Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 14:44:09 -0500 (EST) From: Chuck Robey <chuckr@glue.umd.edu> To: "George M. Ellenburg" <gme@inspace.net> Cc: "'isp@freebsd.org'" <isp@FreeBSD.ORG>, "'hackers@freebsd.org'" <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: FW: Touching Base Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.971205143638.16807T-100000@picnic.mat.net> In-Reply-To: <01BD0186.0B94F9C0.gme@inspace.net>
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On Fri, 5 Dec 1997, George M. Ellenburg wrote: > Greetings, Gentlemen. > > An associate of mine is experiencing a rather unique problem with his > FreeBSD box (P233, 64Mb Ram, 2 Maxtor 3.0gb IDE Hard Drives) ... I'm > enclosing an excerpt from our message. Perhaps you may have some clues > as I'm stumped. > > Regards, > > George Ellenburg > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Tom Holderby > Sent: Friday, December 05, 1997 11:57 AM > To: George M. Ellenburg > Subject: Re: Touching Base > > George, > > [My Comments:] [...Non Relevant Material Cut...] > > Let me also give you a quick update on the FreeBSD situation. When I > run > that "tar x" while sitting at the console I see "Memory Parity Error". > But > I ran several iterations of the CheckIt memory diagnostic with its most > advanced testing options and it's not turning up any errors, so I tend > to > believe it's a software problem. I have definitely seen software bugs > cause memory parity halts, but that was mostly back in the days of > assembler code under DOS when you tried to access a non existant add > ress. > I've never seen it under Unix before. Any ideas? First, questions like this belong on the FreeBSD-Questions list, not hackers. Anyhow, it's not possible to test memory using a PC. The only way to do it is with an expensive piece of test equipment. The return from Checkit is only good for complete failures; any other indication isn't worth anything at all. I mean that -- checkit is worthless to catch anything but gross memory errors. FreeBSD (or really any other unix) works a PC's memory far harder than any DOS or Windows based application, so the chances really are that your friend has a memory problem. What he has to do is take it back to his vendor and really insist on new memory. There isn't any software problem like he's talking about. This kind of thing is seen quite a bit among folks new to Unix ... I'm not guessing here, your friend's complaint is common, and if he wants to run FreeBSD, he's going to have to get the problem fixed. Under Windows 95, heck, it reboots of it's own accord so often, you don't realize that some percentage of those reboots are hardware faults. Many users of FreeBSD have uptime (on busy internet servers) measured in _years_. > > Tom > > > ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include any kind of voice or data chuckr@glue.umd.edu | communications topic, C programming, and Unix. 213 Lakeside Drive Apt T-1 | Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run Journey2 and picnic, both FreeBSD (301) 220-2114 | version 3.0 current -- and great FUN! ----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------
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