[conspire] Server supermicro 1U 5013C-MT Raid1

[Rick Moen]

Daniel Gimpelevich <daniel at gimpelevich.san-francisco.ca.us> wrote:

> Assuming there is no such diagnostic software, which would be a
> godsend to you if it exists, this would be going from the extremely
> pro-forma to the extremely drastic. There is a middle ground between
> resetting the CMOS to factory defaults and reflashing the BIOS with
> the very same image it currently contains, usually in the form of a
> jumper on the motherboard.

Believe it or not _if_ the problem is at root a CMOS one, reflashing the
BIOS often _will_ fix it.  Yes, you would have to re-do all your CMOS 
settings; that is A Good Thing for most folk.

> That would be the first thing I would try in the even I suspected a
> scrambled CMOS, which is not the first thing that comes to mind given the
> symptoms described. It seems much more plausible for the RAM to be at
> fault, perhaps either badly seated in its socket(s) or not fully
> compatible with the motherboard, especially if it's heterogeneous. 

That's not the way bad RAM generally manifests in my experience:  You 
more typically just get kernel panics.  However, I suppose it's
possible.  Unfortunately, Stephan didn't give us a lot to go on, just
that it involves "single bit error location" or "multiple bit error
location" messages "before bios is really starting", and that Stephan
"thinks it has to do with the Bios".

(I've said this so often that I'm basically worn out, and tired of
fruitlessly trying to teach it to people:  Give us the _raw symptoms_ of
your problems in chronological order, dammit:  When, by contrast, you
give us your interpretations, you are severely shooting in the foot our
ability to help you.)

If the user ends up having reason to suspect RAM problems, then there
are any number of very find "live CD" Linux distributions that furnish
memtest86, such as Ultimate Boot CD:  http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/