Message-Id: <200702020402.l12427em008810@turing-police.cc.vt.edu>
To: Chris Rankin <rankincj@yahoo.com>
Cc: Mark Rustad <mrustad@gmail.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: 2.6.18-stable release plans?
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:37:20 GMT."
             <999038.34946.qm@web52908.mail.yahoo.com>
From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu
References: <999038.34946.qm@web52908.mail.yahoo.com>
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On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:37:20 GMT, Chris Rankin said:
> --- Mark Rustad <mrustad@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well, do you have ECC memory? If not, it is at least possible that  
> > that the solar flares that occurred last month may have affected your  
> > system.
> 
> I am going to assume that you are being facaetious, because it would be the rarified pinnacle of
> supreme arrogance to suggest that a cosmic ray event is a more likely explanation than a bug in
> the kernel.

Sorry for the late reply, but cosmic ray events (actually, self-induced alpha
particle events from decays within the chipset itself) *are* a likely
explanation:

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/pc_hardware_faq/2_20_What_does_parity_ECC_memory_protect_the_system_from.html

Most important take-away here:

"With 100 million computers in use today, we should expect roughly 6 million
single bit errors per year. Computer hardware and software companies must
receive thousands of "side effect" bug reports and support calls due to memory
errors alone. The costs of NOT including parity memory must be huge!"


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