Re: How to test RAM?

[Alexander Kushnirenko <kushnir@pccmu1.fnal.gov>]

Hi, Ed!

Just want to share my experience with memtest86.  I had a bad memory module, 
as I found out later.  There are 2 ways of memtest running: as a boot process 
and from inside Linux.  Installation of memtest86 as an independent boot 
process (you can have memtest in your LILO - Linux, Dos and MemTest for 
example) DID NOT catch the bad memory module - it reported that everyting was 
fine.  On the other hand running memtest from Linux (then you have to guess 
your free memory right and give it as an argument) indeed reported the 
problem.  So I would recommend running memtest in both modes to catch the bad 
memory module.

Well, in my case I started to beleive that memory was OK only when X stopped 
to crash spontaneously on me :)

Sasha.

> >   Not a debian package but I use memtest86.  I have the tar.gz file if
> > you can't fina it.
> > 
> 	Thanks, but FYI:  another respondant said memtest86 is part of the
> hwtools deb package that I'm downloading now.