Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752914AbXITLSa (ORCPT ); Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:18:30 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750917AbXITLSX (ORCPT ); Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:18:23 -0400 Received: from moutng.kundenserver.de ([212.227.126.183]:55998 "EHLO moutng.kundenserver.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750749AbXITLSV (ORCPT ); Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:18:21 -0400 From: Bodo Eggert <7eggert@gmx.de> Subject: Re: patch/option to wipe memory at boot? To: Chris Snook , David Madore , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Jeremy Fitzhardinge Reply-To: 7eggert@gmx.de Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:17:40 +0200 References: <94rE7-89j-3@gated-at.bofh.it> <94tmJ-2EJ-77@gated-at.bofh.it> <94vHE-6xa-11@gated-at.bofh.it> <95cD1-7gI-31@gated-at.bofh.it> User-Agent: KNode/0.7.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Message-Id: X-be10.7eggert.dyndns.org-MailScanner-Information: See www.mailscanner.info for information X-be10.7eggert.dyndns.org-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-be10.7eggert.dyndns.org-MailScanner-From: 7eggert@gmx.de X-Provags-ID: V01U2FsdGVkX18KVmt/uq0JMffDn2nfy/vauqjDF5swn4VQVwj qOjTblMvGjjZ66+z9ndlcJsUqSqgbjMjp38OrNTk/k/8e7pq9D UC/2K2SvVv6xIPyf/gsIA== Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1481 Lines: 28 Chris Snook wrote: > David Madore wrote: >> On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 11:11:52AM -0700, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote: >>> Boot memtest86 for a little while before booting the kernel? And if you >>> haven't already run it for a while, then that would be your first step >>> anyway. >> >> Indeed, that does the trick, thanks for the suggestion. So I can be >> quite confident, now, that my RAM is sane and it's just that the BIOS >> doesn't initialize it properly. >> >> But I'd still like some way of filling the RAM when Linux starts (or >> perhaps in the bootloader), because letting memtest86 run after every >> cold reboot isn't a very satisfactory solution. > > Bootloaders like to do things like run in 16-bit or 32-bit mode on boxes where > higher bitness is necessary to access all the memory. It may be possible to > do this in the bootloader, but the BIOS is clearly the correct place to fix > this problem. Just an idea: Does this BIOS have an option to (not) skip the full memory test on bootup? -- Have you ever noticed that the Klingons are all speaking unix? "Grep ls awk chmod." "Mknod ksh tar imap." "Wall fsck yacc!" (that last is obviously a curse of some sort) -- Gandalf Parker - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/