PTS 5.0: Easily Run Linux Benchmarks From Your Phone

With Phoronix Test Suite 5.0-Plavsk you are able to remotely manage your Linux/BSD/OSX systems with ease and easily execute new benchmarks and analyze existing results. The HTML5 user-interface is coming along nicely and here is a preview of the latest pre-alpha state, which makes it easy from an Apple iPhone to easily facilitate new Linux benchmarking.

One of the major themes to Phoronix Test Suite 5.0 development is pushing an HTML5 user-interface for either locally controlling your system with driving Phoronix Test Suite benchmarks (i.e. connecting from the same system and using an HTML5 browser with an "app mode") or for remotely controlling your system(s) and its benchmarking processes. Heck, even besides benchmarking, the HTML5 UI makes it easy to just remotely view hardware/software sensors, system logs, and other administrative tasks with ease.

Being developed alongside the Phoronix Test Suite 5.0 HTML5 UI is a WebSocket server and protocol for communicating the benchmarking test queues and all of the system information, etc. Using WebSockets the information is presented in real-time and it's going to open up new possibilities with presenting a "multi-system controller" like Phoromatic for remotely managing multiple systems simultaneously and from a graphical user-interface.

If you haven't already, check out A Very Early Walkthrough Of Phoronix Test Suite 5.0 for some additional background information on these 5.0 efforts. In the past there was a GTK2 GUI to the Phoronix Test Suite but this new user-interface is going to be much more robust and powerful. While we are mostly focused on Linux benchmarking, this UI also works on BSD and Solaris and OS X systems too. I've also written many other "Plavsk" articles on Phoronix.

While the user-interface is still under heavy development, I have posted some new screenshots and also some quick videos in this article. This is mostly to solicit feedback, new feature requests, and any other potential contributions to make Phoronix Test Suite 5.0 even better for open-source benchmarking.

The user-interface is almost entirely in HTML5 and JavaScript; there's still some PHP code served from the built-in PHP/HHVM server, which was written before settling on the WebSocket design, but that code will eventually be migrated to being served over WebSockets. The WebSocket interface itself is also still being stabilized and designed. Those wishing to help out with the GUI or any other part of our GPLv3-licensed benchmarking software can now find the code on GitHub. It's a great time to get involved on the UI side while it's still in an early prototype state while pts-core and the rest of the Phoronix Test Suite continues to be in great shape for being in public development for six years.

The mobile version of the UI for iOS and Android devices is still under extremely early development... I only started on some mobile stylings this past weekend. Here's a quick demo of the Phoronix Test Suite 5.0 HTML5 UI on iOS; just showing that it works, the basic features, and then running OpenArena as a quick benchmark.

Pardon the poor quality (and orientation) of the cell phone video. When there's a more polished UI to show I'll get out the HD cameras; at least the audio should be useful to complement the screenshots and text of this article.

Now here's a quick cell phone video of the desktop interface with some extra commentary.

Your feedback, contributions, etc are greatly appreciated. There's much more to share in the weeks ahead considering that a bulk of the Phoronix Test Suite 5.0 core changes and interface work was done just since the beginning of December. If you are interested in sponsoring any of the open-source work, require commercial support, or are in need of any custom engineering services for the complete Phoronix Test Suite stack, please contact us.