Hello, I have a laptop computer with half of the RAM soldered on the motherboard. This soldered RAM has a huge amount of bad RAM (too many errors to be able to use the badram option).
Fortunatly, there is a Linux kernel option (available in the mainstream kernel, no need to patch anything) which can run tests like memtest86 when Linux is booting so that it will automatically exclude these parts of the memory from being used. This option, when enabled in the kernel, can be enabled and disabled with a kernel boot argument (option memtest in grub). Is it possible to include this option in the default kernel, even if disabled by default, but having the option enabled in the installation CD (at least to be able to install the system without trouble)? I managed to install Debian Squeeze, but it was really a pain with this bad RAM. Performance benchmarks show also no impact at all from the memtest option. This option is not only useful for laptop computer like mine, but also for the new "plug" servers based on ARM processors. Often they have only soldered RAM chip. As reliability is even more important for a server than for a laptop computer, I think that the activation of this option whould help a lot to prevent to trash these little computers when/if they have bad RAM modules. - Origin of the module, before it was included in the mainstream branch of the kernel : http://rick.vanrein.org/linux/badram/ - Benchmark of the memtest module : http://rick.vanrein.org/linux/badram/results.html - Example of use and explanation of the usefulness of the option when running a server : http://onlyjob.blogspot.com/2011/01/memtest-explained-linux-kernel.html Thank you in advance Best regards Thierry GRAUSS -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kernel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/964f53042aa8b5e03533826c07e4fe4d.squir...@webmail.f-gp.eu
