Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2015 10:20:20 -0453.75 From: "William A. Mahaffey III" <wam@hiwaay.net> Cc: FreeBSD Questions !!!! <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: [(borderline) OT]: memtest question Message-ID: <55E46F6A.2040009@hiwaay.net> In-Reply-To: <55E46C51.2090109@sneakertech.com> References: <55E3AFB4.9050607@hiwaay.net> <55E46C51.2090109@sneakertech.com>
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On 08/31/15 10:07, Quartz wrote:
>> I downloaded Passmark memtest..........
>
> You asked this question at the right time, I just had to deal with all
> of this only last week.
>
>
> Here's the situation:
> The memory testing landscape is currently a big ol' pile of shit.
>
> memtest86+ has had only three updates in the past five years, with the
> most recent (5.01) being in '13. It does not support UEFI booting
> (crashes and random errors), native 64 bit (it uses a PAE hack), can't
> really handle ddr4, and has never supported ECC ram or other options.
> As far as anyone can tell the developer(s) dropped off the face of the
> earth. Although a bootable ISO is available for download from the
> website, it's NOT a hybrid ISO meaning it has to be burned to a
> physical CD. All of the other files on the site are *just* the memtest
> application binaries. If you want to put these on a bootable usb
> stick, you'll have to, manually, format a stick yourself from the
> ground up with your own bootloader and everything and then install the
> memtest binary into that. The website offers a program to do this for
> you but as you discovered it's a Windows EXE. Linux and Unix users are
> expected to figure it out themselves. My best advice (if just burning
> a CD isn't an option) is to find some Linux distro or utility live-cd
> that offers a hybrid ISO or direct USB image that also comes with
> memtest86+. I *think* the latest Ubuntu's come with 5.01. Gparted-Live
> only has 4.x for some reason.
>
>
> PassMark is their own can of shit. Starting with version 5.x, they
> completely dropped support for BIOS booting and went UEFI only,
> ostensibly to provide a 'better experience' but really so that they
> could sell a new thing that was closed source. Unfortunately, UEFI is
> still half broken on a lot of hardware and their new program loads all
> sorts of extra shit that requires extra hardware support accordingly,
> so it fails/hangs/crashes about as often as not. Their USB image still
> lets you boot into the old 4.x BIOS version, but as with memtest86+,
> there's no support for new chipsets/64bit/ddr4/ecc/etc.
>
>
> Basically, you want to test a server that's a couple years old that
> doesn't have UEFI? eat a dick. You want to test a new machine with the
> latest chipset but it has a buggy UEFI? eat a dick. You want to do
> pretty much anything other than testing a commodity desktop from five
> years ago? eat a dick. Can you tell I'm bitter about all this?
Oh man, I haven't laughed this hard in months, maybe years. I agree w/
your assessment, I was hoping someone might have a magic bullet to save
the day, but I guess not. Is the memtest86+ source available ? If so,
maybe someone else (*not* you or me) will pick it up. It was/is a nice
facility when it works. As it happens, my ongoing Passmark memtest
v6.0.0 got unstuck & has proceeded into the 2nd pass, so I may be OK
there ....
--
William A. Mahaffey III
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"The M1 Garand is without doubt the finest implement of war
ever devised by man."
-- Gen. George S. Patton Jr.
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