cpuburn: CPU Stress Tester for Ubuntu Linux
If you’re a power user, then having the ability to put your CPU under a bit of stress can be quite useful. For instance, let’s say that you’ve just over clocked (running it in higher speeds than recommended, yikes!) the CPU and wanted to know if your fan or the cooling system in general could handle the new speeds (= generating more heat etc).
Now under MS Windows OS you can find a lot of tools, however, in GNU/Linux or Ubuntu (as in this case) there aren’t that many you can use (or at least as far as I know). But, if you’re looking for a CPU stress testing utility that’s optimized for both Intel and AMD micro processors, then the utility know as “cpuburn” will come in handy.
But please remember that, putting a lot of stress (100% of CPU usage) on your CPU (especially if you’ve over clocked it) can easily damage your hardware. So with all due respect, dear readers, if you don’t know what you’re doing, please don’t use it!. And also note that, this is not a CPU benchmark tool, but only a stress tester.
(in the picture: I’ve used 4 terminals as I have a CPU with 4-cores, and CPU usage was measured using the awesome “Glances” system monitor).
Main features
*. Although it’s named “cpuburn” but in truth, it comes with few individual utilities (6 small ones) that as said are optimized for Intel and AMD CPU designs, which you can use, depending on your CPU model.
“burnP5”, “burnP6” (better than the “P5” as it supports never CPU models), “burnMMX” (also supports AMD) and “burnBX” (a CPU cache memory related test).
“burnK6”, “burnK7” and “burnMMX”.
*. But of course you can use the AMD optimized packages in Intel chips and Intel ones in AMD etc.
Just to make sure, I tested the AMD optimized tools with my Intel Core i3-2330 (4-cores running an 2.2GHZ. Well actually, it only has 2 cores that can deal with 4 threads simultaneously, which makes it looks like a 4-core processor in a system monitoring tool) and they did put it under full stress (100% usage).
However, since I’m not an expert on that field, I should humbly suggest only to use the tests that are optimized for your CPU type for better results.
Well, that’s it for the features.
You can install “cpuburn” in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.
How to use it?
Quite simple actually. Depending on your CPU type (Intel or AMD) choose one of the individual commands as shown above and put it in your Terminal window and press Enter!.
An example …
As said above, I have an Intel Core i3-2330 (4-cores) CPU and to put it under stress, I’d prefer to use the “burnP6” package (as it’s optimized for never Intel CPU from the bunch).
So for that, I’d simply enter its command in my Terminal window as shown below.
If you have multi-cores …
This however, will only stress a single core, but to to put the whole CPU (all 4 cores) under full stress (oh come on dudes, have mercy! :P) I’ll have to open 4 terminals/tabs and enter “burnP6” under each Terminal window. So altogether, 4 “burnP6” programs will be running simultaneously. That’s it!.
You can terminate (exit) the CPU stress utility/utilities whenever you want by pressing “Ctrl” + “c” keys. Again, if you run multiple Terminals, you’ll have to terminate each one individually.
Update: As ‘Roy’ pointed out (in the comments) it is a bit lame to open tabs or new windows in Terminal for running multiple instances. So if you want a shortcut then you can use this other method for achieving the same task.
Another method: Simply copy and paste the below command into your Terminal window (make sure to replace ‘burnP6’ accordingly).
As soon as you enter this, you’ll be automatically brought back to the ‘$’ (prompt) because of the ‘ & ‘ argument.
So now you can use the Terminal for executing another one while the first ‘burnP6’ is running in the background. Depending on the total of your CPU cores and their threads, calculate how many ‘burnP6’ programs are needed to run, then enter the same command accordingly (for example; if you wanted 8 threads then enter the command 8 times).
As a shortcut (if you’re new), when you’ve executed the command at least once, you can press the up-arrow on the keyboard and the previously entered command will be pasted automatically.
Or, you can combine all those needed running instances into a single chain command as well. For instance, if I wanted to run 4 instances of ‘burnP6’ (without having to enter one after the other) then I can use it in the below format (note there’s a space between each ‘burnP6 & ‘ command).
burnP6 & burnP6 & burnP6 & burnP6 &
When you want to terminate them all, simply enter the below command.
Again make sure to replace ‘burnP6’ with the command that you used. You can also kill the individual processes too but since it can complicate things, I won’t go into that here.
You can read its manual by using the below command in your Terminal as well.
So, if you’ve been looking for a simple yet an effective tool that can be run in Ubuntu (or GNU/Linux in general) to put your CPU under stress, then “cpuburn” is an extremely handy tool.
However, as mentioned before, if you don’t know what you’re doing, then please don’t use it, even if you do know what you’re doing, please use it at your own risk :). Special thanks goes to “Robert Redelmeier” for creating it. Good luck.
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Gayan
An RHCE, ‘Linux’ user with 14+ years of experience. Extreme lover of Linux and FOSS. He is passionate to test every Linux distribution & compare with the previous release to write in-depth articles to help the FOSS community.
Cpuburn : stresser son CPU
There are plenty of system stress testing applications for Windows, but what about Linux? Here is a simple way to stress test your CPU in Linux and monitor various system statistics while doing it. This can be used for testing an overclocked system or just to burn in a new cpu.
