From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu May 6 11:10:53 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2EAF8106566C for ; Thu, 6 May 2010 11:10:53 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from spawk@acm.poly.edu) Received: from acm.poly.edu (acm.poly.edu [128.238.9.200]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C48698FC17 for ; Thu, 6 May 2010 11:10:52 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 82317 invoked from network); 6 May 2010 11:10:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?192.168.0.2?) (spawk@96.224.221.101) by acm.poly.edu with AES256-SHA encrypted SMTP; 6 May 2010 11:10:52 -0000 Message-ID: <4BE2A3A1.5030805@acm.poly.edu> Date: Thu, 06 May 2010 07:10:25 -0400 From: Boris Kochergin User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 (X11/20100330) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Atom Smasher References: <1005062053260.2629@smasher> In-Reply-To: <1005062053260.2629@smasher> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=KOI8-R; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: bad RAM? prove it with a crash dump? X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 06 May 2010 11:10:53 -0000 Atom Smasher wrote: > i suspect i've got bad RAM but memtest has run through several dozen > iterations without a problem. my (3 year old) laptop will run for a > few days or weeks and then crash/freeze/hang. i've enabled crash dumps > and i'm wondering if/how the dump might be able to (dis)prove that the > RAM is bad. any ideas? > > thanks... > My experience with bad memory is that if it causes the machine to crash, it won't always happen while the machine is running the same process (or kernel thread)--so look for it crashing in a wide variety of places--and upon inspection of the core dump, a pointer somewhere will be pointing to garbage. -Boris