memtest86

[Tom Browder]

Here I am again seeking help. I have used memtest86 long ago when I burned it on a CDROM disk. 

I see that it's a Debian package, and  I installed it. Now I see memtest86 on my boot choice screen, but selecting memtest86 does nothing.

I assume I probably have to add something to the grub2 menu to use it.

I have searched for how to do that, but all I've been able to find are instructions on how to use it from a bootable USB thumb drive.

My grub/boot foo has disappeared. Any help on using the installed memtest86 is greatly appreciated.

As a fallback, I will go the USB route if I have to, :-(

Cheers!

-Tom

[Alexander V. Makartsev]

On 13.09.2023 19:10, Tom Browder wrote:

Here I am again seeking help. I have used memtest86 long ago when I burned it on a CDROM disk. 

I see that it's a Debian package, and  I installed it. Now I see memtest86 on my boot choice screen, but selecting memtest86 does nothing.

That's weird.
It works for me, although I use back-ported version 6.20 of "memtest86+" from Testing with a cosmetic patch. I like my grub menu tidy. :)
I've now noticed you've wrote "memtest86", did you meant it to be "memtest86+"?

I assume I probably have to add something to the grub2 menu to use it.

Nothing has to be added, it should work from the grub menu.
On what hardware did you run it?
There could be still some bugs left, and throughout the years, I've seen some of them, usually BIOS and/or Integrated VGA related.

I have searched for how to do that, but all I've been able to find are instructions on how to use it from a bootable USB thumb drive.

My grub/boot foo has disappeared. Any help on using the installed memtest86 is greatly appreciated.

As a fallback, I will go the USB route if I have to, :-(

USB route is usually the way to go, especially when "memtest86+" is a part of some recovery tools project like "System Rescue". [1]



[1] https://www.system-rescue.org/

--
With kindest regards, Alexander.

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀

[gene heskett]

On 9/13/23 12:40, Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:
> On 13.09.2023 19:10, Tom Browder wrote:
>> Here I am again seeking help. I have used memtest86 long ago when I
>> burned it on a CDROM disk.
>>
>> I see that it's a Debian package, and  I installed it. Now I see
>> memtest86 on my boot choice screen, but selecting memtest86 does nothing.
>>
> That's weird.
> It works for me, although I use back-ported version 6.20 of "memtest86+"
> from Testing with a cosmetic patch. I like my grub menu tidy. :)
> I've now noticed you've wrote "memtest86", did you meant it to be
> "memtest86+"?
>

memtest86 has its roots in 8086 16 bit code, and its been quite a party
for the coders to first bring it up to 32 bit, and finally to 64 bit.
That last version I downloaded and burned was memtest86 V9.4 which works
on my 6 core i5 as well as it did on 8086's but of course a bit faster.
A google search should get you a link to burn to a new cd/dvd, and it
Just Works.

>
>> I assume I probably have to add something to the grub2 menu to use it.
>>
> Nothing has to be added, it should work from the grub menu.
> On what hardware did you run it?
> There could be still some bugs left, and throughout the years, I've seen
> some of them, usually BIOS and/or Integrated VGA related.
>
>
>> I have searched for how to do that, but all I've been able to find are
>> instructions on how to use it from a bootable USB thumb drive.
>>
>> My grub/boot foo has disappeared. Any help on using the installed
>> memtest86 is greatly appreciated.
>>
>> As a fallback, I will go the USB route if I have to, :-(
>>
> USB route is usually the way to go, especially when "memtest86+" is a
> part of some recovery tools project like "System Rescue". [1]
>
>
>
> [1] https://www.system-rescue.org/
> --
> With kindest regards, Alexander.
>
> ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
> ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
> ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org
> ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/>

[Tom Browder]

On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 14:43 gene heskett <ghes...@shentel.net> wrote:

On 9/13/23 12:40, Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:
> On 13.09.2023 19:10, Tom Browder wrote:
>> Here I am again seeking help. I have used memtest86 long ago when I
>> burned it on a CDROM disk.
>>
>> I see that it's a Debian package, and  I installed it. Now I see
>> memtest86 on my boot choice screen, but selecting memtest86 does nothing.
>>
> That's weird.
> It works for me, although I use back-ported version 6.20 of "memtest86+"
> from Testing with a cosmetic patch. I like my grub menu tidy. :)
> I've now noticed you've wrote "memtest86", did you meant it to be
> "memtest86+"?

