From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755288AbYDSIVj (ORCPT ); Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:21:39 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751549AbYDSIVY (ORCPT ); Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:21:24 -0400 Received: from einhorn.in-berlin.de ([192.109.42.8]:53223 "EHLO einhorn.in-berlin.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750983AbYDSIVW (ORCPT ); Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:21:22 -0400 X-Envelope-From: stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de Message-ID: <4809AB57.6050103@s5r6.in-berlin.de> Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:20:39 +0200 From: Stefan Richter User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080219 SeaMonkey/1.1.8 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Yinghai Lu CC: Frans Pop , Yinghai Lu , mingo@elte.hu, akpm@linux-foundation.org, tglx@linutronix.de, hpa@zytor.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86_64: simplify the memtest parameter setting References: <200804181749.15782.yhlu.kernel@gmail.com> <200804190357.09243.elendil@planet.nl> <200804190415.47552.elendil@planet.nl> <86802c440804182017r4fe78371w3a4a714a44591223@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <86802c440804182017r4fe78371w3a4a714a44591223@mail.gmail.com> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 7:15 PM, Frans Pop wrote: >> the new description is probably too short. >> The phrase "allows memtest to be set" does not really mean anything to a >> user who does not know what memtest really does. It also does not explain >> that memtest is a boot parameter. >> >> Also, it should probably be made more explicit that no memtest is actually >> performed unless the memtest boot parameter is passed at the boot prompt. >> >> Looks like 4 is the maximum possible value. This should be mentioned >> explicitly (here as well as in Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt). To add to this: The help text should IMO contain - that a test for faulty RAM is being added if Y, - that this feature can be controlled by the boot parameter (and, per the parameter's default, is normally off), - how many loops with which data patterns are performed depending on the boot parameter value, - how long this might take (so that nobody who hears of this for the first time enables it e.g. on a server which is supposed to not take too long to reboot), - how reliable the results of this test are (I presume that some faults can only be found by many repeated re-runs of the memory tester), - that saying Y slightly (?) increases the size of the kernel image but does not influence the kernel size after boot-up is completed. Thanks, -- Stefan Richter -=====-==--- -=-- =--== http://arcgraph.de/sr/