Stress Command Examples (with examples)

Stress Test CPU

To stress test the CPU of a Linux system, you can use the stress command with the -c option followed by the number of workers you want to spawn. For example, the following command will spawn 4 workers to stress test the CPU:

stress -c 4

Motivation: This example can be useful when you want to simulate heavy CPU usage to test the performance and stability of your system under high load. It can help you identify any issues related to CPU utilization, overheating, or CPU-related bottlenecks.

Explanation: The -c option is used to specify the number of workers that will be spawned to stress test the CPU. In this case, we are spawning 4 workers. Each worker will continuously perform calculations to put a heavy load on the CPU.

Example Output:

...
stress: info: [3503] dispatching hogs: 0 cpu, 0 io, 4 vm, 0 hdd
...

In the output, you will see the information about the stress test being dispatched, including the number of workers for each resource (CPU, I/O, memory, and HDD).

Stress Test IO with Timeout

To stress test the I/O operations on a Linux system with a timeout, you can use the stress command with the -i and -t options. For example, the following command will spawn 2 workers to stress test I/O and timeout after 5 seconds:

stress -i 2 -t 5

Motivation: This example can be useful when you want to test the I/O performance of your system and check how efficiently it handles I/O operations. The specified timeout allows you to limit the duration of the test.

Explanation: The -i option is used to specify the number of workers that will be spawned to stress test I/O. In this case, we are spawning 2 workers. The -t option is used to set the timeout in seconds. In this case, the timeout is set to 5 seconds.

Example Output:

...
stress: info: [3503] dispatching hogs: 0 cpu, 2 io, 0 vm, 0 hdd
...

In the output, you will see the information about the stress test being dispatched, including the number of workers for each resource (CPU, I/O, memory, and HDD).

Stress Test Memory

To stress test the memory of a Linux system, you can use the stress command with the -m option followed by the number of workers you want to spawn, and --vm-bytes option to specify the amount of memory each worker should allocate. For example, the following command will spawn 2 workers to stress test memory, with each worker allocating 256M bytes:

stress -m 2 --vm-bytes 256M

Motivation: This example can be useful when you want to test the memory usage and stability of your system under heavy load. It can help you identify any issues related to memory leaks, fragmentation, or insufficient memory management.

Explanation: The -m option is used to specify the number of workers that will be spawned to stress test memory. In this case, we are spawning 2 workers. The --vm-bytes option is used to specify the amount of memory (in bytes) that each worker should allocate. In this case, each worker will allocate 256M bytes.

Example Output:

...
stress: info: [3503] dispatching hogs: 0 cpu, 0 io, 2 vm, 0 hdd
...

In the output, you will see the information about the stress test being dispatched, including the number of workers for each resource (CPU, I/O, memory, and HDD).

Stress Test HDD

To stress test the HDD (hard disk drive) of a Linux system, you can use the stress command with the -d option followed by the number of workers you want to spawn, and --hdd-bytes option to specify the amount of data each worker should write. For example, the following command will spawn 2 workers to stress test the HDD, with each worker writing 1G bytes:

stress -d 2 --hdd-bytes 1GB

Motivation: This example can be useful when you want to test the performance and stability of your HDD under heavy write operations. It can help you identify any issues related to disk I/O bottlenecks, disk fragmentation, or disk corruption.

Explanation: The -d option is used to specify the number of workers that will be spawned to stress test the HDD. In this case, we are spawning 2 workers. The --hdd-bytes option is used to specify the amount of data (in bytes) that each worker should write. In this case, each worker will write 1G bytes.

Example Output:

...
stress: info: [3503] dispatching hogs: 0 cpu, 0 io, 0 vm, 2 hdd
...

In the output, you will see the information about the stress test being dispatched, including the number of workers for each resource (CPU, I/O, memory, and HDD).