Re: [PATCH] x86_64: early memtest to find bad ram

[Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 03:29:19PM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> 
> * H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com> wrote:
> 
> >> very nice patch! I always thought that this was the proper way to do 
> >> memtest - and we could in fact also do something like this after SMP 
> >> bringup, and hit the memory bus via multiple CPUs. [that will need a 
> >> different enumeration though than e820 maps]
> >>
> >> one structural observation: please make this unified functionality, 
> >> so that 32-bit kernels can make use of it too.
> >>
> >
> > Indeed.  Of course, it would also be nice if distros shipped 
> > bootloader-invoked prekernel test software, like memtest86+, by 
> > default.
> 
> some do (Fedora for example), but it's still a bit quirky for users to 
> invoke and it would be nice to see those results in the kernel log as 
> well and flag possibly flaky systems that way. (add a taint bit, etc., 
> etc.)

It may even make sense to merge in the full memtest86. The code is small
(both source and binary) and IIRC it shares a lot of init code with x86.
The remaining problem would then be how to maintain its tests up do date.

Willy