Re: [gentoo-user] MCE in kernel

[Alan E. Davis]

Thank you Dan:

I'll look into this.  Time to tear the old box apart again.

Thank you again.

Alan

On 9/4/07, Dan Farrell <dan@×××××××××.cx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 4 Sep 2007 06:51:38 +1000
> "Alan E. Davis" <lngndvs@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> > I think your solution is the better one, though.
> >
> > I did follow the instructions of the boot messages and installed an
> > mce log translation utility, but I didn't make sense of what to do
> > with it.
>
> The thing is, you are only masking symptoms.  There may be something
> wrong, and perhaps you could save a lot of work later by fixing a
> problem before it turns catastrophic.
>
> from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Check_Exception
>
> A Machine Check Exception, also called MCE, is a computer hardware
> error which occurs when a computer's central processing unit detects an
> unrecoverable hardware problem.
>
> Normal causes for MCE errors are overheating and/or incorrect hardware
> installation. Overheating can cause electrons to become more animated
> and thus escape from the silicon tracks, resulting in corrupted data.
> Some specific manually induced causes could be:
>
> Overclocking (naturally increases heat output)
>
> Poorly fitted heatsink/computer fans (the same problem can happen with
> excessive dust in the CPU fan)
>
> Computer software can also cause errors in this way (normally by
> corrupting data they are reading or writing). For example:
>
> -Software performing read or write operations to non-existent memory
> regions which leads to confusion for the processor and/or the system
> bus.
>
> 3rd party programs
>
> mcelog
>     mcelog is a Linux program to decode MCE's on x86-64 processors
>
> --
> gentoo-user@g.o mailing list
>
>


-- 
Alan Davis, Kagman High School, Saipan  lngndvs@×××××.com

"An inviscid theory of flow renders the screw useless, but the need for one
non-existent."
         ---Lord Raleigh (aka John William Strutt), or else his son,