Re: [OT] Linux stability despite unstable hardware

[Bryan Andersen <bryan@nerdvest.com>]

Timothy Miller wrote:
> I have had some issues recently with memory errors when using aggressive 
> memory timings.  Although memory tests pass fine, gcc would tend to 
> crash and would generate incorrect code when compiling other things. Gcc 
> couldn't even build itself properly under those conditions.
> 
> The really interesting thing is that the Linux kernel was totally 
> unaffected.  Compiling the Linux kernel is often thought of as a 
> stressful thing for a system, yet compiling a kernel with a broken gcc 
> on a system with intermittent memory errors goes through error free, and 
> the kernel is 100% stable when running.
> 
> But until the memory errors were fixed, things like KDE wouldn't build 
> without gcc crashing.
> 
> So, what is it about Linux that makes it build properly with a broken 
> GCC and run perfectly despite memory errors?

It could just be heat buildup in an critical area when under sustained 
heavy load.  It may take a while for enough heat to build up to cause 
problems.  I just recently found one of these.  It would take 4-6 hours 
of heavy intensive processing before an error would happen.  I placed a 
fan pointing at the motherboard chipset and memory to keep them cooler 
and the problem seams to have gone away.

For testing I wrote a script that kept compiling the kernel again and 
agian in a while(true) loop.  Effectively a repeat until crash loop. 
For each compile it saved the stdout/stderr output and diffed it against 
the first run.  Any differnces were flagged for checking latter.

- Bryan