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Yup, been there. Way back I had a Pentium 133 doing firewall duty in a closet. It did approximately nothing besides iptables, but of course any machine has log

Yup, been there. Way back I had a Pentium 133 doing firewall duty in a closet. It did approximately nothing besides iptables, but of course any machine has logs, updates and so on going on. After running fine for months one day it suddenly died. I rebooted it. A few days later it died again. Another reboot. Then it died for the last time and failed to boot at all. Examination showed the disk was corrupt and couldn't be mounted. Further examination showed that one of the memory modules was loose for some reason, could be that it was never firmly in and I just bumped the box when messing with something else. Then came the wasted weekend of dealing with that my normal internet connection relied on the thing that was now completely broken. And that was the luckiest case I can imagine, when the broken machine contains no data of actual value. Since then I'm very paranoid, always run memtest on any new RAM I buy overnight, and have ECC where it's possible to have it.

vladvasiliu 4y ago
> Since then I'm very paranoid, always run memtest on any new RAM I buy overnight, and have ECC where it's possible to have it. Yeah, I do the same, but I've learned that you have to do it regularly. In one of my desktop machines, the RAM ran fine for like two years. Then, all of sudden, random Firefox segfaults, etc. Whipped up a memtest ISO, and sure enough, one of the sticks was bad.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  That's the nice thing about ECC, it acts like an always running memory test. You normally have a scrub time that can be configured in the BIOS, which also adds a regular verification of the entire RAM at regular intervals, just in case something goes wrong in some rarely used part of the memory.
  - IYasha 4y ago
    Unfortunately, background scrubbing significantly increases power consumption and impacts performance as well.
    - metadat 4y ago
      Do you want (1) a higher rate of stable and correct computations to be performed at a slightly higher energy cost, or (2) a demonstrably less reliable device at a slightly lower energy efficiency? I'll go for #1 in most cases, as long as the system is to be relied upon for anything deemed important.
      - IYasha 4y ago
        Me too, of course. I'm just highlighting downsides so people know what to expect.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Weirdly enough I had same case but memory turned out to be fine, replacing power supply fixed the issue. I ran test, saw memory is bad, replaced sticks, same problem, put the sticks back in and decided to just run it (it was gaming PC). Few months later powersupply outright died (had ~8years at that point), replaced it with good one, no memory errors.
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    In my case it was clearly a bad RAM stick. Took it out, OK. Switched them around: errors. Replaced it with a new one, back to OK. In this particular case, a bad PSU would be the end of the PC. It's an HP dekstop mini. Basically a laptop without a screen, powered by and external adaptor that puts out a single 12V line. All further conversions are done on the motherboard somehow.
consp 4y ago
Badly socketed ram was one of the reasons my PC started failing after being on for a while. When everything was cool it was all fine, when the case and everything heated up a bit it failed eventually. Re-seating the ram fixed it and ran for quite a time without issues. This was in the early Athlon days though.

vladvasiliu 4y ago

> Since then I'm very paranoid, always run memtest on any new RAM I buy overnight, and have ECC where it's possible to have it. Yeah, I do the same, but I've learned that you have to do it regularly. In one of my desktop machines, the RAM ran fine for like two years. Then, all of sudden, random Firefox segfaults, etc. Whipped up a memtest ISO, and sure enough, one of the sticks was bad.

dale_glass 4y ago
That's the nice thing about ECC, it acts like an always running memory test. You normally have a scrub time that can be configured in the BIOS, which also adds a regular verification of the entire RAM at regular intervals, just in case something goes wrong in some rarely used part of the memory.
- IYasha 4y ago
  Unfortunately, background scrubbing significantly increases power consumption and impacts performance as well.
  - metadat 4y ago
    Do you want (1) a higher rate of stable and correct computations to be performed at a slightly higher energy cost, or (2) a demonstrably less reliable device at a slightly lower energy efficiency? I'll go for #1 in most cases, as long as the system is to be relied upon for anything deemed important.
    - IYasha 4y ago
      Me too, of course. I'm just highlighting downsides so people know what to expect.
ilyt 4y ago
Weirdly enough I had same case but memory turned out to be fine, replacing power supply fixed the issue. I ran test, saw memory is bad, replaced sticks, same problem, put the sticks back in and decided to just run it (it was gaming PC). Few months later powersupply outright died (had ~8years at that point), replaced it with good one, no memory errors.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  In my case it was clearly a bad RAM stick. Took it out, OK. Switched them around: errors. Replaced it with a new one, back to OK. In this particular case, a bad PSU would be the end of the PC. It's an HP dekstop mini. Basically a laptop without a screen, powered by and external adaptor that puts out a single 12V line. All further conversions are done on the motherboard somehow.

consp 4y ago

Badly socketed ram was one of the reasons my PC started failing after being on for a while. When everything was cool it was all fine, when the case and everything heated up a bit it failed eventually. Re-seating the ram fixed it and ran for quite a time without issues. This was in the early Athlon days though.