No, I installed both. I'll try again with just memtest86 (I saw somewhere that memtest86+ was still being finalized, but that doesn't sound like it would be available if that were the case).

memtest86 has its roots in 8086 16 bit code, and its been quite a party
for the coders to first bring it up to 32 bit, and finally to 64 bit.
That last version I downloaded and burned was memtest86 V9.4 which works
on my 6 core i5 as well as it did on 8086's but of course a bit faster.
A google search should get you a link to burn to a new cd/dvd, and it

Will report back.

-Tom

[Tom Browder]

On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 3:32 PM Tom Browder <tom.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On 13.09.2023 19:10, Tom Browder wrote:
>> >> Here I am again seeking help. I have used memtest86 long ago when I

>> >> I see that it's a Debian package, and I installed it. Now I see
>> >> memtest86 on my boot choice screen, but selecting memtest86 does nothing.
>> >>
>> > That's weird.

I just tried again with only memtest86+. After reboot, I get several
memtest86+ options but when I select one I gect a pretty Debian screen
with nothing apparent happening.

-Tom

[Tom Browder]

Retried, nothing.

-Tom

[Alexander V. Makartsev]

On 14.09.2023 00:42, gene heskett wrote:

On 9/13/23 12:40, Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:

On 13.09.2023 19:10, Tom Browder wrote:

Here I am again seeking help. I have used memtest86 long ago when I burned it on a CDROM disk.

I see that it's a Debian package, and  I installed it. Now I see memtest86 on my boot choice screen, but selecting memtest86 does nothing.

That's weird.
It works for me, although I use back-ported version 6.20 of "memtest86+" from Testing with a cosmetic patch. I like my grub menu tidy. :)
I've now noticed you've wrote "memtest86", did you meant it to be "memtest86+"?

memtest86 has its roots in 8086 16 bit code, and its been quite a party for the coders to first bring it up to 32 bit, and finally to 64 bit. That last version I downloaded and burned was memtest86 V9.4 which works on my 6 core i5 as well as it did on 8086's but of course a bit faster.
A google search should get you a link to burn to a new cd/dvd, and it Just Works.

I know "memtest86" was before "memtest86+", but memtest86+ is a successor [1] and up-to-date version should work for an old and modern hardware.
This is probably the reason why "memtest86" wasn't included to Stable repos:

$ rmadison memtest86
memtest86  | 4.3.7-3       | oldoldstable | source, amd64, i386
memtest86  | 4.3.7-3       | oldstable    | source
memtest86  | 4.3.7-3+b1    | oldstable    | amd64, i386

$ rmadison memtest86+
memtest86+ | 5.01-3         | oldoldstable       | source, amd64, i386
memtest86+ | 5.01-3.1       | oldstable          | source, amd64, i386
memtest86+ | 6.10-2~bpo11+1 | bullseye-backports | source, amd64, i386
memtest86+ | 6.10-4         | stable             | source, amd64, i386
memtest86+ | 6.20-3         | testing            | source, amd64, i386
memtest86+ | 6.20-3         | unstable           | source, amd64, i386

The other reason is that "memtest86" was sold to PassMark [2] and became closed source since version 4.3.
Anyway, I'd consider "memtest86+" the only reliable OSS option, which I've used successfully for many years with Legacy BIOS/UEFI and PXE.


[1] https://www.memtest.org/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memtest86

[Alexander V. Makartsev]

Is it possible that you forgot to disable UEFI Secure Boot feature in BIOS?
There is a FAQ section on an official website [1], that could help you troubleshoot boot problems.


[1] https://www.memtest.org/

[Tom Browder]

On Thu, Sep 14, 2023 at 13:15 Alexander V. Makartsev <avb...@gmail.com> wrote:

...

I know "memtest86" was before "memtest86+", but memtest86+ is a successor

I just found my system rescue disk, booted it, entered the memtest86++ and see lots of FAILUREs (I have 128 Gb so that may be why it's been hit and miss).

I'm trying to see if a log is or can be generated for my warranty repair.

Thanks to all who gave advice!

-Tom

[gene heskett]

On 9/14/23 16:30, Tom Browder wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2023 at 13:15 Alexander V. Makartsev <avb...@gmail.com
> <mailto:avb...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> ...
>
>> I know "memtest86" was before "memtest86+", but memtest86+ is a
>> successor
>
> I just found my system rescue disk, booted it, entered the memtest86++
> and see lots of FAILUREs (I have 128 Gb so that may be why it's been hit
> and miss).
>

Tom, I've said it before and been ignored, please google or ddg for it,
get the latest version and build it following the instructions in the
download. There's little chance a distro copy can cope with that much
memory.

latest version is 10.6, get it at:
<https://www.memtest86.com/download.html>
Take your pick of the pro version you have to buy, or the right hand
free download. I have 32G only in this machine and the free version of
9.6 worked fine here. But I see it now only boots on uefi enabled machines.

