Phoronix Test Suite 5.8 M3 Brings Live Sensor Monitors, Halt Testing Option

It's been a few weeks since the last development release of Phoronix Test Suite 5.8 while out this afternoon is Phoronix Test Suite 5.8 Milestone 3.

As has been the focus for much of the Phoronix Test Suite 5.6 and now 5.8 development cycles, Phoromatic continues seeing a great deal of improvements. With this latest milestone build, highlights include:

- Initial work on the WebSockets communication back-end for client to/from server as an alternative to the default HTTP back-end, in order to provide real-time, bi-directional communication. However, this new WebSockets back-end isn't yet used by default for the Phoromatic Server.

- Phoromatic System Variables set via each system's "system" page are now exported to the respective client as environment variables prior to running any test.

- As an alternative to the built-in PHP web server, the embedded Mongoose web server will now be automatically used if present on the Phoromatic Server. If the php-cgi and mongoose binaries are present on the system, when running phoronix-test-suite start-phoromatic-server, Mongoose will be preferred over the built-in PHP web-server due to delivering faster performance and support concurrent connections.

- Initial work on the tick thread with having concurrent checks while the test(s) are running or any other events if any special events need to take place. Initially, via each system's system page are "reboot" and halt testing" buttons if you wish to interrupt the ongoing events to reboot the system due to problems or just wish to end the testing prematurely. Both will then take place in real-time (well, for now until the WS code is in good shape, within 60 seconds).

- Via the previously mentioned feature, per-minute the system sensor vitals are now reported to the Phoromatic Server and exposed via the systems page. The Phoronix Test Suite's client log is also updated in real-time for each system on the Phoromatic Server.

- Various Phoromatic fixes/tweaks.

There's still a few weeks left of Phoronix Test Suite 5.8-Belev development and many more features are still expected to land in time. You can download the Phoronix Test Suite from Phoronix Test Suite on GitHub.