Re: utility for testing ram?

Matthew Kirkwood (weejock@ferret.lmh.ox.ac.uk)
Tue, 29 Sep 1998 09:31:32 +0100 (GMT)


On Mon, 28 Sep 1998, Ricardo Kleemann wrote:

> Anyone know of a utility to extensively test a system's ram, in order to
> determine whether the ram has any faults?

It's called gcc :)

Seriously, a 24-hour repeated kernel compile will stress your memory much
harder than things like memtest86 (sunsite:/pub/linux/handware/somewhere)
because the CPU, RAM, cache and various other peripherals are working
hard, and probably not following some easily identifiable pattern.

( while true; do
make dep clean zImage modules
done ) >/dev/null 2>/tmp/errlog &

and wait. After a day or so, grep /tmp/errlog for "signal" (usually 11 or
6). Short of a gcc error (relatively unlikely :) each of those signals is
a bit-flip. (Don't rely on al of them being caught, either.)

See http://bitwizard.nl/sig11/ for more information.

Matthew.

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