Shakedown - Linux Hardware Stress Testing Application

Shakedown is a GUI application for running comprehensive hardware stress tests on Linux systems to detect hardware faults. It provides a user-friendly interface for configuring and monitoring stress-ng tests while tracking system temperatures and hardware errors.

Features

• GUI-based test configuration - Select which subsystems to stress test:

  • CPU - Computation-heavy workloads, FPU, cache stress
  • Memory - RAM integrity, memory subsystem testing
  • Disk - Storage read/write operations
  • Network - Network stack and socket operations
  • I/O - Asynchronous/synchronous I/O operations

• Execution modes:

  • Sequential - Run tests one after another (easier to identify which test causes issues)
  • Parallel - Run all tests simultaneously (maximum system stress)

• Real-time monitoring:

  • Temperature sensors via sysfs/hwmon
  • Hardware error logging via journalctl
  • Test progress and elapsed time

• Pre-configured stress-ng jobfiles - Solid defaults that can be customized if needed

Requirements

• Linux operating system
• Rust toolchain (for building)
• stress-ng (built from source, see below)
• journalctl (for error logging)

Building

1. Build stress-ng

The application expects stress-ng to be in the same directory as the built binary. You'll need to build stress-ng from source:

# Clone stress-ng repository
git clone https://github.com/ColinIanKing/stress-ng.git
cd stress-ng

# Build
make

# Copy to your shakedown build directory (after building shakedown)
cp stress-ng /path/to/shakedown/target/release/

2. Build Shakedown

cd shakedown
cargo build --release

3. Set up the distribution

# Create distribution directory
mkdir -p dist

# Copy the binary
cp target/release/shakedown dist/

# Copy stress-ng
cp /path/to/stress-ng dist/

# Copy jobfiles
cp -r jobfiles dist/

Usage

1. Launch the application:

   cd dist
   ./shakedown
   

2. Select Tests: Check the boxes for the subsystems you want to stress test

3. Choose Execution Mode:

   • Sequential: Tests run one at a time
   • Parallel: All selected tests run simultaneously

4. Start Tests: Click "Start Tests" to begin

5. Monitor:

   • Watch temperatures in the right panel
   • View hardware errors in the center panel
   • Track progress in the status bar

6. Stop Tests: Click "Stop Tests" to terminate running tests

Jobfiles

Pre-configured stress-ng jobfiles are located in the jobfiles/ directory:

File	Description
cpu.job	CPU stress tests (matrix ops, crypto, FPU, cache)
memory.job	Memory stress tests (allocation, mmap, cache)
disk.job	Disk stress tests (file I/O, sync operations)
network.job	Network stress tests (sockets, UDP, TCP)
io.job	I/O stress tests (AIO, io_uring, pipes)

Customizing Jobfiles

The jobfiles use stress-ng's jobfile format. You can edit them to:

• Adjust test duration (timeout)
• Enable/disable specific stressors
• Change resource limits

Example jobfile directive:

timeout 300s     # Run for 5 minutes
cpu 0            # Use all CPU cores
verify           # Verify computations for error detection

Hardware Error Detection

Shakedown monitors journalctl for hardware-related errors including:

• Machine Check Exceptions (MCE)
• EDAC memory errors
• Disk/storage errors (ATA, AHCI, NVMe)
• PCIe errors
• Thermal events
• Kernel hardware errors

Troubleshooting

"stress-ng not found"

Ensure stress-ng is in the same directory as the shakedown binary.

No temperature sensors detected

• Check if running in a virtual machine (limited sensor support)
• Verify thermal drivers are loaded: ls /sys/class/thermal/
• Check hwmon devices: ls /sys/class/hwmon/

Permission errors

Some stress tests may require elevated privileges. Run with sudo if needed.

License

MIT License

Acknowledgments

• stress-ng - The underlying stress testing tool
• egui - Immediate mode GUI library for Rust