Is ECC memory any use?

Mike Fleetwood mike.fleetwood at googlemail.com
Sat Dec 8 08:44:50 UTC 2007


On 08/12/2007, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> I'm getting memory for a very old (P2B-LS) Asus motherboard,
> and I see I can get ECC memory for some 20% more.
>
> Is there any point in getting this?
> I see there is quite a lot of work
> in getting ECC testing incorporated into the Linux kernel.
> But even if it were there, would it be very valuable?
>
> I have a feeling that disk errors are far more likely
> than RAM errors.
> Is that right?

I would personally always use ECC memory.  Here's D. J. Bernstein's
recommendation on the subject: http://cr.yp.to/hardware/ecc.html

ECC detection and correction usually has to be enabled in the BIOS and
is performed by the hardware.  Linux kernel from 2.6.16 includes the
EDAC project (http://bluesmoke.sourceforge.net/) code to report memory
errors and corrections to syslog for supported motherboard chip sets.
Also see Documentation/drivers/edac/edac.txt in the Linux kernel
source tree.

Thanks,
Mike




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