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

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bill Broadley (bill at cse.ucdavis.edu):

> 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.

You have a small point, but only for trivial values of "survive":  The
lion's share of those bit flips will turn out to be harmless for any of
sundry reasons.  (I'd specualate that some non-zero percentage of
prematurely deceased httpd instances owed to that, for example -- but
those just respawn.)

> 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.

If that were a concern meriting real-world concern in situations where
the RAM _doesn't_ give unmistakeable signs of defects, my data would have
gone to mush a decade ago.  Frankly, HD defects are a many orders of
magnitude more significant threat.