My gentoo desktop machine has been acting flakey recently. Apps stop responding, network inconsistent. Sounds like a hardware problem. So I figured I would check my memory.
Memtest86 to the rescue. Thanks to Ubuntu I had a live cd with memtest86 on it. Actually I had 5 of them. So I put one in the machine and let memtest crank away for two days....
Commercial interlude. (No I don't work for Ubuntu.) It is cool that Ubuntu sent me 5 cds for free. And stickers as well. (Though my laptop running ubuntu still has some issues). So use Ubuntu if you aren't willing to run Gentoo)
Back to our (ir-)regularly scheduled program.
Turns out the memory error was at 422.7M (of a 512M module). Good, if it were in the first couple of megs things might be a little more complicated. But I'm happy the error is towards the end of my memory (chances are 50% that it will be). So I added mem=420 to my grub options and I'm happily running now (error free, albeit with 20% less memory). But at least now I can boot to a stable environment if I want to install the badram kernel patches and make my kernel ignore only the bad bits of ram. (Sure wish that patch was included in the gentoo-kernel....)