Re: Hardware Error Kernel Mini-Summit

From: George Spelvin
Date: Wed Jun 16 2010 - 04:57:51 EST


> ...and the numbers that come out of this may have no relation
> to your motherboard labels at all. What do you do then?
> Read schemantics again? Or do binary search on the DIMM again
> like Eric suggested?

Or make a guess and see if it works, or STFW for someone else who figured it
out, or read chipset docs, or see if the SPD addresses correspond in a
sensible way, or extrapolate from another board with the same NB and
BIOS vendor, or...

One of the big advantages of Linux/*BSD over certain other x86 operating
systems is they don't try so hard to be user-friendly that they're
expert-hostile. "Your computer is fucked up, please consult your
system administrator" isn't much help to the poor system administrator.

So while it's fine to *try* to translate to a DIMM slot using BIOS info,
please also report whatever can be figured out without trusting the BIOS.
So if I find it's in error, I can report everything needed to write
an override table entry.

Without the BIOS, it's a PITA, but the correspondence between /CSx lines
and DIMM slot locations can be figured out, and if necessary, I can publish
a web page with the mappings.

"We do not trust BIOS tables, because BIOS writers are invariably
totally incompetent crack-addicted monkeys. If they weren't,
they wouldn't be BIOS writers. QED." -- Linus
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=127498023108564
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