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Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 20:48:59 +0200
From: Andriy Gapon <avg@freebsd.org>
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To: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>
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Cc: Alexander Best <arundel@freebsd.org>, bz@freebsd.org,
	Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de>, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: kernel memory checks on boot vs. boot time
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on 23/03/2011 20:26 John Baldwin said the following:
> I think that doing *real* memory checks isn't really the role of our kernel.  
> Better effort would be spent on improving memtest86 since it is already trying 
> to solve this problem.  Something that would be nice would be a way to invoke
> memtest86 from the loader.

Just a note that with sysutils/memtest86+ port you can already do that.
But of course the utility is not headless and lacks the advanced functionality
that you describe below.

>  Assuming you could pass arguments (such as a time
> limit) to the memtest "kernel", then you could install memtest to 
> /boot/memtest and do something like 'nextboot -k memtest -o "-t 120"' to run 
> memtest for 2 hours on the next boot then reboot back into the stock OS after 
> it finishes, etc.

-- 
Andriy Gapon