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As someone who has had to read thousands of random game crash reports from all over the interwebs (you know when Windows says you might want to send that crash
by cbanek 6y ago
As someone who has had to read thousands of random game crash reports from all over the interwebs (you know when Windows says you might want to send that crash log? like that), I totally agree.
Of all the things to be worried about, like OS bugs, bad hardware configuration, etc. bad memory is one of those really troubling things. You look at the code and say "it's can't make it here, because this was set" but when you can't trust your memory you can't trust anything.
And as the timeline goes to infinity, you may also get one of these reports and be asked to fix it... good luck.
- lighttower 6y agoSomeone reads those reports!?! Wow, how do I write them to ensure someone who reads them takes them seriously?
- xmodem 6y agoThe best way is to submit the same crash report from thousands of different locations, repeatedly
- apankrat 6y agoAye. I have an assert in the code that fronts a very pedantic test of the context. In all cases when this assert was tripped (and reported) an overnight memtest86 test surfaced RAM issues. - Edit - Also, bit flips in the non-ECC memory are _the_ cause of the "bitrot" phenomenon. That is when you write out X to a storage device, but you get Y when you read it back. A common explanation is that the corruption happens _at rest_. However all drives from the last 30+ years have FEC support, so in reality the only way a bit rot can happen is if the data is damaged _in transit_, while in RAM, on the way to/from the storage media. So, if you ever decide if to get an ECC RAM, get it. It's very much worth it.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoBitrot in human memory is the same. Memories change during the process of recalling them, not while they are in "storage".
- joshspankit 6y agoHard to say for sure since we can’t measure “bit“ flips in-brain
- masklinn 6y ago> Also, bit flips in the non-ECC memory are _the_ cause of the "bitrot" phenomenon. That is when you write out X to a storage device, but you get Y when you read it back. A common explanation is that the corruption happens _at rest_. However all drives from the last 30+ years have FEC support, so in reality the only way a bit rot can happen is if the data is damaged _in transit_, while in RAM, on the way to/from the storage media. Problems can definitely happen in the IO controller, RAID controller, cable, and disk controller. AFAIK all of these were seen and motivations for the existence of ZFS. One of their biggest insistence was that drives are universally lying bastards and should not be trusted any further than they can be thrown.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- TonyTrapp 6y agoOne of my favourite stories about this type if stuff is from Patrick Wyatt on developing Guild Wars: https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/whose-bug-is-this-anyway https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/whose-bug-is-this-anyway See "Your computer is broken". They essentially inserted a stress test into the game that verified if the hardware was still doing calculations correctly, and if not, inform the user.
- faitswulff 6y agoDo the crash reports include whether the machine has ECC memory?
- jackric 6y agoDo the crash reports include recent solar activity?
- jacquesm 6y agoTimestamp + location should be enough to figure that out.
- ant6n 6y agoIt would be interesting to see whether there is a correlation between solar activity and game crashes — which in turn may provide an indication whether crashes are due to bugs or bit flips.
- joshspankit 6y agoAs long as someone is tracking crash times/locations, the data is definitely there. Working tech support for major ISPs, there were some “surprising” large-queue days that correlated with solar flares.
- cbanek 6y agoWell, I've had to actually worry about radiation bitflips as well. It does happen. But usually not so much on Earth!
- dharmab 6y agoI once got to tell a CTO the reason our shiny new point to point connection was suddenly trash was due to solar flares.
- jgalentine007 6y ago
- pkaye 6y agoI wonder how much of those crashes are due to gamers aggressively overclocking their systems?
- BlueTemplar 6y agoYeah, here's one example along many more : https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=405060#p405060 https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=405060#p405060
- Springcleaning 6y agoWorse than a game crash is your data. It is incomprehensible that there are still NAS devices being sold without ECC support. Synology took a step in the right direction to offer prosumer devices with ECC but it is not really advertised as such. It is actually difficult to find which do have ECC and which ones don't.
- ksec 6y ago>Synology took a step in the right direction to offer prosumer devices with ECC I just look it up because if it was true it would have been news to me. Synology have been known to be stingy with Hardware Spec. But none of what I called Prosumer, the Plus Series have ECC memory by default. And there are "Value" and "J" Series below that. Edit: Only two model from the new xx21 series using AMD Ryzen V has ECC memory by default.
- dannyw 6y agoBlame Intel for that. They dropped support for ECC RAM on the new Celerons and i3s.