Inquisitor project is a platform, i.e. a set of modules that can be connected and ran together in a clean, controlled environment. There are several classes of modules:

* Tests - scripts that prepare everything to run a stability test, initiate a run and collect/parse results afterwards.
* Detects - detection routines to analyze hardware or software (so, for example, one would know that it is HDD with serial number X that is faulty).
* Monitorings - monitoring routines to record various system running parameters (temperatures, frequencies, loads, etc) to help diagnosing faults.

These modules are generally ran in complex sequenced determined by test scheduler. Scheduler makes test execution plan according to test profile (i.e. a list of tests with all parameters).

Inquisitor's client (i.e. software that will be run on system under test) can be built and ran using one of the several Linux systems (ALT Linux, Debian/Ubuntu, SuSE). Inquisitor's server (i.e. software that maintains a central database of test results/reports, allows to control testing and view test results using web UI) can be installed on almost any Linux system.

Full web interface is available as a demo at http://demo.inquisitor.ru/

Web Site : http://www.inquisitor.ru/

Country : Russian Federation

License : GPLv3

Leader of the Project : Mikhail Yakshin

Aimed Public : "Standalone" can be used for demonstration purposes and running simple tests that does not overwrite HDDs. "LiveCD" is meant to be used by advanced end-users or system administrators to check a few systems (running hardware tests) relatively quickly. "Enterprise" builds of Inquisitor are suitable for companies that build, use or maintain a large park of computers and deal with hardware stability fairly often - it helps to organize a database of computers built/used and track hardware stability issues.

Similar Projects : VA Linux Cerberus, Stress Linux, Phoronix Test Suite

Specificity : Most of similar projects are either not actively developed (Cerberus is abandoned since 2003, Stress Linux - since 2006) or focus on entirely different form-factor and functionality (Phoronix Test Suite focuses on benchmarking and does not provide any means to run itself except on manually pre-installed OS - while Inquisitor focuses on hardware testing and is usually run in a clean, controlled environment provided either with a LiveCD or network boot).

Dependencies : Inquisitor does not aim to reinvent all the existing open-source testing software: instead, it just uses it. From this point of view, Inquisitor can be seen as a "runner" solution that just launches a clean run of well-known tests in preset managed environment.

Inquisitor uses more than 30-40 utilities in its tests. For more information, please take a look at tests description at http://www.inquisitor.ru/doc/tests/

Want to contribute ?

Documentation; code for more tests (to test more devices with more algorithms), more detection routines (to detect more devices properly), more monitoring routines (to monitor more things that might give a clue what's wrong).

Please check out our roadmap at http://track.inquisitor.ru/projects/roadmap/inq for more fundamental code plans.

Number of developers : 6

Number of contributors : 5

Mailing-list of the project : http://sourceforge.net/mailarc[..]

Public CVS/SVN : https://inq.svn.sourceforge.ne[..]