Panic caused by bad memory?

[Charles Sprickman]

On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:

>> I can't get a kernel dump since it fails like this each time:
>>
>> dumping to dev #da/0x20001, offset 2097152
>> dump 1024 1023 1022 1021 Aborting dump due to I/O error.
>> status == 0xb, scsi status == 0x0
>> failed, reason: i/o error
>
> Bad memory seems unlikely to cause an I/O error trying to write the
> dump to the swap partition.  I'd guess a dicey drive -- and bad
> swap space could also account for the original crash.  You might
> be able to get a backup by booting single user, provided nothing
> activates the (presumably bad) swap partition.

Just for the record, this box is running an Adaptec raid controller (2005S 
- ZCR card) and swap is coming off a mirrored array.

Coincidentally, I have a utility box where it had bad blocks on the swap 
partition (but no others) - what I saw there is that the box would just 
hang and spit out a bunch of "swap_pager timeout" messages to the console. 
Quick and dirty remote fix while waiting for a drive?  Run file-backed 
swap on /usr. :)

Let's pretend for a minute it's not the drive that's the root cause... 
Not saying it isn't - we're none too thrilled with these Adaptec RAID 
controllers...  Do those memory addresses in the panic message point 
towards bad memory if they are always the same?

Thanks,

Charles