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Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 23:31:21 +0100 (CET)
From: Richard Torkar <ds98rito@thn.htu.se>
To: David Riley <oscar@the-rileys.net>
cc: Jeff Epler <jepler@inetnebr.com>, <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Defective Red Hat Distribution poorly represents Linux
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David Riley wrote:

> Jeff Epler wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Nov 21, 2000 at 04:08:26PM -0500, David Riley wrote:
> > > Windoze is not the only OS to handle bad hardware better than Linux.  On
> > > my Mac, I had a bad DIMM that worked fine on the MacOS side, but kept
> > > causing random bus-type errors in Linux.  Same as when I accidentally
> > > (long story) overclocked the bus on the CPU.  I think that more
> > > tolerance for faulty hardware (more than just poorly programmed BIOS or
> > > chipsets with known bugs) is something that might be worth looking into.
> >
> > And how do you propose to do that?
> >
> > For instance, in some other operating systems having the top bit flip
> > in a pointer will cause silent use of incorrect data.  On Linux, this
> > will cause a signal 11.  Which do you prefer, bad results or an error
> > message?
> >
> > Can you suggest a specific way in which Linux can react correctly to
> > e.g. flipped bits in RAM or cache which cannot be detected at the hardware
> > level?  Or maybe tell me how Linux can react correctly when an overclocked
> > CPU starts producing incorrect results for right shifts once every few
> > thousand instructions?
>
> Hmm... Good point.  That would be hard to do.  On that note, there
> should be some prominent note on things like user manuals (though Linux
> users shouldn't need *manuals* :-) that notes that common crashes like
> signal 11 or "cc: internal failure" messages are generally caused by
> hardware problems.

Well David, there is such a "manual".

http://ftp.sunet.se/LDP/FAQ/faqs/GCC-SIG11-FAQ



/Richard
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