From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jan 17 16:57:51 2015 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher AECDH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id BF945A4B; Sat, 17 Jan 2015 16:57:51 +0000 (UTC) Received: from astart2.astart.com (108-248-95-193.lightspeed.sndgca.sbcglobal.net [108.248.95.193]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 944A0E32; Sat, 17 Jan 2015 16:57:50 +0000 (UTC) Received: from laptop_93.private (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by astart2.astart.com (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id t0HGvhkh043247; Sat, 17 Jan 2015 08:57:44 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from papowell@astart.com) Message-ID: <54BA9487.2040509@astart.com> Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 08:57:43 -0800 From: Patrick Powell Reply-To: papowell@astart.com Organization: Astart Technologies User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.3.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ed Maste Subject: Re: [PATCH] Display progress during getmemsize() so the kernel doesn't look like it hanged References: <54B7656D.9000704@freebsd.org> <54B927F9.1010401@astart.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: "freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org" X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 16:57:51 -0000 On 01/16/15 13:56, Ed Maste wrote: > On 16 January 2015 at 10:02, Patrick Powell wrote: >> On 01/14/15 22:59, Allan Jude wrote: >>> Glad to see this, thanks for doing the work Ravi. Also, I agree with jhb@, >>> we should disable the test by default in stable/10 (i think it is off by >>> default only for VMs currently). >> >> Please please do not disable memory tests by default. If you do, when >> trying to boot from a CD/Memory Stick >> image on a system with bad memory (which would be found by the tests) then >> it gets quite difficult to find this >> problem. > The boot time "memory test" is not particularly valuable, especially > on contemporary amd64 hardware. While it won't have any false > positives, there are a huge number of failure modes it will not catch. > It also does not inform the user of "failure" -- it just removes that > memory from the kernel's map. It's really a test of memory presence, > not quality. Right. But at least it gets you crawling... or staggering... so you can do further diagnostics. Bad memory is a *((*&^( NASTY problem. Since we seem to have diverged a bit on topic, any recommendations for stand-alone memory tests? -- Patrick Powell Astart Technologies papowell@astart.com 1530 Jamacha Rd, Suite X Network and System San Diego, CA 92019 Consulting 858-874-6543 FAX 858-751-2435 Web: www.astart.com