Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 15:51:49 -0700 From: David Greenman <dg@root.com> To: Colin Campbell <sgcccdc@citec.qld.gov.au> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: freebsd v bsdi v linux Message-ID: <199910052251.PAA00656@implode.root.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 06 Oct 1999 08:38:23 %2B1000." <Pine.LNX.3.95.991006082831.16730A-100000@guru.citec.qld.gov.au>
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>Had an interesting installtion problem that has just been solved. > >Machine is a PIII 450 with 512MB (4x128)RAM. During installation of 3.2 >from the WC CD I'd get a wite failure or a panic of the machine or both. >With 3.3 using NFS I just got a machine panic. These always happened >during the bin dist unpacking. > >I tried RedHat 6.0 and the system panicked half way through the >installation. > >The machine came with BSDI 3.1 on it. When I booted it for the first time >I noticed that the system was reporting only 128MB RAM. Just BSDI >weirdness I thought. Despite the repeated FreeBSD and Linux failures I was >always able to install BSDI, but the system always reported 128MB RAM. >Nothing dawned on me from this. > >Anyway, I started pulling DIMMs from the box. With only slot 1 occupied >FreeBSD installed no problems. I pulled that DIMM and put two others in. >No problems. Added the first one to give 384MB, no problems. Put the >untested DIMM in and the machine wouldn't even boot! Hmm bad memory! > >To test a theory I then installed BSDI 3.1 again. Interestingly it now >reported 384MB RAM. This now leads me to my question: > >What is BSDI doing that made it recognise the bad memory in slot 2, and >hence only work with the first 128MB, that Linux and more importantly >FreeBSD are NOT doing? Anyone think it's a useful enough feature to be >added to the system? It measn that if you think you have xMB and the OS >comes up with yMB you might have a problem. FreeBSD does do a simple validation of memory during the bootup and has caught problems in the past like you've described. BSDI is apparantly just using a pattern that tickles your memory problem where FreeBSD's does not. -DG David Greenman Co-founder/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project - http://www.freebsd.org Creator of high-performance Internet servers - http://www.terasolutions.com Pave the road of life with opportunities. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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