Re: [gentoo-user] New Gentoo system has become unstable and unusable - help, please!

[Helmut Jarausch <jarausch@igpm.rwth-aachen.de>]

On 12 Feb, 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.
> 
>> Swap them out with known good items and test thoroughly *before* doing
>> anything else.
> 
> I hope you're not right here.  ;-)  The hardware is spanking brand new;
> so new, in fact, that it's still gleaming.
> 
> Are there any handy utility programs around to test RAM exhaustively?

I have made good experience with sys-apps/memtester. If you have not
more than 4 Gb RAM, you can use the SystemRescueCD.
Otherwise the GRML64 RescueCD has a true 64 bit version of memtester.

I have made the experience that memtester finds errors more quickly than
memtest86+ .

Helmut.


-- 
Helmut Jarausch

Lehrstuhl fuer Numerische Mathematik
RWTH - Aachen University
D 52056 Aachen, Germany