Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 18:45:54 -0400 From: Ed Maste <emaste@freebsd.org> To: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> Cc: "Bjoern A. Zeeb" <bz@freebsd.org>, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: kernel memory checks on boot vs. boot time Message-ID: <20110322224554.GA67925@sandvine.com> In-Reply-To: <201103221551.14289.jhb@freebsd.org> References: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1103221634241.6104@ai.fobar.qr> <201103221551.14289.jhb@freebsd.org>
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On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 03:51:13PM -0400, John Baldwin wrote: > Do other platforms bother with these sorts of memory tests? If not I'd vote > to just drop it. I think this mattered more when you didn't have things like > SMAP (so you had to guess at where memory ended sometimes). Also, modern > server class x86 machines generally support ECC RAM which will trigger a > machine check if there is a problem. I doubt that the early checks are > catching anything even for the non-ECC case. In the common case at work we want this off to reduce boot time. The desire for a tunable though that can add extended memory tests is to be able to use the FreeBSD startup code as a replacement for memtest86+, for a couple of reasons: - FreeBSD's serial console output is more easily parsed by automated tools - Memtest86+ appears to be limited to 64GB of RAM at the moment - Memtest86+ lacks support for the Tylersburg architecture last I looked -Ed
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