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I have a test that has been running for over eight hours. There is a message to press Esc to exit, but it is still running.

It shows 0 errors so far.

Will it eventually stop? How do I know that the test has been completed.

My journal shows an error about Memory Corruption but the system is working without issue, so I'm confused about this.

Stephen Boston
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1 Answers1

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MemTest will keep running forever until you stop it. This allows you to run long-term tests which might discover issues that only show up after some time.

It has a Pass counter which increments every time it starts again from the beginning when the full set of test algorithms has completed:

MemTest screenshot with Pass count highlighted

Generally, they say a single pass should usually be enough but if you have reason to suspect any defects, more passes might detect some more obscure problems.

Byte Commander
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  • So I could let it run longer. It is possible that the error in the journal is a software glitch? Given that it is so frequently and quickly reported it would likely show up within a single pass of the memtest. Is that a fair interpretation? – Stephen Boston Oct 08 '19 at 14:54
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    I doubt it's a hardware RAM defect if it isn't detected by few passes of MemTest yet occurs frequently during normal operation. You'd have to ask a new question and include the actual, full error messages from your syslog though to get help interpreting them and finding their cause and hopefully a fix. – Byte Commander Oct 08 '19 at 15:15