memtester − stress test to find memory subsystem faults.
memtester <MEMORY> [ITERATIONS]
memtester is an effective userspace tester for stress-testing the memory subsystem. It is very effective at finding intermittent and non-deterministic faults. Note that problems in other hardware areas (overheating CPU, out-of-specification power supply, etc.) can cause memory faults.
memtester will malloc(3) the amount of memory specified, if possible. If this fails, it will decrease the amount of memory requested until it succeeds. It will then attempt to mlock(3) this memory; if it cannot do so, testing will be slower and less effective.
Note that the maximum amount of memory that memtester can test will be less than the total amount of memory installed in the system; the operating system, libraries, and other system limits take some of the available memory. memtester is also limited to the amount of memory available to a single process; for example, on 32-bit machines with more than 4GB of memory, memtester is still limited to less than 4GB.
MEMORY |
the amount of memory to allocate and test, in megabytes |
ITERATIONS
(optional) number of loops to iterate through. Default is infinite.
memtester must be run with root privileges to mlock(3) its pages. Testing memory without locking the pages in place is mostly pointless and slow.
memtester’s exit code is 0 when everything works properly. Otherwise, it is the logical OR of the following values:
x01 |
error allocating or locking memory, or invocation error |
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x02 |
error during stuck address test |
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x04 |
error during one of the other tests |
Written by Charles Cazabon.
Report bugs to <charlesc-memtester-bugs AT pyropus DOT ca>.
Copyright © 2007 Charles Cazabon
This is free software; see the file COPYING for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.