lkml.org 
[lkml]   [1996]   [Sep]   [14]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
SubjectRe: Memory testing program
Date
From
> 
> > Does anybody on the kernel list know of a good test program that is generally
> > available that can be left running over-night or similar? (Actually, if you
>
> The memtest86 program seems to be a fine package. It even uses a portion of the
> kernel's boot code to get itself running.. slap it on a disk, slap it in your
> machine and let it roll. I don't know how hard it hits the memory, but it
> looked like a pretty decent memory tester.

Yes. We had two servers with 64M of memory that I was suspicious about.
My copy of DOS CheckIt could only test 16M and it found nothing. From
experience I know that other DOS memory testers don't find the errors
that CheckIt does (they don't waggle all the bits hard enough). I
loaded up memtest .. it takes forever to run but it found some errors
on the first pass. Left it running over the weekend on the servers and
16 other PCs and it made about 50 passes, detecting a few errors on
each pass on the two servers. The 16 other PCs were clean.

I recommend you do the same as we did here. Leave memtest running for a
day or so. There is no logging so you will only seen the last few errors
on screen. The PC shop accepted the results without quibble. The memory
units were mismatched - a rush job on their part. They were initially from
different manufacturers. One more iteration later and we had chips from
the same manufacturer and the same batch.

I hacked my copy of memtest about a bit to probe areas of memory I
wanted probed again and to make the output move about a bit while you
are sitting there - avoids boredom.

Peter T. Breuer
,---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Departamento de Ingenieria de Sistemas Telematicos, Universidad Politecnica
|de Madrid, Escuela Tecnica Superior de Ingenieros de Telecomunicacion,
|Ciudad Universitaria, E--28040 Madrid, SPAIN.
|Tel. Office : +34 (1)336 6831
| Fax : +34 (1)543 2077 or 336 7333
|Internet : <ptb@eng.cam.ac.uk, ptb@comlab.ox.ac.uk, ptb@dit.upm.es>
| URL : http://www.dit.upm.es:80/~ptb/
`---------------------------------------------------------------------------

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:38    [W:0.377 / U:1.224 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site