> I'm trying to see if a log is or can be generated for my warranty repair.
>
> Thanks to all who gave advice!
>
> -Tom

[Felix Miata]

Tom Browder composed on 2023-09-14 15:29 (UTC-0500):

> Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:
> ...

>> I know "memtest86" was before "memtest86+", but memtest86+ is a successor

>> I just found my system rescue disk, booted it, entered the memtest86++ and
> see lots of FAILUREs (I have 128 Gb so that may be why it's been hit and
> miss).

> I'm trying to see if a log is or can be generated for my warranty repair.

All my UEFI PCs have memtest86 from https://www.memtest86.com/ installed. ISTR it
logs by default. ATM, I don't have any UEFI PCs booted to confirm.
--
Evolution as taught in public schools is, like religion,
based on faith, not based on science.

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata

[Stefan Monnier]

> latest version is 10.6, get it at:
> <https://www.memtest86.com/download.html>

Freeware! Eww!

I recommend https://www.memtest.org/ instead (admittedly, until a year
or two ago, this Free Software was severely outdated and didn't really
work with UEFI, but things have picked up again since).


Stefan

[Michel Verdier]

On 2023-09-14, Stefan Monnier wrote:

> I recommend https://www.memtest.org/ instead (admittedly, until a year
> or two ago, this Free Software was severely outdated and didn't really
> work with UEFI, but things have picked up again since).

This is the package memtest86+

[gene heskett]

On 9/14/23 22:17, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> latest version is 10.6, get it at:
>> <https://www.memtest86.com/download.html>
>

This, Stefan, looks exactly like the memtest86 we've all been using for
nearly 30 years. Possibly under new management, and you may not agree
with the pro version costing money, but TANSTAAFL is a universal law.
Somebody has to pay the bills. If you think the peanuts are free, check
the price of the beer.

> Freeware! Eww!
>
> I recommend https://www.memtest.org/ instead (admittedly, until a year
> or two ago, this Free Software was severely outdated and didn't really
> work with UEFI, but things have picked up again since).
>

I've pulled this on down too, but the previews don't quite look like the
old familiar one I found above. And with all the caveats discussed in
the faq list, I'll be a bit spooky. Like running it w/o a net cable so
it can't call home.

But I'll burn the 64 bit grub iso to a dvd and try it. I have had
several "use the back panel power switch" to recover from lockups since
being forced to upgrade to bookworm by something wiping my passwd during
a bullseye update. bookworm does NOT like my raid10 /home, taking from
30 secs to 5 minutes to open the file requestor just to save this
download. Perhaps this one can tell me something the v9.4 I got from my
link didn't. Lockups that are strange, the mouse pointer still moves
normally, but clicks are ignored and so is the keyboard. The cute
analog clock is frozen, as is the rest of the gkrellm display.
>
> Stefan
Take care and stay well..

[Stefan Monnier]

>>> latest version is 10.6, get it at:
>>> <https://www.memtest86.com/download.html>
> This, Stefan, looks exactly like the memtest86 we've all been using for
> nearly 30 years.

"we"? I sure haven't run that one, ever. I've run memtest86+ many
times, yes, that's the one that "look like the old familiar one" for me
(and presumably for others who stay away from proprietary code :)

> Possibly under new management, and you may not agree with
> the pro version costing money,

The problem is not the money but the impossibility to know what it is
you're running because you can't see the source code.

> If you think the peanuts are free, check the price of the beer.

Have you ever heard of Free Software (or maybe "open source")? :-)

> And with all the caveats discussed in the faq list, I'll be a bit
> spooky. Like running it w/o a net cable so it can't call home.

Of course the `.com` version won't push all its own caveats in your
face, that would go against its own commercial interests.

That's another advantage of Free Software: it doesn't have a commercial
incentive to hide its limitations in order to trick you into choosing
over some competitor. IOW Free Software encourages honesty.

BTW, you can also run a memory tester from the comfort of a running
Debian machine, using the `memtester` package. Clearly it won't be able
to check *all* the memory of your machine (e.g. it can't access the
memory used by the kernel), but I've anecdotally found it "good enough"
(the two times memtest86+ found a problem in one of my machines,
`memtester` also found a problem on that machine).


