Phoronix Test Suite Picks Up More Capabilities

Written by Michael Larabel in Phoronix on 24 May 2009 at 06:10 PM EDT. 9 Comments
PHORONIX
Next week marks the five-year anniversary of the creation of Phoronix and also signals one year since Phoronix Test Suite 1.0 was released. With those celebrations ahead, the second alpha release for Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 "Sandtorg" has been released. Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 Alpha 2 drives the test profile count up even higher, introduces several new pts-core features, and has other enhancements throughout.

The first alpha release for Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 earlier this month crossed the milestone of having over 100 test profiles in this open-source benchmarking and performance profiling software. With the second alpha release, more test profiles have been added in such as dcraw for RAW image decoding, sudokut for a Sudoku game solver, nero2d for an Open FMM Nero2D TM/TE electromagnetic software solver, and minion for a new computational solver. Other test profiles and test suites have also been updated in this new release.

For those that use the GTK2 GUI interface to the Phoronix Test Suite, it has received a few minor additions and other improvements -- in particular there are some new options in the view menu for better sorting the available tests/suites. New run-time options in this Sandtorg release include extract-from-result-file, list-installed-dependencies, and list-missing-dependencies. Two new options have been added to the ~/.phoronix-test-suite/user-config.xml and those are DefaultBrowser for overriding the default web browser detection paths and UsePhodeviCache for toggling Phodevi's smart cache feature. The Phoronix Test Suite now also supports a SKIP_TESTS environmental variable for overriding some tests to not run within a given suite. Beyond that Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 Alpha 2 contains various bug fixes, improved Xfce 4 desktop detection, and improved video memory detection for some open-source drivers.

For more on the plans we have with Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 "Sandtorg" check out Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 Enters Alpha and Driving Linux-based Benchmarking With Sandtorg. Two other features that will be part of Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 is Phoromatic and PTS Linux Live with more on that coming in the next month or two. Phoronix Test Suite 2.0.0 will be officially released by this August.

Download the latest Phoronix Test Suite.

Phoronix Test Suite 2.0.0 Alpha 2
May 24, 2009


- pts-core: Fix for showing tests in the GTK2 GUI from Alpha 1
- pts-core: Various GTK2 GUI improvements
- pts-core: Add 1.77 ratio to available modes in phodevi_gpu for supporting 1920 x 1080 resolution
- pts-core: Various code clean-ups
- pts-core: Add DefaultBrowser tag to user-config.xml to allow the user to override the web browser auto detection
- pts-core: Add extract-from-result-file option for extracting a single test run from a merged results file
- pts-core: Various bug fixes from Deanjo
- pts-core: Cleanup and revise PTS installation External Dependency functions
- pts-core: Add list-installed-dependencies option
- pts-core: Add list-missing-dependencies option
- pts-core: Add view option to GTK2 GUI for displaying available tests based upon external dependency criteria
- pts-core: Add SKIP_TESTS environmental variable for specifying test identifier(s) (delimited by comma) to override and skip from testing
- pts-core: Rewrite pts_generate_graphs() so that it can be supported for Phoronix Global / Phoromatic usage
- pts-core: Add UsePhodeviCache option to user-config.xml for toggling whether to enable Phodevi smart cache for PTS
- pts-core: Add support for test install scripts to write an install-exit-status where if it's set to a value not 0 it means install failed
- phodevi: Support monitoring the system temperature from the ACPI TZ00 thermal zone
- phodevi: Fix in Xfce 4 desktop version detection
- phodevi: Report video memory detection for some GPUs, at least when using the xf86-video-ati driver
- phodevi: Report video memory size for GPUs where the driver in use is Mesa
- pts: Add dcraw test profile for RAW image decoding benchmark
- pts: Add sudokut test profile for a Sudoku solver benchmark
- pts: Add fftw3-development external dependency for Fast Fourier Transform 3 library
- pts: Add blas-development external dependency for Basic Linear Algebra Subroutine library
- pts: Add lapack-development external dependency for LAPACK
- pts: Add cmake external dependency for cmake
- pts: Add boost-development external dependency for Boost development libraries
- pts: Add bzip2-development external dependency for BZIP2 development libraries
- pts: Add nero2d test profile for Open FMM Nero2D TM/TE electromagnetic software solver
- pts: Add minion test profile for Minion solver
- pts: Support using multiple threads for FFmpeg test profile
- pts: Update filesystem test suite
- pts: Add External Dependencies support for Zenwalk Linux distribution
- pts: Update disk test suite
- pts: Drop system-disk test suite, since basically the same as the disk test suite
- pts: Update linux-system test suite
- toggle_screensaver: Support using gconftool-2 for toggling GNOME screensaver
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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