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Date:      Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:51:21 +0200
From:      Andriy Gapon <avg@freebsd.org>
To:        Matthew Jacob <mj@feral.com>
Cc:        "Bjoern A. Zeeb" <bz@freebsd.org>, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: kernel memory checks on boot vs. boot time
Message-ID:  <4D89DEB9.7060509@freebsd.org>
In-Reply-To: <4D88FE89.1060900@feral.com>
References:  <alpine.BSF.2.00.1103221634241.6104@ai.fobar.qr>	<201103221551.14289.jhb@freebsd.org> <4D88FE89.1060900@feral.com>

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on 22/03/2011 21:54 Matthew Jacob said the following:
> 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.
>>
>> If nothing else, I would definitely drop this from amd64 (all those systems
>> have SMAP and machine check support, etc.).
>>
>>   
> Memory checks are definitely still useful. Loading the linux mem tester has
> helped find lots of problems, even on so-called modern machines. I'd voter for
> leaving this as an option.

I think that you talk about a different kind of memory checking/testing.
What we have in FreeBSD looks a lot like what BIOSes use(d) to do on startup.
Besides, AFAIR, it doesn't report any results to you.

-- 
Andriy Gapon



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