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Adding Memtest to a Debian Install USB Drive and Menu

This is meant to work with a USB drive or other bootable media containing the boot.img.gz contents for the Debian Installer. You might be able to shoehorn it in other of the various ways to set up Debian installation media, but this is the simplest.

It’s actually very easy to add Memtest86+ to an existing drive with this setup.

  1. Copy the Memtest86+ kernel over (I named it memtest for simplicity):

    $ cp memtest86+-5.01.bin /media/user/usbdrive/memtest

  2. Add a new config (I used memtest.cfg) for Memtest86+:

    label memtest  
    menu label ^Memtest  
    kernel memtest

  3. Include your config in the menu.cfg (I put mine at the bottom):

    include memtest.cfg

That’s it. Despite not coming with Memtest86+, it can be easily added to the menu and it works fine.

Some of the other installation media seem to be hostile to this small addition. They have locked partitions or do not have easily-amended menu configurations. That said, maybe Debian Installer will eventually include Memtest86+ by default.