Is there a way you can check and make sure that a host is using the hardware that they say they are.

For example, if a host tells you that your site will run on a server that has dual 1.3GHz P3 processors with 4 gigs of RDRAM and 15000 RPM SCSI Hard Drives with RAID... how can you check it out to see if it is the truth?

There is a php script that can check this, along with some perl programs, I dont know them off hand, but a quick search here or on a script site should come up some results.

http://phpsysinfo.sourceforge.net/

the output of that might or might not be trustworthy - it depends on underlying system binaries, which could be modified or removed if the host is serious about deception.

but if they're serious about deception, there's nothing you can do.

on the other hand, you can ask for (or look at) metrics that can't be faked - instead of talking about how many CPU's are installed or how much RAM or how fast are SCSI disks or whatever, you can say that you want a host that'll handle 10 or 100 or 1000 simultaneous sessions, or that'll render & serve a given page in <x> milliseconds 95% of the time, and you don't care what they have to do to deliver that result - run a VIC-20 or an E10K, so long as they're hitting your performance numbers.

that would be my suggestion.

Are you guys sure? I know you can check out the software with unix commands; but I don't think there's any unix commands to check hardware specs.

In /proc on linux you can find info all the devices...

cat /proc/meminfo
cat /proc/cpuinfo

Originally posted by JTY
In /proc on linux you can find info all the devices...

cat /proc/meminfo
cat /proc/cpuinfo
Thanks, JTY. I take it there is a similar directory for other unixes.

FreeBSD doesn't have the same /proc directory Linux does. Use the 'dmesg' command after a reboot and it'll show you the hardware specs of the machine.

Originally posted by JTY
In /proc on linux you can find info all the devices...

cat /proc/meminfo
cat /proc/cpuinfo

Thanks. Mem info worked great, cpu info, however:


processor : 0
cpu : 686
model : <NULL>
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
stepping : 6
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid : yes
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de p
mmx 24 25
bogomips : 596.38

processor : 0 ????
Also, teh 686 i assume it is mhz?
Also, what is bogomips ?

Thanks.

Originally posted by ClineCOM
http://phpsysinfo.sourceforge.net/

Thanks, I'll use this to verify my own host.

Originally posted by AceWeb


Thanks. Mem info worked great, cpu info, however:

processor : 0 ????
Also, teh 686 i assume it is mhz?
Also, what is bogomips ?

Thanks.

That 0 means it's the first processor in the system.
The 686 means it's a pentium class.
BogoMips is a Linux benchmark tool. If that machine is only getting 596.8, then it's probably a 300MHz or so processor. My best guess.