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To: "Stephen Gutknecht (linux-kernel)" <linux-kernel@i405.com>
Cc: "'David Lang'" <david.lang@digitalinsight.com>,
        David Riley <oscar@the-rileys.net>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Better testing of hardware (was: Defective Read Hat)
In-Reply-To: <0066CB04D783714B88D83397CCBCA0CD49AF@spike2.i405.net>
From: ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman)
Date: 22 Nov 2000 00:13:09 -0700
In-Reply-To: "Stephen Gutknecht's message of "Tue, 21 Nov 2000 13:39:17 -0800"
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"Stephen Gutknecht (linux-kernel)" <linux-kernel@i405.com> writes:

> A Linux Kernel compile test does a really good job of testing the hard disk,
> RAM, and CPU... as it executes all types of instructions and the final
> output depends on all prior steps completing correctly.  On a really fast
> system (> 900Mhz) might make sense to run it twice, once to "warm up" the
> CPU and other components.  Most "benchmarks" just test speed, not the actual
> stability or data integrity (they write results to a device but don't check
> for data corruption, or they test only one device at a time, not all at
> once).

Also note that a Linux Kernel compile stresses memory because
of the very pointer loaded data structures of gcc.  This means that
memory corruption is most likely to flip a bit in a pointer, and cause
a bad pointer.

Eric
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