Linux: How do I find out causes for memory faults?

Posted by Vivek Gite [Last updated: December 11, 2006]

Memory faults can occur due to various causes.

You can use memtester command which stress test to find memory subsystem faults. memtester command is an effective userspace tester for stress-testing the memory subsystem. It is very effective at finding intermittent and non-deterministic faults under Linux.

You can run memtester as follows:

memtester MEMORY ITERATIONS

Where,
=> MEMORY: The amount of memory to allocate and test, in megabytes
=> ITERATIONS: Number of loops to iterate through. Default is infinite

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
x02: Error during stuck address test
x04: Error during one of the other tests

Example
$ memtest 5 1Output:

memtester version 4.0.5 (32-bit)
Copyright (C) 2005 Charles Cazabon.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 (only).

pagesize is 4096
pagesizemask is 0xfffff000
want 5MB (5242880 bytes)
got  5MB (5242880 bytes), trying mlock ...locked.
Loop 1/1:
Stuck Address       : ok
Random Value        : ok
Compare XOR         : ok
Compare SUB         : ok
Compare MUL         : ok
Compare DIV         : ok
Compare OR          : ok
Compare AND         : ok
Sequential Increment: ok
Solid Bits          : ok
Block Sequential    : ok
Checkerboard        : ok
Bit Spread          : ok
Bit Flip            : ok
Walking Ones        : ok
Walking Zeroes      : ok

Done.

Display memtester's exit code with following command (it is 0 when everything works properly):
$ echo $?
Output:

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