kernel memory checks on boot vs. boot time

[Andriy Gapon]

on 22/03/2011 21:54 Matthew Jacob said the following:
> John Baldwin wrote:
>>  
>> Do other platforms bother with these sorts of memory tests?  If not I'd vote
>> to just drop it.  I think this mattered more when you didn't have things like
>> SMAP (so you had to guess at where memory ended sometimes).  Also, modern
>> server class x86 machines generally support ECC RAM which will trigger a
>> machine check if there is a problem.  I doubt that the early checks are
>> catching anything even for the non-ECC case.
>>
>> If nothing else, I would definitely drop this from amd64 (all those systems
>> have SMAP and machine check support, etc.).
>>
>>   
> Memory checks are definitely still useful. Loading the linux mem tester has
> helped find lots of problems, even on so-called modern machines. I'd voter for
> leaving this as an option.

I think that you talk about a different kind of memory checking/testing.
What we have in FreeBSD looks a lot like what BIOSes use(d) to do on startup.
Besides, AFAIR, it doesn't report any results to you.

-- 
Andriy Gapon