Messages from MCA in the kernel log

[Frédéric Perrin]

perryh at pluto.rain.com writes:
> Frederic Perrin <fred at resel.fr> wrote:
>
>> ... I don't know what MCA, DRD, SNOOP and {D,G}CACHE stand for...
>
> MCA = Machine Check Architecture.
> DRD here probably refers to a data read cycle.
> SNOOP has to do with hardware-maintained cache coherency.
> DCACHE = data cache.
>
> Google and/or Wikipedia may help with the details.

Thanks for the pointers.

>> Is it a transient error?
>
> I _think_ the COR refers to a corrected error, but that could be
> either transient (a random bit-flip, possibly due to a cosmic
> ray hit) or permanent (a bit in the cache has gone bad).  In the
> latter case I'd expect ongoing error messages, rather than just
> two isolated occurrences.

This server has been running since about 18 months, with a current
uptime of 75 days. This is the first time this message appeared, and has
not returned yet. I'll shrug it off as a one-time glitch.

Thanks for your comments. Have a nice day,
-- 
Frédéric Perrin -- http://tar-jx.bz