Re: [OT] Linux stability despite unstable hardware

[Horst von Brand]

"Timothy Miller" <theosib@xxxxxxxxxxx> said:
> 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.

Really? memtest86 <http://www,memtest86.com> did finish its run without
errors? I'm sure they'd want to get their hands on the broken RAM...

> 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.

Sure enough, if the kernel lives (mostly) in unaffected memory, and
furthermore doesn't bang on it quite as hard as a compiler run does (the
kernel only runs for a tiny fraction of the time).
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                     Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria              +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile                Fax:  +56 32 797513
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/