David Newall wrote:
Pavel Machek wrote:
On Sat 2007-12-22 13:42:47, Richard D wrote:
Cant you, modify bootmem allocator to test with memtest patterns and
then
use kexec (as Pavel suggested) to test the one where kernel was sitting
earlier?
I do not think you need to modify anything in kernel. Just use
/dev/mem to test areas that kernel doesn't see, then kexec into place
you already tested, and test the rest.
That's still an insufficient test. One failure mode is writes at one
location corrupting cells at another.
The idea of wanting to do comprehensive and robust memory testing from
within the operating system seems dubious at best, to me.
Well if we're trying to be thorough, either way is flawed - you can't
possibly test pathologically-misbehaving memory from code running from
inside of it, you'd want some kind of non-uniform memory arrangement to
do that properly. memtest86's value is that it at least *tries* to work
in this environment by dynamically relocating itself, but its memory
testing algorithms aren't the hard bit. Also I'm not necessarily
interested in *which* section of which DIMM is faulty, just a yes or no
is enough so I can send the faulty ones back to the shop.
I don't agree that adding a network stack to memtest86's bare kernel is
going to be easier than working out how to get Linux to do the same job,
with its luxurious programming environment. I can already automate
memtest via serial consoles, power cycling, network booting and so on
but it's ugly.
I will report back in the new year when I've had a chance to play with
our collection of dodgy hardware.
--
Matthew
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