# Best way to peg CPU usage?



## horseflesh (Aug 26, 2010)

I am trying to run down a signal 11 problem. I suspect it may have to do with CPU cooling. Can anyone suggest a way to easily nail all the cores on the CPU with some process that would be sensitive to a hardware fault?

I have tried making world but I need a test that can run longer.


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## graudeejs (Aug 26, 2010)

Build OpenOffice 
Or if you think that is short, build all localized OpenOffice packages 

And remember to turn off *distcc* and/or *ccache* if you're using one of them


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## horseflesh (Aug 26, 2010)

<rimshot> I walked in to that one!

Looks like I may have fixed the underlying problem, knock on wood... I think it was poor CPU cooler mounting.


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## nakal (Aug 27, 2010)

I've done it before, because my laptop was overheating with FreeBSD. Due to missing voltage modulation on ATI VGA, I could drive the CPU that was sitting under the same cooler to over 100Â°C which forced an automatic power-off.

A simple way is to run _openssl speed -multi <number-of-CPUs-times-2>_ in a loop. Compiling in a loop is also fine, but you need to saturate all the available cores.


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## horseflesh (Aug 27, 2010)

Excellent, thanks!


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