Comment by account42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by account42 | Hacker News Reader

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I do regularly look at dmesg on my Ryzen Threadripper system with ECC RAM.

Random correctable errors are rare but they do happen - at least if you overclock your RAM ("gaming" RAM often is already pre-overclocked). Might just be confirmation bias but I noticed ECC errors and then later heard there was a solar flare around the time.

I also replaced a DIMM that was starting to get more frequent ECC errors once. As OP found the mapping for consumer boards requires to some trial and error - my motherboard documentation even had a table but the numbering was different from the one used in Linux :/

I don't think I'm ever going to use a non-ECC desktop again, the additional cost is not that high for the extra safety against silent corruption.

I have a script to relay new dmesg events into my (xfce) desktop session using libnotify. I figure others may find it useful, too:

https://paste.debian.net/1257030/

It gets started via xdg autostart here, and will tell me about new "stuff" that happens. For it to work, your user will have to have permission to read the kernel event log/debug ringbuffer. I achieve that by setting the appropriate sysctl:

    kernel.dmesg_restrict = 0

I just keep `dmesg -w` running in a terminal window :)

> I don't think I'm ever going to use a non-ECC desktop again, the additional cost is not that high for the extra safety against silent corruption.

same here, but sadly you don't get to choose what you get when purchasing laptops, it is simply impossible to get ECC ram if you run mbp.

Even in PC-land, I don't think there's much choice when it comes to ECC in laptops.

I can only remember one model of Lenovo that had an option to have a Xeon CPU with ECC RAM. I've never seen one with an AMD CPU.

There are many Dell, HP and Lenovo laptops with ECC memory, but all are very expensive (e.g. $2500 ... $7500 in a usable configuration, even if the prices may start a little under $2000, but in a useless configuration).

When browsing their Web sites, these models are not obvious, because they are in the section for "enterprise" laptops, listed under "mobile workstations".

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