[Lancaster] memory error?

[Richard Robinson]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 05:49:58PM +0100, andy baxter wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm getting intermittent system freezes. The whole system just locks up 
> and nothing works, including ctrl-alt-f1. I've tried running a memory 
> test, both from the hard disk and a usb cd drive, and in both cases the 
> test program freezes with junk on the screen. There doesn't seem to be 
> any pattern to this - sometimes it happens just after I switch on, and 
> sometimes after an hour or so.
> 
> Is it worth getting some new memory and trying that? (I've tried just 
> taking the memory chip out and putting it back in).


Some distros come with a memory checker that offers itself on grub bootup.
www.memtest86.com/ Might be worth having a go with that before spending
money ?

Failing that, flaky memory is the sort of thing that can mess up a linux
box. Once upon a time I was running a dual-boot W3.1/Linux 486 box, to which
I added memory, with the result that W3.1 ran as reliably as ever (no
comment) and the linux would predictably collapse during bootsequence; all
traceable to 1 of the new memchips. I had real trouble believing it was
possible, but finally couldn't get round it.

Mind you, "predictable" is easier to deal with than flaky behaviour without
any pattern. Temperature is the other thing that comes to my mind.

-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem