Server Burn-in

I used to burn-in new servers by having them compile MySQL from source in a loop for 24-48 hours, but let’s face it, that’s not much of a challenge for today’s servers.

You know what is? Building OpenOffice.org.

On Debian Lenny, here’s the shortest path:

# apt-get install build-essential dpkg-dev pbuilder
# apt-get source openoffice.org
# apt-get build-dep openoffice.org
# cd openoffice.org-2.4.1
# debuild -us -uc


On a Sun x4100 with dual Opteron 275s and 8GB RAM, this takes about 5.5 hours, and uses way more disk I/O and memory than a mere MySQL compile.

Run this 4-5 times and you can probably feel pretty safe that your server won’t burst into flames at 3AM the day after you deploy it in production.