Memory Testing in linux

Twink · Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004 4:43 am Post subject: Memory Testing in linux

I was just wondering if anyone had a nice memory tester or something that I could use. This box does not have a cd drive or floppy which I would prefer to leave that way if possible (as it would mean shutting down another machine) basically I'm trying to track what I believe to be a hardware fault that's causing odd kernel panics.

taskara · Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004 4:45 am Post subject:

memtest86 comes to mind, but I think u have to boot to it.. you could try writing memtest86 to a bootable usb thumb drive (if your bios supports booting from usb-hdd)

other than that I am not sure..
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Malakin · Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004 7:40 am Post subject:

memtest86 is it, you just emerge it and add the entry to your grub.conf, reboot and test.

Twink · Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004 11:30 pm Post subject:

Twink · Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 11:22 am Post subject:

errors detected by this program aren't neccessarily ram ones are they? can they be processor/mobo related? as I dont really wanna replace the ram on this pc just to find I'm still having problems (as I'm using sd-ram on this board but obviously if its the mobo then I'd get one with ddr...)

basically the symptoms are kernel panics when emerging (usually the extraction and never the downloading phase) memtest did find problems so I moved the stick to another slot and they went (ran 2 times without problems) then later in the day I ran again and found some.

taskara · Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 1:08 pm Post subject:

it's usually a memory problem.

either the memory is faulty, or your system is too highly overclocked and so there are random errors.

If u have multiple sticks of memory, try taking the out and trying one at a time.

if you are overclocking, set fsb etc back to defaults and test again - if it is still showing errors then the ram is probably faulty.

however lastly make sure the ram is running at the correct CAS latencies (memtest will tell u what it's running at)

if you have a faulty mainbaord or cpu, then access to the memory if often damaged so it would also show up as faulty memory, but it could be your board / cpu.

u need to swap things out and deduce what's causing the problem
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Malakin · Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 6:47 pm Post subject:

If they're memory errors you will tend to see the exact same errors on every run.

An overheating cpu can also cause errors but they will tend to be more random and you might get none on a cooler day and lots on warmer day etc...

Motherboard problems creating errors in memtest would be possible but fairly rare.

It's probably an overheating cpu in your case.

Twink · Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 4:23 am Post subject:

I'm thinking that it shouldn't be a heat problem it doesn't seem to get over 40 degrees so I presume it is ok. However I did just notice a common message in the kernel panic having to do with cpu idle and ACPI, so I've disabled ACPI and will see how it goes.

That along with setting bios to "PnP OS installed" to yes seems to have improved it alot got alot further into the xfree compile (yeah I want to move to Xorg sometime, but emerge -U world insists on xfree)

or not it seems to die still, just not at the same place.

Malakin · Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 5:24 am Post subject:

40C is really low, are you sure you're reading the right temp and it's correct? What cpu is it?

KingTaco · Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 5:34 am Post subject:

Twink · Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 7:42 am Post subject:

Malakin · Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 7:54 am Post subject:

Twink · Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2004 10:55 am Post subject:

i just remembered that my mate has some old sd-ram of mine that he doesn't need anymore

so guess I'll get that back for a few days and see if that fixed my problem, if not guess its fork out for ddr ram and use my other mobo that's been lying around.

Malakin · Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2004 6:10 pm Post subject:

Twink · Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2004 12:08 pm Post subject:

yep appears to be the ram, took out the 512 module and put in a 128 and its stable and compiling everything fine. I might experiment with having both modules in to see if its still stable.

dwn · n00b Joined: 23 Dec 2003 Posts: 24

this may interest you guys:
http://rick.vanrein.org/linux/badram/