BurnInTest Linux - Live Boot

BurnInTest Linux V5 - Creating a live boot environment

These steps refer to creating a live boot environment on USB to run V5 of BurnIntest Linux, PassMark also sell a pre-built self booting USB drive that will launch BurnInTest Linux and also contains a number of other testing software packages.

The following steps are based on Porteus Linux V5.

  1. Download the current Desktop edition of Porteus. There are a number of different desktop environments available, we would recommend using the KDE based one.
  2. Follow these steps to creating a Porteus USB drive
  3. Most of the tests in BurnInTest require root privileges so edit the /boot/syslinux/porteus.cfg file and in the "LABEL GRAPHICAL" section add "login=root" to the APPEND line, for example;

    LABEL GRAPHICAL
    MENU LABEL Graphics mode
    KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
    INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
    APPEND changes=/porteus login=root

  4. Download the latest version of BurnInTest Linux
  5. Extract the files and copy the BurnInTest directory to the /porteus/rootcopy folder on the USB drive
  6. Boot into Porteus from the USB drive
  7. BurnInTest will be in the /burnintest folder, launch BurnInTest and register your key.
  8. If you have setup Porteus to save changes then next time Porteus boots BurInTest should remain registered. If not you will need to copy the contents of the the burnintest directory back into the rootcopy folder on the USB drive (you will need to check the mounted disks for your USB drive), eg cp -R -F /burnintest /mnt/sdc1/porteus/rootcopy
  9. If you want to launch BurnInTest automatically when booting has finished you can create a burnintest.sh file in the /porteus/rootcopy directory on the usb drive that contains these lines;

    #!/bin/bash
    cd /burnintest/
    ./bit_gui_x64

    Then edit the /boot/syslinux/porteus.cfg file and in the "LABEL GRAPHICAL" section add "guiexec=/burnintest.sh" to the APPEND line, for example;

    LABEL GRAPHICAL
    MENU LABEL Graphics mode
    KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
    INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
    APPEND changes=/porteus login=root guiexec=/burnintest.sh

There are numerous other ways to create self booting Linux environments and while they should work we have done the most testing on the Porteus live environment.

Older releases

BurnInTest Linux V4 - Creating a live boot environment

These steps refer to creating a live boot environment on USB to run V4 of BurnIntest Linux, PassMark also sell a pre-built self booting USB drive that will launch BurnInTest Linux and also contains a number of other testing software packages.

The following steps are based on Porteus Linux V4.

  1. Download the current Desktop edition of Porteus. There are a number of different desktop environments available, we would recommend using the KDE based one.
  2. Follow these steps to creating a Porteus USB drive
  3. Most of the tests in BurnInTest require root privileges so edit the /boot/syslinux/porteus.cfg file and in the "LABEL GRAPHICAL" section add "login=root" to the APPEND line, for example

    LABEL GRAPHICAL
    MENU LABEL Graphics mode
    KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
    INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
    APPEND changes=/porteus login=root

  4. Download the latest version of BurnInTest Linux
  5. Extract the files and copy the BurnInTest directory to the porteus\rootcopy folder on the USB drive
  6. Boot into Porteus from the USB drive
  7. BurnInTest will be in the /burnintest folder, launch BurnInTest and register your key.
  8. If you have setup Porteus to save changes then next time Porteus boots BurInTest should remain registered. If not you will need to copy the contents of the the burnintest directory back into the rootcopy folder on the USB drive (you will need to check the mounted disks for your USB drive), eg cp -R -F /burnintest /mnt/sdc1/porteus/rootcopy
  9. If you want to launch BurnInTest automatically when booting has finished you can create a burnintest.sh file in the porteus\rootcopy\root\.config\autostart-scripts directory (creating each sub directory as required) on the usb drive that contains these lines;

    #!/bin/bash
    cd /burnintest/64bit/
    ./bit_gui_x64

BurnInTest Linux V3 - Creating a live boot environment

The following steps are based on Kubuntu 10/11 and will require about 2GB of free space. Slax V7 will now run BurnInTest V3 so if you require a smaller installtion size then see the "Live Boot with Slax V7 and newer" section of this guide.

  1. Download the Universal USB Installer
  2. Download the ISO of the Linux distribution you will be using, one that is capable of live booting (there is a list of distributions available on the Universal USB Installer page). To use the GUI version of BurnInTest one that uses KDE as the desktop environment should be chosen.
  3. Run the Universal USB Installer and select the distribution, ISO of the Linux distribution you are using and the USB drive letter
  4. Set a persistent file size, this will allow you to save files and settings when the live environment is closed.Ideally this should be at least 500MB, click create to start the process
  5. Once the process is finished boot from the USB drive and either download BurnInTest from the PassMark website or copy it from your network or another USB drive.
  6. If you want BurnInTest to automatically launch and start executing on startup, edit the config file to use setup the required tests and options. Register your key in BurnInTest and then create a script file in the ~/.kde/Autostart directory (eg called burnintest.sh) that contains;
    #!/bin/bash
    sudo /home/ubuntu/Documents/burnintest/burninstest.sh -R 1000 &
    Change the location of "/home/ubuntu/Documents/burnintest/burninstest.sh" to match where you have downloaded and installed your copy of BurnInTest.

    Make the script executable by using "chmod +x burnintest.sh". Depending on the distribution you should be able to use "emacs" or "nano" to create the script file. If you donn't want the tests to start automatically remove the "-R 1000" paramter.

BurnInTest Linux V3 - Live Boot with Slax V7 and newer

Slax is a lightweight live CD distribution of Linux that can be used to boot systems from CD/DVD and USB memory sticks. There are two versions of Slax provided, a CD Iso and a USB version which you can download from http://www.slax.org/get_slax.php, the following steps were based on the USB (ZIP) download.

  1. Unzip the Slax download package and follow the installation instructions in the slax.txt file, we reccomend doing this step in Windows to make the install process easier.
  2. Copy bitlinux.tar.gz to the rootcopy folder
  3. Boot into Slax from the USB drive, open a console window and go to the "/mnt/live/memory/data/slax/rootcopy" folder
  4. Un-gzip (gunzip bitlinux.tar.gz) and un-tar (tar -xvf bitlinux.tar) the BurnInTest files
  5. Launch BurnInTest and enter your licence key details. Next time you boot Slax BurnInTest will laucnh as the registered version.
  6. If you want BurnInTest to launch automatically you can create a script file in the ~/.kde/Autostart directory (eg called burnintest.sh) that contains;
    #!/bin/bash
    /burnintest/burninstest.sh -R 1000
    Make the script executable by using "chmod +x burnintest.sh". If you donn't want the tests to start automatically remove the "-R 1000" paramter.