Stefan

[gene heskett]

On 9/15/23 09:34, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>>> latest version is 10.6, get it at:
>>>> <https://www.memtest86.com/download.html>
>> This, Stefan, looks exactly like the memtest86 we've all been using for
>> nearly 30 years.
>
> "we"? I sure haven't run that one, ever. I've run memtest86+ many
> times, yes, that's the one that "look like the old familiar one" for me
> (and presumably for others who stay away from proprietary code :)
>
>> Possibly under new management, and you may not agree with
>> the pro version costing money,
>
> The problem is not the money but the impossibility to know what it is
> you're running because you can't see the source code.
>
>> If you think the peanuts are free, check the price of the beer.
>
> Have you ever heard of Free Software (or maybe "open source")? :-)
>

Sure, great believer in it, ever since my first and last encounter with
Bill Gates about 39 years ago. but eventually the coder might want to
buy some grocery's or pay the rent. That's something I would support
monetarily. But the difficulty of moving the money internationally
makes it way to difficult to be assured the money gets to the intended
recipient. Way the hell and gone too many local tax laws so the big guy
gets his 50% or even all of it. Corruption in the monetary exchange
field seems rampant and uncontrollable. Ours here in the USA is no
exception.

I can afford to buy that which I can inspect, maybe you can't. IDK. I
bailed out of the RedHat world when they went commercial but used their
fedora to make always sick lab rats out of us. Mandrake was good, went
bust, tried ubuntu but that was then seemingly wanting to be a free
windows lookalike then. Now its much better so armbian for wannabe pi's
is the thing.

I use several copies of linuxcnc here, so when they switched to debian
to base their program on, I followed, but it appears debian is also
short handed when a copy/paste bug somewhere along the path from coder
to release broke one of udevs functions during bullseye that will not be
fixed before trixie.

>> And with all the caveats discussed in the faq list, I'll be a bit
>> spooky. Like running it w/o a net cable so it can't call home.
>
> Of course the `.com` version won't push all its own caveats in your
> face, that would go against its own commercial interests.

No argument there.

>
> That's another advantage of Free Software: it doesn't have a commercial
> incentive to hide its limitations in order to trick you into choosing
> over some competitor. IOW Free Software encourages honesty.

That it does, but it should not impede the coders ability to feed and
house his family.

> BTW, you can also run a memory tester from the comfort of a running
> Debian machine, using the `memtester` package. Clearly it won't be able
> to check *all* the memory of your machine (e.g. it can't access the
> memory used by the kernel), but I've anecdotally found it "good enough"
> (the two times memtest86+ found a problem in one of my machines,
> `memtester` also found a problem on that machine).

Installing now, Along with a new kernel. 3rd reboot this week, where is
the famous debian dependability...

Take care and stay well, Stefan
>
> Stefan

[Felix Miata]

gene heskett composed on 2023-09-15 12:24 (UTC-0400):

> Mandrake was good, went bust

Its core has survived in the form of Mageia, which just released v9 a few weeks ago.

[gene heskett]

On 9/15/23 13:46, Felix Miata wrote:
> gene heskett composed on 2023-09-15 12:24 (UTC-0400):
>
>> Mandrake was good, went bust
>
> Its core has survived in the form of Mageia, which just released v9 a few weeks ago.

Hopefully with support for recent hdwe. The last time I tried it, it
didn't like my then new AMD Phenom hdwe. That was 2 or 3 motherboards in
this tower ago, so I won't bad mouth today's. That Phenom must have been
happy running win-98 but was definitely unhappy running linux when
kernels were in the mid-2's. IRQ latencies ran in the 3 digits worth of
milliseconds range.

Take care & stay well, Felix.

[Anssi Saari]

Stefan Monnier <mon...@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Of course the `.com` version won't push all its own caveats in your
> face, that would go against its own commercial interests.

Indeed. Like a feature it has might not work due to other reasons. For
example, I bought the memtest86 pro since I wanted to use the ECC error
injection feature to see ECC memory correction in action. Unfortunately,
on two of my ECC computers error injection isn't working (meaning it's
disabled and there's no option to enable) and the third is old school
and doesn't have UEFI so I can't boot memtest86 pro on it.

Not to mention the GUI seemed unusable on both the systems I tried so
basically I had to do batch testing. At least that limitation was
mentioned somewhere.

[Tom Browder]

On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 09:10 Tom Browder <tom.b...@gmail.com> wrote:

Here I am again seeking help. I have used memtest86 long ago when I burned it on a CDROM disk.

Finally tested all my memory modules using a recent system rescue cd and its memtest86+. One bad module out of four.

Sending bad module back for warranty replacement.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers!

-Tom