UnixBench is a classic performance test for Unix systems. It runs a set of workloads against the CPU, memory and disk and combines them into a single score that makes it easy to compare servers. The project is maintained on GitHub, and the current version at the time of writing is 6.0.1.

The UnixBench score on its own says nothing about a "good" or "bad" server. It is useful precisely for comparison: for example, to see how much faster a new plan is than the old one, or to compare two providers on the same task.

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What UnixBench measures

The test consists of several workloads that check different parts of the system:

• Dhrystone 2 – integer CPU operations;
• Whetstone – floating-point operations;
• File Copy – file handling speed;
• Pipe Throughput and Pipe-based Context Switching – data exchange between processes;
• Process Creation – creating new processes;
• Shell Scripts – running shell scripts;
• System Call Overhead – the cost of system calls.

The graphics tests are off by default

UnixBench also has a set of graphics tests, but they need X11 and video drivers and are not useful on an ordinary server without a desktop. They are disabled in the standard build, so you will not need to install any X11 libraries.

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Installation

Building the test needs a compiler, make and Perl, which the run script is written in.

apt update && apt install -y build-essential perl git

dnf groupinstall -y "Development Tools"
dnf install -y perl git

Download the current version and build the test.

# Clone the project repository
git clone https://github.com/kdlucas/byte-unixbench.git
cd byte-unixbench/UnixBench

# Build the system tests
make

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Running the test

# Run the standard set of system tests
./Run

Nothing else needs to be specified. UnixBench runs the tests twice on its own: first with a single copy, then with as many copies as the server has cores. That way one run gives you both the single-threaded and the multi-threaded result.

Stop extra services before the test

For a fair result, stop busy services such as the web server and database before running. The test takes a few minutes and loads the CPU heavily, so do not run it on a production server during peak hours.

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How to read the result

At the end, UnixBench prints a table and two final System Benchmarks Index Score lines.

System Benchmarks Index Score (1 copy)      1250.3
System Benchmarks Index Score (N copies)    4800.7

The first line is the single-thread result and shows the speed of one core.
The second is with all cores at once and reflects the overall power of the server. The higher the number, the faster the system.

Compare these figures only between tests taken the same way. The absolute value depends on the UnixBench version, the compiler and the system kernel, so results from different builds are not directly comparable.

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