Memtest86+
The wiki is being retired!
Documentation is now handled by the same processes we use for code: Add something to the Documentation/ directory in the coreboot repo, and it will be rendered to https://doc.coreboot.org/. Contributions welcome!
Building
Instead of building coreboot with MemTest86+ as its default payload, it is recommended to simply load the binary from your payload of choice as an extra boot option.
Manual build
First download the latest tarball, extract and cd into it:
$ curl -O http://www.memtest.org/download/5.01/memtest86+-5.01.tar.gz $ tar -xvzf memtest86+-5.01.tar.gz && cd memtest86+-5.01
The default Makefile includes a scp command to backup already built binaries, which we obviously don't want. Furthermore, due to MemTest86+ 5.01 not being updated since 27.09.2013, compilation will fail on newer versions of GCC unless a specific option is added. Last but not least SERIAL_BAUD_RATE should be increased; we might also want to hear a beep before memory testing starts. The following patch includes all those changes, feel free to adjust.
--- Makefile 2015-11-18 23:49:40.900093793 +0100 +++ Makefile.new 2015-11-19 00:08:37.392634002 +0100 @@ -15,3 +15,3 @@ CFLAGS= -Wall -march=i486 -m32 -O1 -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-builtin \ - -ffreestanding -fPIC $(SMP_FL) -fno-stack-protector + -ffreestanding -fPIC $(SMP_FL) -fno-stack-protector -fgnu89-inline @@ -23,3 +23,2 @@ all: clean memtest.bin memtest - scp memtest.bin root@192.168.0.12:/srv/tftp/mt86plus --- config.h 2015-11-18 23:49:27.696700200 +0100 +++ config.h.new 2015-11-19 00:08:55.799401157 +0100 @@ -19,3 +19,3 @@ /* BEEP_MODE - Beep on error. Default off, Change to 1 to enable */ -#define BEEP_MODE 0 +#define BEEP_MODE 1 @@ -37,3 +37,3 @@ /* SERIAL_BAUD_RATE - Baud rate for the serial console */ -#define SERIAL_BAUD_RATE 9600 +#define SERIAL_BAUD_RATE 115200
Either make those changes by hand or paste the patch into a file and apply it:
$ patch < fix.patch
Now build it:
$ make
The resulting binaries are:
memtest: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped memtest.bin: DOS/MBR boot sector
In case GRUB2 is used default payload, add the x86-bootable memtest.bin to your ROM image with
$ cbfstool coreboot.rom add -f memtest.bin -n memtest.bin -t raw
and add the following entry to your grub.cfg:
menuentry 'MemTest86+ 5.01' {
set root='cbfsdisk'
linux16 /memtest.bin
}
Alternatively one can also load it directly from disk, e.g. by placing it under /boot/memtest.bin and adjusting the menuentry accordingly:
search -n --set=root -f /boot/memtest.bin