Inquisitor is a software suite

Software suite

A software suite or application suite is a collection of computer programs, usually application software and programming software of related functionality, often sharing a more-or-less common user interface and some ability to smoothly exchange data with each other.Sometimes software makers...

 used for hardware diagnostics, stress testing, certification and benchmarking platform. It is available in 3 formats:

• Standalone — as a package to be installed into existing Linux installation; such practice is somewhat limited in available tests.
• Live — distributed as a Linux live CD
  Live CD
  A live CD, live DVD, or live disc is a CD or DVD containing a bootable computer operating system. Live CDs are unique in that they have the ability to run a complete, modern operating system on a computer lacking mutable secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive...
  
   distribution; system under test should be booted from it; this way one particular system can be tested thoroughly.
• Enterprise — a most advanced format; multiple systems can be tested simultaneously by booting from network using PXE
  Preboot Execution Environment
  The Preboot eXecution Environment is an environment to boot computers using a network interface independently of data storage devices or installed operating systems.PXE was introduced as part of the Wired for Management framework by Intel and is described in the specification The Preboot...
  
  , in fully controlled environment; all testing progress and results are collected on central server to be analyzed by testing operator.

Released under the terms of version 3 of the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

, Inquisitor is free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

.

History

Inquisitor started in early 2004 as a closed project developed by Mikhail Yakshin at ALT Linux

ALT Linux

ALT Linux is a set of RPM-based operating systems built on top of the Linux kernel and Sisyphus packages repository. ALT Linux is developed jointly by ALT Linux Team developers community and ALT Linux Ltd.- History :...

 for MaxSelect, a Russian hardware vendor. First versions were closed-source, although some effort was made to open some of its components. Versions 1 and 2 were fully developed in-house and were fully adopted by MaxSelect and its multiple branches. These versions concentrated on server-based enterprise testing and were optimized mostly for notebook hardware.

In 2005, a special abridged version of Inquisitor suite was developed for distribution on Live CDs. These Live CDs were supplied with MaxSelect products, so every buyer can stress test their newly bought hardware to ensure it runs stable.

In August, 2007, all legal complications were solved and Inquisitor was announced as an open source platform. This platform can be used to implement various Linux-based solutions that deal with hardware testing, monitoring and benchmarking. As of July, 2008, version 3.0 is released into public.

Tests

Minimal steps that can be undertaken for purposes of testing or benchmarking are called "tests" in Inquisitor and are implemented as simple Unix shell script

Shell script

A shell script is a script written for the shell, or command line interpreter, of an operating system. It is often considered a simple domain-specific programming language...

s that run other (binary) programs and collects their results. In its simplest form, test outputs only binary result: success or failure, but more advanced API

Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...

 is supplied for benchmarks

Benchmark (computing)

In computing, a benchmark is the act of running a computer program, a set of programs, or other operations, in order to assess the relative performance of an object, normally by running a number of standard tests and trials against it...

 that output results.

, Inquisitor distribution includes following tests:

Array configurator Boot from image BYTEmark benchmark suite CPU benchmark: Dhrystone CPU benchmark: Whetstone CPU burn Database to Detects comparison DD FDD read/write Firmware reflashing HDD array stress HDD benchmark: Bonnie HDD benchmark: hdparm Hdparm hdparm is a command line utility for the Linux and Windows operating systems to set and view ATA hard disk hardware parameters. It can set parameters such as drive caches, sleep mode, power management, acoustic management, and DMA settings....

HDD benchmark: IOzone IOzone IOzone is a file system benchmark utility. Originally made by William Norcott, further enhanced by Don Capps. Source code is available. It does mmap file I/O and uses POSIX Threads.It won the 2007 Infoworld Bossie Awards for Best file I/O tool.... HDD passthrough HDD SMART Memory benchmark: STREAM Memory test: Memtester Mencoder in memory Mencoder on hard drive Network interface ODD read ODD write Partimage Reference-based detects comparison Stress compression

Torrent upload UnixBench benchmark suite USB flash drive USB GPRS modem USB GPRS Modem Dialup USB GPRS modem signal level USB presence