From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754500AbXITLjS (ORCPT ); Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:39:18 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752095AbXITLjG (ORCPT ); Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:39:06 -0400 Received: from mail.syneticon.net ([213.239.212.131]:32887 "EHLO mail2.syneticon.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751540AbXITLjE (ORCPT ); Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:39:04 -0400 Message-ID: <46F25BCD.2070005@wpkg.org> Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:38:53 +0200 From: Tomasz Chmielewski User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061110 Mandriva/1.5.0.8-1mdv2007.1 (2007.1) Thunderbird/1.5.0.8 Mnenhy/0.7.4.666 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: LKML Subject: patch/option to wipe memory at boot? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-2; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > Is there a patch or a boot option or something which wipes all > available (physical) RAM at boot (or better, fills it with a fixed > signature like 0xdeadbeef)? I'm getting phony ECC errors and I'd like > to test whether they go away when the RAM is properly initialized. > Also, I'd like to know exactly which parts of RAM are being used and > which are untouched since boot (hence the 0xdeadbeef signature). > > If this patch/option doesn't exist, can anyone give me a hint as to > where and how it would be best to add this? (I'm afraid I'm very > ignorant as to how Linux sets up its RAM mapping.) I'm concerned > about x86 and x86_64. > > PS: I'm not finicky: it's all right if a couple of megabytes at the > bottom of RAM are not scrubbed (I'm more interested about the top > gigabyte-or-so), especially if they're guaranteed to be used by the > kernel. As a side note to what others said, you can always use initrd/initramfs to start your favourite program that wipes the memory... -- Tomasz Chmielewski http://blog.wpkg.org