On Sunday, June 23, 2013 08:55:43 AM DenverD wrote:
On 06/23/2013 08:23 AM, Constant Brouerius van Nidek wrote:
Memory or the main board?
i'd suspect RAM first
What to do next to find the precise reason of the segfaulting?
1. boot from a known good Linux live CD. if it boots and runs ok for a half-hour or so (do some browsing, video watching, etc) you probably do not have a hardware problem..
All my live cd's seem to have gone bad. The only dvd and cd that boot are a net 12.3 cd and the 12.3 dvd. Booth have the memtest86= VERSION 4.20 which I used.
but, if that same disk/medium will boot and run on another system then you probably do have some sort of hardware flake (maybe RAM, maybe not).. [note: successfully booting and running any version is MS-Windows will _not_ prove a lot about faulty RAM]
2. you have not described your hardware, but if it is not a laptop and you can (and are competent to) disconnect the power, [before proceeding read the caveat in my sig!] remove cabinet side(s) top/bottom (etc) as required to access the RAM sticks... GROUND yourself to the chassis and then unlock and remove the RAM sticks (how many do you have?)
Asrock motherboard with two memory slots and two sticks, 512 and 10xx M
a. carefully use a soft pencil eraser to 'polish' the gold colored contacts of the RAM stick(s), and then without touching them again with your bare fingers, soft cloth wipe to remove all vestiges of eraser bits and then reinstall the RAM stick(s) into the motherboard slots.
Used the pencil eraser and cleaned the bar ram. Reinstalled and ran the memtest again. Result, bad ram beginning at 1024 up to above 1080. No time today to wait for the end address :(.
b. run Memtest again.. (hmmmm...i think i recall the 12.2 install media had a buggy Memtest, if you used that one, DON'T! use 12.3 or 12.1 or any other Linux boot disk..) if it has not thrown an error in about 12 hours you have probably solved your "RAM problem"
Could download and burn on a rewritable cd the memtest86+ iso. But which version should I look for? 4.20 seems to be the latest. Version 5 is in beta.
c. but, if Memtest errors then remove all but one RAM stick and leave that one in slot #1 (see owner manual), and run Memtest again..
d. if that errors, then remove that RAM stick, lay it aside as a possible bad stick and put another in the same #1 slot..and run memtest again..
e. do that until you find one RAM stick that does not error during (12 hours of) Memtest OR all of the memory sticks are in the suspected RAM pile--in which case the problem is _probably_ either the #1 slot or the motherboard..
f. read your owner manual to learn if the machine should run with only the (say) #2 (or other) slot filled....if so, populate that other slot only and run memtest
Owner manual is not specific about the slot.
g. if all RAM sticks also seem to fail in the #2 slot you are (i think) pretty much assured you have a hardware problem more serious than just "bad RAM" and a qualified technician/shop is probably your next best step.
Qualification is problematic where I live. Could try to exchange the bad stick at the seller but I doubt that they will be open to that suggestion. Think of a lifetime guarantee as valid up to installation in your computer ;). Would like to first look into Badram and Memmap solutions. The DDR1 sticks are not that easy to get here and the supply will be at least time consuming.
Like your DD-Caveat :) -- Linux User 183145 using KDE4 and LXDE on a Pentium IV , powered by openSUSE 12.3 (i586) Kernel: 3.9.6-13.g8ead728-default KDE Development Platform: 4.10.3 "release 1" 14:34pm up 1:57, 3 users, load average: 0.72, 0.46, 0.42 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org