I wrote an article a while back about using test suites to test new Linux kernels. The tests I link to in the article would also be good for just testing out your hardware, particularly in a stressful way, or checking the basic health of your machine.
There is memtest86, which runs as its own operating system either off a boot floppy or installed in LILO on Linux, which can test all of your ram much more thoroughly than the BIOS startup tests - it found a bad PC133 module in my desktop box.
Some of the tests are dangerous to run on poor quality hardware, as you will smoke your drive or processor. Be careful!
Using Test Suites to Validate the Linux Kernel
There is memtest86, which runs as its own operating system either off a boot floppy or installed in LILO on Linux, which can test all of your ram much more thoroughly than the BIOS startup tests - it found a bad PC133 module in my desktop box.
Some of the tests are dangerous to run on poor quality hardware, as you will smoke your drive or processor. Be careful!
Using Test Suites to Validate the Linux Kernel
