Memtester diagnostic

Memtester is a Linux utility that tests RAM. This repo contains Python scripts that turn memtester into an OCP-compliant diagnostic by parsing its output using SLY, a Python implementation of Lex and Yacc. The parsing process happens in runtime, allowing the diag to report partial results while the memory test is still running.

Currently, Python >=3.11 is required to run this diag.

Basic usage

To run the diag do the following:

1. Install memtester on your DUT. Make sure the version you have is supported.
2. Install all the dependencies specified in requirements.txt.
3. Run the diag with parameters required for your use case.

For Debian-based operating systems the procedure above may look as follows:

apt install memtester
git clone https://github.com/opencomputeproject/ocp-diag-memtester.git
cd ocp-diag-memtester
python -m venv .
source bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python3 src/main.py --mt_args="100M 3"

In the last command, mt_args specifies arguments that the diag will pass to memtester. The value above will make memtester reserve 100 megabytes of RAM and test it three times. For more info on the parameters you can pass to memtester run man memtester.

Supported versions

The output memtester produces may vary significantly across different versions. This means that it is hard to write a parser that works properly with all of them. Thus, only a few versions are currently supported:

Version of memtester	Status
4.6.0	Full support. No known issues.
4.5.0	Full support. No known issues.
4.5.1	Full support. No known issues.
4.4.0	Memtester reports memory errors for a normally working system. Error messages appear in unexpected places. No plans to support this version.
4.3.0 and earlier	Source code does not compile. No plans to support this version(s).

Running custom memtester

It is possible to run this diag with a custom version of memtester. To do that, install your custom version in the location of your choice and pass this location to the diag as follows (the path must include the name of the executable):

python3 main.py --mt_args="100M 3" --mt_path="/my/favorite/location/memtester"

In order for this diag to work properly, the output format of your memtester must comply with one of the supported versions.

Running unit tests

Execute the following command in the repo's root directory to run the diag's unit tests:

python -m unittest

Testing older memtester versions using Docker

If you need to test this diag with an older memtester version, you can use Dockerfile from the root directory of this repo. This Dockerfile takes care of all necessary dependencies for the diag. In addition to that, it downloads memtester of the required version from its author's website and builds it. You can use the following command to build and run the container:

docker build -t ocp_memtester --build-arg="MT_VERSION=<version>" . && docker run --rm -t ocp_memtester

In the command above, replace <version> with the version of memtester you want to test. For example:

 docker build -t ocp_memtester --build-arg="MT_VERSION=4.5.1" . && docker run --rm -t ocp_memtester

Note: if you face any permission issues when running docker, please refer to this article.

The list of available memtester versions can be found on this page.

Since there is no Python parser for OCP-compliant output yet, the container does not do automatic diag validation, so you have to manually confirm whether the version you chose works correctly.