[ Thanks to Kellie
for this link. ]
“One of Linux’s claims to fame is its legendary stability.
However, the most stable operating system in the world won’t do you
any good if your hardware is defective or misconfigured. In this
article, Daniel Robbins shows you how to diagnose and fix CPU
flakiness, as well as how to test your RAM for defects. By the end
of this article, you’ll have the skills to ensure that your Linux
system is as stable as it possibly can be.”
“Many of us in the Linux world have been bitten by nasty
hardware problems. How many of us have set up a Linux box,
installed our favorite distribution, compiled and installed some
additional apps, and gotten everything working perfectly only to
find that our new system has an (argh!) fatal hardware bug? Whether
the symptoms are random segmentation faults, data corruption, hard
locks, or lost data is irrelevant — the hardware glitch
effectively makes our normally reliable Linux operating system
barely able to stay afloat. In this article, we’ll take an in-depth
look at how to detect flaky CPUs and RAM — allowing you to replace
the defective parts before they do some serious damage.”
“If you’re experiencing instability problems and suspect they
are hardware related, I encourage you to test both your CPU and
memory to ensure that they’re working OK. However, even if you
haven’t experienced these problems, it’s still a good idea to
perform these CPU and memory tests. In doing so, you may detect a
hardware problem that could have bitten you at an inopportune time,
something that could have caused data loss or hours of frustration
in a frantic search for the source of the problem. The proper,
proactive application of these techniques can help you to avoid a
lot of headaches, and if your system passes the tests, you’ll have
the peace of mind that your system is up to spec.”