A majority of the Phoronix Test Suite development and testing is done on Ubuntu and Fedora Linux, but this software should run virtually unmodified on any Linux distribution. The only distribution-specific bits deal with the external dependencies support feature. For instance, if you're not running one of the supported distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Gentoo, OpenSolaris, OpenSuSE, CentOS) you may need to install a package manually in order for a test to run. For example, GCC and the OpenGL Utility Toolkit may need to be installed manually by the user to support the OpenGL source tests.
The Phoronix Test Suite can be simply extracted from the downloaded .tar.gz file or it can also be installed system-wide. If you just wish to run the Phoronix Test Suite without installing it, open a terminal and run ./phoronix-test-suite <options> from the same directory.
The only required dependencies for the Phoronix Test Suite on Linux systems are PHP 5.x CLI (packages for it are commonly called php5-cli or php-cli or just php) and the PHP GD module (commonly called php-gd or php5-gd). It's important to note that only PHP 5 is needed and not a web server (Apache) or other packages commonly associated with PHP. The reasoning behind the use of PHP 5 for is the portability across platforms for this language, low impact on the overall system, a lower entrance barrier for new developers, and low number (if any) dependencies that PHP5 CLI requires. The PHP GD library is used for rendering the graphs within the PTS Results Viewer.
Note #1: Depending upon your distribution's package configuration, you may also need php-posix package for providing the POSIX functions.
Note #2: /usr/bin/time is needed by many of the timed tests.
Note #3: You may need to modify the php.ini file on your system in order to support uploading results to Phoronix Global or logging into your Phoronix Global account. The allow_url_fopen, file_uploads, and allow_url_include options must be set to true in the PHP configuration and curl must be supported by the PHP installation. Additional information.
While PHP and PHP GD are the only required dependencies, many of the test profiles do require the standard Linux development tools/libraries (GCC, etc). On a clean Ubuntu installation, it's as easy as first running sudo apt-get install php5-cli php5-gd and then running the Phoronix Test Suite as it will take care of installing additional dependencies.
The Phoronix Test Suite has a feature known as "External Dependencies" where the Phoronix Test Suite can attempt to automatically install some of the test-specific dependencies on supported distributions. If running on a distribution where there is currently no External Dependencies profile, the needed package(s) are listed. To see all possible External Dependencies, run phoronix-test-suite list-possible-dependencies.
If manually changing the location of the phoronix-test-suite file, the environmental PTS_USER_DIR variable must be adjusted inside the file to reflect the absolute location that leads to the root directory of the pts and pts-core folders. The pts folder houses the XML test profiles, XML test suites, test resource files, the External Dependencies files, and other important information. The pts-core directory is the "engine" of the Phoronix Test Suite.
Running install-sh from the root directory of the Phoronix Test Suite will install the software for system-wide access. By default the phoronix-test-suite executable is in /usr/bin/, the Phoronix Test Suite files in /usr/share/phoronix-test-suite/, and the documentation in /usr/share/doc/phoronix-test-suite/. Root access is required. The default installation prefix is /usr/ but can be adjusted as the first argument (example: install-sh /home/user/ to install the Phoronix Test Suite in your home directory).
Debian/Ubuntu users are able to follow the Generic Installation instructions or optionally can generate their own Debian package. If dpkg-dev is installed, run php pts-core/scripts/build-package-deb.php and a Debian package will be generated which can be subsequently installed. This package contains the phoronix-test-suite executable in /usr/bin/, the Phoronix Test Suite files in /usr/share/phoronix-test-suite/, and the documentation in /usr/share/doc/phoronix-test-suite/.
Gentoo ebuild's for the Phoronix Test Suite have been created by users and can be currently found in the Gentoo BugZilla.
Phoronix Test Suite packages are available through Mandriva Cooker starting with the Mandriva Linux 2009 release. These packages were made by Stephane Teletchea.
The Phoronix Test Suite core (pts-core) is supported on Solaris and OpenSolaris platforms, but some features may not fully function. Additionally, the PTS External Dependencies feature is supported on OpenSolaris using IPS (the Image Packaging System). However, not all test profiles are supported on Solaris / OpenSolaris, and it may be in violation of your end-user agreement to perform such benchmarks on the Sun Solaris operating system. Using the OpenSolaris Image Packaging System, installing SUNWphp524 will provide PHP, PHP GD, and related dependencies.
The Phoronix Test Suite also supports *BSD operating systems. However, like the Solaris support, not all test profiles are compatible with BSD operating systems, but pts-core has been tested against FreeBSD 7.0.