ULTRIX Guide to System Exercisers

This document, the "ULTRIX Guide to System Exercisers" by Digital Equipment Corporation (June 1990), provides instructions for testing and troubleshooting ULTRIX operating systems (version 4.0 or higher).

Aimed at system administrators and maintainers, it details how to use various "exerciser" commands located in the /usr/field directory to diagnose system health. The guide covers exercisers for different system components, including:

• File Systems and Memory: fsx (local file systems), memx (system memory), and shmx (shared memory).
• Peripherals: dskx (disk drives), mtx and tapex (tape drives), and lpx (line printers).
• Network and Communications Systems: netx (TCP/IP networks) and cmx (terminal communication systems).

It explains how to run these exercisers, including simultaneous execution using the syscript utility, and emphasizes the requirement of superuser privileges. The manual also describes the diagnostic output and log files generated by the exercisers, which are crucial for identifying system errors. Crucially, it warns users about data loss risks when using certain disk exerciser options (-p and -c for dskx).