Stress-ng: How to Stress Test Your Computer (and Possibly Break It)

Explore the intricacies of stress testing computer systems with this comprehensive mentorship session on stress-ng, a powerful tool designed to stress test kernels and hardware. Delve into various methods for exercising a system, understanding testing concepts that shape the project, and gaining practical insights through worked examples. Learn how to build and install stress-ng, analyze results, and discover success stories from its application. Gain knowledge on contributing to the project and explore specific stress cases including CPU, cache, system calls, network, and virtual memory. Understand the importance of concurrency, benchmarking, and allowing sufficient time for thorough testing. This session, led by Colin Ian King, Principal Engineer at Intel, provides valuable insights for both beginners and experienced professionals in system testing and optimization.