From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265223AbUEUX6A (ORCPT ); Fri, 21 May 2004 19:58:00 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265268AbUEUXwU (ORCPT ); Fri, 21 May 2004 19:52:20 -0400 Received: from kinesis.swishmail.com ([209.10.110.86]:6157 "EHLO kinesis.swishmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264488AbUEUX3v (ORCPT ); Fri, 21 May 2004 19:29:51 -0400 Message-ID: <40AE4493.3090202@techsource.com> Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 14:04:03 -0400 From: Timothy Miller MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: [OT] Linux stability despite unstable hardware Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org I have had some issues recently with memory errors when using aggressive memory timings. Although memory tests (like memtest86) pass fine, gcc would tend to crash and would generate incorrect code when compiling other things. Gcc couldn't even build itself properly under those conditions. The really interesting thing is that the Linux kernel was totally unaffected. Compiling the Linux kernel is often thought of as a stressful thing for a system, yet compiling a kernel with a broken gcc on a system with intermittent memory errors goes through error free, and the kernel is 100% stable when running. But until the memory errors were fixed, things like KDE wouldn't build without gcc crashing. So, what is it about Linux that makes it build properly with a broken GCC and run perfectly despite memory errors?