[sf-lug] memtest

[Kristian Erik Hermansen]

On Feb 2, 2008 4:54 PM, Alex Kleider <a_kleider at yahoo.com> wrote:
> thanks, Sameer, Kristian and Asheesh;
> am I to conclude that memtest is only a boot option,
> and that testing memory is NOT something that can be done from the
> command line of an already running Linux system?

Alex, in order to test the memory properly, the OS cannot be loaded.
memtest86+ needs to run at boot to detect the errors :-)

khermans at khermans-laptop:~$ aptitude show memtest86+
Package: memtest86+
State: installed
Automatically installed: yes
Version: 1.70-3ubuntu1
Priority: standard
Section: misc
Maintainer: Ubuntu Core Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss at lists.ubuntu.com>
Uncompressed Size: 233k
Suggests: hwtools, memtester, kernel-patch-badram, grub2 (>= 1.95+20070515-1) |
          grub (>= 0.95+cvs20040624), mtools
Description: thorough real-mode memory tester
 Memtest86+ scans your RAM for errors.

 This tester runs independently of any OS - it is run at computer boot-up, so
 that it can test *all* of your memory.  You may want to look at `memtester',
 which allows to test your memory within Linux, but this one won't be able to
 test your whole RAM.

 It can output a list of bad RAM regions usable by the BadRAM kernel patch, so
 that you can still use you old RAM with one or two bad bits.

 Memtest86+ is based on memtest86 3.0, and adds support for recent hardware, as
 well as a number of general-purpose improvements, including many patches to
 memtest86 available from various sources.

 A convenience script is also provided to make a grub-based floppy or image.
-- 
Kristian Erik Hermansen
"Know something about everything and everything about something."