[gentoo-user] Ramifications of memtest86

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 11:22:21AM +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 10:50:46AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On Friday 12 February 2010 10:54:53 Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > > Hi, Gentoo,

> > > My new Gentoo box has become unusably unstable.

> > > The first sign was when the compiler threw a segfault whilst
> > > emerging the xfce window manager.  I "solved" this by emerging
> > > Openbox instead.

> > > Then I got another compiler segfault whilst emerging firefox (yes,
> > > I know there's a binary for this).



> > everything you mention below is indicative of failing hardware,
> > especially RAM closely followed by PSU.

> Yes, you're right.  :-(

> When I run memtest86 from the gentoo boot disk, it signals millions of
> failures in b11 of 32 bit words.

> I'll try unplugging and replugging these.

No help.  :-(

No matter how I plug in the RAM (4 combinations of 2 sticks into 2 pairs
of slots) it is always b11 which fails and always at an address ending
in (hex) 0 or 8.

How is this DDR3 Ram organised?  Is each stick 64 bits wide, or are they
32 bits wide, being accessed by the motherboard pairwisely?  If the
latter, I would have exected the failure to move to address ....4 and
....C when I swap the two sticks.  Am I being prematurely pessimistic in
thinking the motherboard might be the fault?

> > alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

> -- 
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).