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Date:      Sat, 17 Jan 2015 08:57:43 -0800
From:      Patrick Powell <papowell@astart.com>
To:        Ed Maste <emaste@freebsd.org>
Cc:        "freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org" <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: [PATCH] Display progress during getmemsize() so the kernel doesn't look like it hanged
Message-ID:  <54BA9487.2040509@astart.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAPyFy2Cg3hRJ6sqN7JOtBJxmfBBwjcYFCpu0749Su=9Jycc6CA@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <D0DCA0FF.129C55%rpokala@panasas.com> <54B7656D.9000704@freebsd.org> <54B927F9.1010401@astart.com> <CAPyFy2Cg3hRJ6sqN7JOtBJxmfBBwjcYFCpu0749Su=9Jycc6CA@mail.gmail.com>

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On 01/16/15 13:56, Ed Maste wrote:
> On 16 January 2015 at 10:02, Patrick Powell <papowell@astart.com> 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




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