How do you test RAM in Qubes?

General Discussion
1

Is there a way to run a RAM test in Qubes that is similar to what you would do in Windows?

I’ve got some issues and I want to isolate the RAM itself as being the culprit. If this isn’t possible, from a security perspective how much risk does one take booting up a live usb of a different ISO on a system that holds their Qubes installation?

Thanks.

2

There was a relevant option when you boot the Qubes USB stick, wasn’t there?

I guess the risk is similar to multibooting, i.e.:

firmware security - for example the other system could infect the BIOS firmware, which might enable compromise or spying on the Qubes system.

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I’m running HEADS firmware which is a custom security BIOS that doesn’t have that kind of UEFI functionality.

I’ll probably just have to boot in to a standard OS because I can’t see how I could do it through Qubes. I guess because I run heads the risk of multibooting is greatly reduced as you have measured & attested firmware state so I will probably have to do that.

I have a barely functional Qubes setup right now, which is good, but I am also having a lot of freezing issues that aren’t explained by the load I am putting through the system.

Thanks for your response Fsflover.

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Would running memtest from heads help? I haven’t tried it myself yet but hope the link might be useful to you.
I’d be interested in ways test RAM in Qubes, too.

5

To see the amount of RAM available to the system in dom0 terminal:
qubes-hcl-report | grep RAM

I had a lot of freezing too. Default Xen Dom0 only uses a limited amount of RAM. To increase it go to /etc/default/grub file and find this line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_XEN_DEFAULT=“console=none dom0_mem=min:2048M dom0_mem=max:8192M ucode=scan smt=off gnttab_max_frames=2048 gnttab_max_maptrack_frames=4096”
Default is mem=min1024M mem=max:4096M. I changed it to 2048M and 8192M.
After that update grub off course, in UEFI: # grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/grub.cfg
in BIOS MBR systems: # grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Now I have a faster boot process and much less freezing.
After installing perl in dom0 you can see the whole system -hardware and software including firmware with $ inxi -bxx command.

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Testing RAM on linux is difficult because you can’t test the in-use ram, using a live-system is standard for this.

If it’s your usb and you’ve verified the image on your Qubes system, I don’t see any risk in using it for a ramtest.