linux-kernel - Re: patch/option to wipe memory at boot?

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Date:	Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:17:40 +0200
From:	Bodo Eggert <7eggert@....de>
To:	Chris Snook <csnook@...hat.com>,
	David Madore <david.madore@....fr>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>
Subject: Re: patch/option to wipe memory at boot?

Chris Snook <csnook@...hat.com> wrote:
> David Madore wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 11:11:52AM -0700, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:

>>> Boot memtest86 for a little while before booting the kernel?  And if you
>>> haven't already run it for a while, then that would be your first step
>>> anyway.
>> 
>> Indeed, that does the trick, thanks for the suggestion.  So I can be
>> quite confident, now, that my RAM is sane and it's just that the BIOS
>> doesn't initialize it properly.
>> 
>> But I'd still like some way of filling the RAM when Linux starts (or
>> perhaps in the bootloader), because letting memtest86 run after every
>> cold reboot isn't a very satisfactory solution.
> 
> Bootloaders like to do things like run in 16-bit or 32-bit mode on boxes where
> higher bitness is necessary to access all the memory.  It may be possible to
> do this in the bootloader, but the BIOS is clearly the correct place to fix
> this problem.

Just an idea: Does this BIOS have an option to (not) skip the full memory
test on bootup?
-- 
Have you ever noticed that the Klingons are all speaking unix?
"Grep ls awk chmod."   "Mknod ksh tar imap."
"Wall fsck yacc!"     (that last is obviously a curse of some sort)
        -- Gandalf  Parker
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