ECC memory for home servers or not?

[Fleshmauler]

Generally yeah - reporting & alarming on all systems. Hardware deffects reported on the management level (ipmi), software/application issues reported from the OS (for our example Truenas).

[Davvo]

@dwolsten

My question is this: is there any other support in TN for ECC?

IIRC depending on your motherboard and memory awareness, TN can show you the errors as notifications.

Generally though, uncorrectable errors will freeze your system.

[etorix]

@dwolsten

I managed to build a system with ECC memory with secondhand parts, and everything seems to work quite well.

Congratulations!
As to your question, on ECC-capable but not fully server-grade (i.e. without IPMI and low-level hardware monitoring) ECC is an act of faith: You trust that some invisible force protects you but do not ask for material evidence of said divine providence…

[Arwen]

Let me fix that for you

@etorix

Non-ECC is an act of faith: You trust that some invisible force protects you anyway, but do not ask for material evidence of said divine providence…

[HoneyBadger]

@dwolsten

My question is this: is there any other support in TN for ECC? For instance, if there’s any corrected ECC errors, how do I know, other than by looking through the dmesg logs manually? Will there be an alert?

I don’t know if @etorix screencapped it at the time but they reported catching one in the webUI.

@etorix

One of my TrueNAS systems had one a few months ago. No crash, no reported data corruption, just a notification in the GUI.
And, of course, a reminder that memory errors do happen.

[etorix]

I didn’t take a screenshot. But this was a proper server-grade Supermicro board with IPMI monitoring, so I got a fleeting evidence of the very real protective device (no faith required).

On a non-ECC system one could actually have some evidence of the opposite: Unexplainable corruption as an indication of the lack of divine protection.

[ericloewe]

Yeah, I’ve seen that, it’s pretty prominent in the system log and I think they trigger a notification email, too.

[Fleshmauler]

Well there we go - no need to run any commands per others. I must have forgotten that it also sends email notifications when it happens; just actually remember to set those up.