LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Rick Marshall <rjm@herzfeld.com.au>
  To  : Mark Pulford <mark@kyne.com.au>
  Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 12:43:48 +1100

Re: Memory Fault ?? maybe

Mark Pulford wrote:

> On Fri, 27 Nov 1998, Paul OBrien wrote:
>
> > Does anyone have access to a memory tester or is there some thing I can run
> > in Linux that will test RAM memory thoroughly.
>
> There is a memory tester on sunsite called "memtest", you could try that.
> However, I haven't come across a memory tester which will pick up faults
> better than a kernel compile.
>
> #!/bin/bash
> cd /usr/src/linux
> for I in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
> do
>   for J in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
>   do
>     ( make dep && make clean &&
>       make zImage && make modules ) >& /tmp/log.$I$J
>   done
> done
>
> Let that run overnight and then check to see if there are any differences
> in the sizes of the log files. All the log files should be exactly the
> same. Have a look at the smaller files and you will find the compile died
> in an odd way.
>
> I've used this several times to comfirm bad ram (and cache). Ordinary
> memory testers never found any errors.
>

Some BIOS will do quite good memory testing, and there used to be some DOS
utilities with the old memory boards (You know when it took a whole ISA slot to
get an extra 2MB of RAM). Someone might have one hanging around still.

RJM

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