You can run CPU Burn-In with:
stress --cpu 2 --io 1 --vm 1 --vm-bytes 128M --timeout 10s --verbose
Now for a few diagnostic tools. First install lm-sensors. This program can read various sensor chips in your system and report their outputs. This gives you access to things like CPU temperature, core voltage, and fan speeds. In Ubuntu you can install lm-sensors with:
sudo apt-get install lm-sensors
Once you have done this you have to configure lm-sensors so it knows about the sensors in your system. To do this run:
sudo /usr/sbin/sensors-detect
In most cases you can choose the default answer at each of the programs prompts. When you get to the end, the program will tell you that you need to add some lines to several system files. In my case I was asked to add the following:
To make the sensors modules behave correctly, add these lines to /etc/modules: #----cut here---- # I2C adapter drivers # modprobe unknown adapter NVIDIA i2c adapter 0 at 5:00.0 # modprobe unknown adapter NVIDIA i2c adapter 1 at 5:00.0 # modprobe unknown adapter NVIDIA i2c adapter 2 at 5:00.0 # modprobe unknown adapter NVIDIA i2c adapter 0 at 4:00.0 # modprobe unknown adapter NVIDIA i2c adapter 1 at 4:00.0 # modprobe unknown adapter NVIDIA i2c adapter 2 at 4:00.0 i2c-nforce2 # Chip drivers eeprom k8temp w83627hf #----cut here----
At this point either restart so that the new kernel modules get loaded or load them by hand with:
If you load the modules by hand you do not need to restart. Now you can run lm-sensors with:
and you will get an output like this:
k8temp-pci-00c3 Adapter: PCI adapter Core0 Temp: +42°C Core1 Temp: +37°C w83627thf-isa-0290 Adapter: ISA adapter VCore: +1.13 V (min = +0.70 V, max = +1.87 V) +12V: +12.77 V (min = +14.53 V, max = +6.81 V) +3.3V: +3.20 V (min = +0.91 V, max = +4.02 V) +5V: +5.04 V (min = +3.33 V, max = +2.91 V) -12V: -12.03 V (min = -7.34 V, max = -1.75 V) V5SB: +5.08 V (min = +0.30 V, max = +1.67 V) VBat: +3.02 V (min = +0.86 V, max = +2.10 V) fan1: 0 RPM (min = 11065 RPM, div = 2) CPU Fan: 4821 RPM (min = 84375 RPM, div = 8) fan3: 6887 RPM (min = 6887 RPM, div = 2) M/B Temp: +41°C (high = +127°C, hyst = +32°C) sensor = thermistor CPU Temp: +41.5°C (high = +80°C, hyst = +75°C) sensor = thermistor temp3: -98.5°C (high = +80°C, hyst = +75°C) sensor = diode vid: +0.000 V (VRM Version 2.4) alarms: Chassis intrusion detection beep_enable: Sound alarm enabled
You can further modify the output of lm-sensors by changing the /etc/sensors.conf file, but I will not get into that here. lm-sensors only displays its output once each time you call it, so it only gives you a static image of system statistics. A simple python script will enable you to view the sensor outputs continuously.
#!/usr/bin/python import os, time while 1: time.sleep(3) os.system('clear') os.system('sensors') Note: you can do the same with this in your terminal: watch sensors
This will update the sensor output every three seconds. If you have a CPU that does frequency scaling like an AMD Athlon 64, you can also output the current CPU frequency by adding these lines at the end of the while loop:
fid = open('/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq', 'rb') print 'CPU0 Frequency:', float(fid.read()) / 1000000, 'GHz' fid.close() If you have more than one CPU core just copy that piece of code multiple times replacing «cpu0» with «cpuN». Save the script as something like sensors.py and run it with:
Just hit Ctrl-c to stop the script. Now its time to actually stress the system. I open several terminals, one for each CPU core I have in my system, and run one instance of CPU Burn-In in each of them. This should hopefully get the CPUs running at 100 percent. Next open another terminal and run the python sensor script so you can keep track of temperatures and core frequencies and whatever else lm-sensors is outputting. If you are using Gnome go to System—>Administration—>»System Monitor» on the top menu bar. This will open System Monitor which is much like the Windows Task Manager and will graphically display various system information. In particular for stress testing, the Resource tab in System Monitor is helpful because it shows the CPU load. I usually run the burn in program for a good length of time, like 10 or 12 hours while I am sleeping. Hopefully, when CPU Burn-In finishes it reports a message that no errors were found. If not, reduce your overclock or get some better cpu cooling or maybe your cpu is just bad. Whatever the case, that should be everything you need to stress test the CPU in Linux and view some diagnostics while you do so.
Thread: stress testing & cpu burn in
First Cup of Ubuntu 
stress testing & cpu burn in
hello all, i’m very new here and VERY new to Ubuntu. thank you in advance for this resource.
i’m building a new computer and i want to make sure everything is all set with the system before i dive in headlong. my overall plan for the computer is to dual boot ubuntu on one hard drive and then to boot OSX on another drive which will be my main OS.
so, i plan on rigorously testing the system but i am finding it difficult to locate the best ubuntu stress testing software. i’m really green when it comes to linux so the easier the software is to use and navigate the better.
i’ve read some stuff about running prime 95 through WINE but found nothing conclusive as to whether or not this works well.
i need to do all of the stress testing in ubuntu but i really have no idea where to start so any help or direction would be greatly appreciated.
i also plan on running the 64 bit version of Ubuntu if that makes a difference, which it probably does.
Tea Glorious Tea! 
Re: stress testing & cpu burn in
Save a large file in a .tar.gz to stress test, though there are better tools to try, I just don’t remember their names at the moment.