System information

7.1 Complex Tasks

for key in $ANSI_RIGHT $ANSI_RIGHT $ANSI_DOWN $ANSI_DOWN $ASCII_ENTER ...

keyb_cmd -u --key $key -s

done

# Switch off the PC

hostPowerOff

The setup of the BIOS settings is ﬁnally a sequence of arrow, escape and return keys

which are sent to the host system. But ﬁrst, the BIOS setup has to be set into an initial

state. The key sequence of the BIOS setup depends on this initial state.

7.1.3 Automatic Computer Tests

Before a node is conﬁgured to run in the HLT cluster, the hardware of the node has to

be tested. Furthermore, the hardware conﬁguration of the node like main memory size,

amount of hard discs and the CPU speed, have to be validated with the expected values.

These tests ought to run before the operating system is installed. Therefore, a live system

has to start the computer tests. The setup of the live system, starting of the computer tests

and validating the results of one hundred computer nodes, requires a signiﬁcant amount of

time.

At the HLT at CERN the CHARM cards test and validate the computer nodes. A shell

script running on every card setups the node, starts the tests and validates the hardware

conﬁgurations. Table 7.1 lists the tasks which are processed by the CHARM card.

• Power on the node.

• Setup the CMOS to boot from USB CD-ROM.

• Boot a KNOPPIX Live CD.

• Validating the PCI devices with lspci [89].

• Get network interface MAC with ifconﬁg [90].

• Validating the mainboard hardware setup with dmidecode [91].

• Validate the hard disc conﬁguration with /proc/diskstat.

• Test the main memory with memtest [92].

• Check the hard discs with badblocks [93].

• Stress test of the CPUs with cpuburn [94].

• Restart node.

• Start installing of the system image.

Table 7.1: Principal tasks of the CHARM card while testing the HLT nodes.

The programs which validate and test the node are running on the host CPU. A KNOP-

PIX live system provides the necessary tools. In principle, there are two possibilities to pro-

cess the test of the node: a script running on the node or direct interaction with keystrokes

and the visual output. To be ﬂexible as possible, the test programs are executed by but