 Lucifer V1.0 - A Burn-in Utility
=====================================

 Whats Lucifer?
----------------

Lucifer is a burn-in program for dos and Linux. It's designed to thoughly check
your system for errors caused by bad memory, overheated CPUs, broken storage
devices (hard drives, floppy, cdrom) etc. If your hardware is flaky Lucifer
will find out.

 Why the name Lucifer?
-----------------------

Well it's a burn-in program. Lucifer is one of the names of the devil. And the
devil lives in that oh-so-hot place Hell. The main thing that got me to name
this program Lucifer was actually the Lucifer brand of matches that are sold
in Austrailia. I was thinking of a original name for my program and remembered
seeing those matches while I was on a camping trip in Austrailia.

 How to Install Lucifer
------------------------

See INSTALL for information on installing Lucifer on your system.

 How to Use Lucifer
--------------------

The first thing you'll want to do is disable ECC error correction and the L1
and L2 cache. You'll have to go into the BIOS for this. If you're not
comfterable with doing this it's OK if you don't. But Lucifer won't be able
to do as good a job at detecting errors.

Once you've done that then just run Lucifer without any command line options.
Lucifer will start up and burn in your memory, cpu and fpu. By default it will
check for errors. Every 1 second the display will be updated. If you want to
stop Lucifer just press crtl-break or crtl-c.

If you don't know what a burn-in program does then please read "Whats a Burn-In
Program" at the end of this manual.

 Advanced Useage
-----------------

Not content with the default options? Well try these examples:

Want to test the multitasking of your Linux machine? Well then start up 4
different instances of Lucifer: 

lucifer -m (some amount of memory) --nocpu --nofpu --nostorage &

lucifer --nomem --nofpu --nostorage &

lucifer --nomem --nocpu --nostorage &

lucifer --nomem --nocpu --nofpu --storc 1 --dirlist /somedir/ 10000 &

Now just watch as your system slows to a crawl. :) If you have the dos version
of Lucifer you could run it under Windows the same way. However I'm not sure if
it will work right. I seem to remember something about dos sessions not working
right....

Want to test your harddrives? Then run:

lucifer --nomem --nocpu --nofpu --storc 1 --dirlist /somedir/ 10000 
/someotherdir/ 100000 /yetanotherdir/ 10000

Do you think your memory is faulty? Try:

lucifer -m (the amount free memory) --nocpu --nofpu --nostorage

Want to make your system overheat? Try:

lucifer -m (some amount of memory) --storc /somedir/ 10000

 Command Line Options
----------------------

General Options:

-c      Turn off checking

-s	Stop on errors

-t x    Display interval in seconds. Every x seconds the display will be 
        updated. If x is zero the display will be updates continusly.

--nodisplay
        Don't display anything but errors.

-l x    Loop x times and exit.  

Burning routine control:

--nomem      Don't do any memory burning at all.

--nocpu      Don't burn the cpu.

--nofpu      Don't burn the fpu.

--nostorage  Don't do any burning of storage.

How often to run the routines:

This is a relative indicator of how much time is spent on each routine. During
each loop all of the burning routines are run X times. Remember that the cpu
and fpu routines take a lot less time to execute then the memory and storage.

--memc x     How many times the memory burning routien should run per loop.

--cpuc x     How many times the cpu burning routine should run.

--fpuc x     How many times the fpu burning routine should run.

--storc x    How many times the storage burning routine should run.

Routine specific options:

-m X                  The amount of memory to burn

--dirlist dir size... Specififies what directorys the storage burning routine
                      should burn. Type in a directory and the amount of 
                      storage you want Lucifer to burn. You can have as many
                      directory-storage pairs as you want. Note that this
                      option *must* be at the end of the options list. 
                      Otherwise the rest of your options will get screwed up. 

-b blocksize          Specififies the "blocksize" Every time the storage
                      burning routien writes something it will write a block
                      of blocksize bytes. I put this option in because 
                      internally there is a blocksize variable and I figured
                      that I might as well allow you to change it.

 Whats a Burn-In Program?
--------------------------

A burn-in program is actually rather simple. All it does is puts the system
under maximum load. If the system is unreliable a burn-in program can often
detect whats going wrong.

If you're going to buy a new server, or even just any old computer, you might 
want to use a burn-in program to make sure the computer in question can
handle the job. If the computer fails with the burn-in program running chances
are it would have failed at a later date. Also some people run burn-in 
programs just before their computer's warrenty expires for the same reason.

If you're an overclocker you will want a burn-in program to make sure your 
machine is stable at the increased clock speed. Many people use games like 
Quake3 and Unreal to test their computers. But unlike a game a burn-in 
program will catch any error the computer makes. Of course unlike a game this 
burn-in program doesn't test your video card or display pretty pictures. :(
Oh well, there is always a next version.   





