Re: how can a bit be off in memory?

Charles T. Smith wrote:

All software is just 'bits in hardware'..any chance of identifying WHAT
the actual difference was, or have you simply overwritten the corrupt
copy?

:) Yeah, that's the thing. I didn't need to overwrite it. I rebooted.
After that, the file in /bin/vim matched the file I downloaded from suse.


Ah. The plot thickens.

So the image on disk was fine, but the image as READ by the system was corrupt, until you rebooted.

Actually, I guess I'll buy the arguments of the ECC (EMA?) posters that it
shows why ECC is a good thing.

I don't. I am fairly certain you had a corrupt transfer off the disk.

In my experience, that is almost certainly another device on the IO bus that woke up when it shouldn't as some PARTICULAR address passed it by..

By rebooting you changed the memory address it was being loaded INTO.

That problem will remain..sometime someplace you will load another file off disk into the same space and it will be corrupted.

I think at this point a complete breakdown of what cards and motherboards you have, is in order..

I am scratching my brains as to how to replicate this reliably too..you want to copy huge files around probably on a bare bones system, and see if you can reliably get a one byte corruption. Lacking hardware emulation (which I used to find the issue we had) your only recourse is probably to remove cards till the problem vanishes, and ditch whatver card it was that caused the problem.

If it was a single byte that was corrupted it is almost certainly some 8 bit device that is the issue. That may help to pin it down. I didn't know there were such anymore..

.

Relevant Pages

  • [DECK] Smash the State!
    ... Anarch Khay`tall stealth voter. ... Corrupt opposing voters w/ Reformation. ... Library: (90 cards) ...
    (rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad)
  • Re: PS1 Games on PS2 - Memory Card problem
    ... but it will not recognise my 8mb cards, and it says that my old PS1 ... Is this a general problem using old 2mb memory cards ... You can only use PS1 memory cards for PS1 games. ... odds are it really is corrupt because they're all ...
    (uk.games.video.playstation)
  • file corrupt: system partially freezes (reiserfs)
    ... w/ emacs) became corrupt: all I could see was a long string of "@@@@" ... provide more meaningful details. ... There was a loud sound, like perhaps a disk drive bearing noise, when ... rebooting, a couple of times. ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: XP pro SP2 install problem
    ... the registry is corrupt. ... How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install ... | Rebooting into safe mode didn't work either. ... Booting on my XP pro install disk and and going ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)
  • Re: invalid boot.ini file - help
    ... New symptom but the same problem - boot.ini is corrupt or incorrectly built. ... Re-install file and re-boot. ... the only thing I know to do is get to the safe mode screen. ... Tried rebooting with my McAfee ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)