[vox-tech] ECC memory --- is it worth it? (semi-OT)

[Bill Broadley]

Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Bill Broadley (bill at cse.ucdavis.edu):
> 
>> I'd agree on bad dimms, but bad dimms aren't the only cause of memory
>> errors.
> 
> Nor did I so claim.  However, problems with the motherboard circuitry or
> CPU are (1) rarer, (2) susceptible to their own diagnostic techniques,
> and (3) (more to the immediate point) are helped not a whit by use of
> ECC sticks.  So, I cannot so far see the relevance of your comment.

My point is that while ECC isn't really necessary to help diagnose bad
dimms with linux because the behavior of linux makes it readily apparent
that you have some serious problem.  ECC is necessary to improve uptimes
if you want to survive the random bit flips which can occur at the
mentioned 1 bit per GB per month.

So if you have a few GB around, and want to have multi-month uptimes
without corruptions of data and possibly your filesystem get ECC
memory.

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