Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?

[Peter Hoff]

Yes, thinking that running a software based test is going to damage your hardware is silly. Maybe 20 years ago that was possible, but on modern hardware the very idea is absurd. You really should run all of the tests recommended earlier in this thread.

I don't think you understand what I mean by a "loop" in Memtest. Unless you have run all of the tests at least once, you have not done a loop (there are 8, IIRC). The amount of time you ran it for is irrelevant, as that's totally system dependent. I've had systems with 32M take 3 hours to complete a loop, and I've had systems with 1G do it in less than 45 minutes. Processor type and speed, RAM type and speed, memory controller, system bus... all of these are factors in how long it takes to complete a Memtest loop. BTW, Memtest tells you how many loops it has completed, and it automatically starts over on the first test once it completes the last one.

As for not wanting to put your fingers on the hardware, that's justifiable, especially if you aren't prepared to protect your equipment from electrostatic discharge. But, warranty questions can't be answered here, you'd have to talk to the vendor you got it from. I'm just telling you what my experience has been. Dell, for example, really doesn't want to pay someone to swap parts for you, and will do everything they can to get you to do it yourself. If you're really that worried about it, though, you could take it to the local computer repair shop. Most of the good ones can handle Linux these days.

I am also a student, and I have never had $100k to spend on a system, I was just trying to give you an idea of the level of experience I have with hardware testing. Those are systems that I used to test and repair, not systems that I owned.


----- Original Message ----
From: Peter Davoust <worldgnat@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-amd64@l.g.o
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 8:48:41 AM
Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?


Now wait a minute, not everyone has $100k to spend on a brand new
laptop. I'm a student, and I have a single computer to last me through
two years of highschool and and at least a few years of college, and
there's no way I'm going to screw up my computer without some
insurance, ok? Before I run anything on this machine, I'm going to
make sure that I'm still under warrantee, whether the parts are user
servicable or not. Now if you call that being silly, then that's your
choice, but it's my choice if I want to be cautious, even overly so.

On that note, I did buck up and run memtest86+ from a Ubuntu livecd,
and after several loops (about 1h 30 min of straight testing) I didn't
get a single error. It was on Test #6 when I stopped, so I think the
memory's chill. Besides, as I said before, when I run anything GUI
(enlightement, right now), it's fine. I just have to jump in and out
of terminal really quickly. The fact that it likes to crash after
starting x server twice makes me think I might have a few damaged
portions on my harddrive. Does that sound about right? Of course, that
sounds like it could be a kernel issue too. If I can figure out how to
"downgrade" my kernel, maybe that will solve it.

I just clicked the "<<plain text" button and the setting has held for
this entire thread. Come to think of it, I may have actually converted
it back to Rich Text a few weeks back.

-Peter

On 5/15/07, Peter Hoff <petehoff@×××××××.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Peter Davoust <worldgnat@×××××.com>
> To: gentoo-amd64@l.g.o
> Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 7:11:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Gentoo crashing?
>
> I know it doesn't actually burn the cpu, but I'd rather not cook any
> components if I don't have to. From what I know of torture tests, they run
> the cpu so hot it starts making computational errors, am I right? It still
> makes me nervous. I was hoping to be able to fix the issue just by
> recompiling my kernel, but no such luck. I'll mess with it some more and see
> what I can do. Can you give me any advice as to what I should to to a) not
> violate my warrantee and b) avoid killing my computer as much as possible?
> Could it just be something with my Gentoo install? I guess that's a stupid
> question; I've had this problem on an older computer, but it was a Desktop
> and it was much easier to swap components without messing up my warrantee.
> So if it were a hardware problem, wouldn't you think that suse 10.2 would
> have run into it as well? I used to run 10.2 (used to as in 3 days ago) for
> hours on end without any problems at all. I agree that Gentoo can run the
> computer harder, but that doesn't quite click.
>
> -Peter
>
>
>
> You're being silly. Software torture tests are not going to kill your
> hardware. Just run them and see what you get. Memtest will give you the
> address where the error occured, and I've always been able to determine
> which stick was bad from that, using a little deductive reasoning (I usually
> verify by testing the sticks alone, but so far I've not been wrong).
>
> As for voiding your warranty, memory and the hard drive are typically
> considered user-servicable parts. In fact, most of the time if either of
> those are the problem they'll just send you the parts and you'll have to
> replace them yourself anyway.
>
> More on torturing hardware: really, the only component that's at all
> vulnerable to this is the hard drive, simply because it's a mechanical
> device, but it will take an absurdly long time to do any actual damage. I
> used to test hard drives for video servers (think Tivo, but starting at
> $100k). We tried a wide variety of drive testing suites, but it turned out
> none of them ran the drives harder than our normal application. A surprising
> number of the oldest version of our product are still running, on the
> original drives, after over 10 years, in situations that are very demanding
> (like serving multiple channels for DirecTV). So, really, stop being so
> paranoid about software torture tests. It is a complete myth that you can
> ruin your hardware by running them.
>
>
>
-- 
gentoo-amd64@g.o mailing list