Documentation confusion - Getting started.

[AspieTechMonkey]

First off, thanks for creating PTS, and especially for supporting BSD/Solaris(h)!

Second, if there is already other documentation besides (http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/d...est-suite.html) or a sticky post or something that I missed, please point me to it!

The one page of documentation at first blush seems fairly comprehensive, but I'm finding it ambiguous. Adding some examples in the doc would help tremendously. (Searching on the web seems to reveal I'm not the only one.)

1 - I'll quote from https://gist.github.com/anshula/728a76297e4a4ee7688d:

• Q:What's the difference between testing and benchmarking?
• A: Not a blooming clue.

2 - I've managed to run a test suite, it asked for a filename to save the results, but I can't find it. Running as root, there is no /root/.phoronix-test-suite/ (Yes, I know "ls -la" , and it's not in a subfolder of the extracted .tgz where I ran it from. (I saw one post

3 - How to interact with openbenchmark.org? I've created a user there, but no idea how to associate a result run to my account, and I certainly can't find a way to upload result files (once I find them) on the website. (Running "benchmark" did

4 - What's the difference between install and install-dependencies? Shouldn't/doesn't "install" install the dependencies already?



Thanks for any help!

[Michael]

First off, thanks for creating PTS, and especially for supporting BSD/Solaris(h)!

Second, if there is already other documentation besides (http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/d...est-suite.html) or a sticky post or something that I missed, please point me to it!

The one page of documentation at first blush seems fairly comprehensive, but I'm finding it ambiguous. Adding some examples in the doc would help tremendously. (Searching on the web seems to reveal I'm not the only one.)

1 - I'll quote from https://gist.github.com/anshula/728a76297e4a4ee7688d:

• Q:What's the difference between testing and benchmarking?
• A: Not a blooming clue.

2 - I've managed to run a test suite, it asked for a filename to save the results, but I can't find it. Running as root, there is no /root/.phoronix-test-suite/ (Yes, I know "ls -la" , and it's not in a subfolder of the extracted .tgz where I ran it from. (I saw one post

3 - How to interact with openbenchmark.org? I've created a user there, but no idea how to associate a result run to my account, and I certainly can't find a way to upload result files (once I find them) on the website. (Running "benchmark" did

4 - What's the difference between install and install-dependencies? Shouldn't/doesn't "install" install the dependencies already?



Thanks for any help!

2. If running as root with newer versions of PTS, it's in /var/lib/phoronix-test-suite/ on Linux systems.

3. You can run phoronix-test-suite openbenchmarking-setup to associate your PTS client with your OB account. You can upload any existing results using the phoronix-test-suite upload-results command.

4. You are correct that install will install any needed dependencies. Install-dependencies command is basically just around for some niche use-cases and testing.

Let me know if you have any other questions! Unfortunately with developing 99% of PTS by myself, on top of everything else, documentation is currently low priority compared to commercial support needs, etc.

[AspieTechMonkey]

2. If running as root with newer versions of PTS, it's in /var/lib/phoronix-test-suite/ on Linux systems.

3. You can run phoronix-test-suite openbenchmarking-setup to associate your PTS client with your OB account. You can upload any existing results using the phoronix-test-suite upload-results command.

4. You are correct that install will install any needed dependencies. Install-dependencies command is basically just around for some niche use-cases and testing.

Let me know if you have any other questions! Unfortunately with developing 99% of PTS by myself, on top of everything else, documentation is currently low priority compared to commercial support needs, etc.

Thanks for the quick reply!

1 - So the answer is...testing is just saving results locally, benchmarking is uploading results?

2 - That was it, thanks.

3 - Worked. Perhaps could be called out a bit better in docs.

4 - Also could be explained better.

And yes, I know how documentation always gets shoved to the back of the line. "The urgent crowds out the necessary." (And then people don't read the docs, and you end up answering the same questions anyway...).

5 - I was confused by "Name to save these results under" vs "unique name". I *think* I understand now that the first "Name to save under" is just a generic tag/field for logical grouping.

I've got lots more questions, but mostly from an ill-advised attempt at running in a native SmartOS zone. If I continue down that path I'll start another thread.

[Michael]

Thanks for the quick reply!

1 - So the answer is...testing is just saving results locally, benchmarking is uploading results?

2 - That was it, thanks.

3 - Worked. Perhaps could be called out a bit better in docs.

4 - Also could be explained better.

And yes, I know how documentation always gets shoved to the back of the line. "The urgent crowds out the necessary." (And then people don't read the docs, and you end up answering the same questions anyway...).

5 - I was confused by "Name to save these results under" vs "unique name". I *think* I understand now that the first "Name to save under" is just a generic tag/field for logical grouping.

I've got lots more questions, but mostly from an ill-advised attempt at running in a native SmartOS zone. If I continue down that path I'll start another thread.

1. there isn't really a difference at least from the PTS context. Whenever you run a test/benchmark you always have the option of saving or not. When uploading results to OpenBenchmarking.org, it's just a matter of uploading the results. The only other form of testing in PTS is "stress-run" where you can run many tests simultaneously and not save the results as a form of burn-in. There is some documentation on that.

Hopefully for Phoronix Test Suite 7.0 early next year I'll be able to find time/resources for some better documentation.

Let me know if any other questions come to mind as also helps me seeing where people have questions / lack of understanding from docs.