Ubuntu 20.04 crashes: An ECC error or L2 poison was detected
Solution 1:
This isn't technically an answer, but ...
The ECC error or L2 poison was detected on a data cache read by a load message points to a memory problem, either with the RAM itself or the cache on the CPU. Neither are great, but you can test the system RAM with the following process:
- Restart your system
- Press and hold the Shift key to bring up the GRUB menu
- Select "Ubuntu, memtest86+" and press Enter
The memory test will run until the end of time or until you press the Esc key. Let the machine complete at least one test before escaping.
Based on reports around the web, this issue seems to be seen only with the higher-end AMD Ryzen processors. Reading through this long thread on AMD's community site revealed this interesting bit:
I replaced memory and the computer has been rock solid now for a few days. Hopefully this helps you out as it helped me out. Previous memory was Gskill 3600mhz memory... new memory is 3200 memory from Corsair.
Your question does not state what sort of memory you have installed but, if it's a higher-frequency set of modules, there may be something between the RAM and the CPU that is causing an instability. If the memory test fails and you happen to have some compatible 3200MHz RAM available (even if it's just one DIMM), consider swapping it out and performing the memory test again.
Solution 2:
BIOS
ASRock X570 Taichi
The BIOS is current at version P4.30.
MEMORY
G Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4 - 3600Mhz 32GB (2 x 16GB), product: F4-3600C16-16GTZNC
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core Processor
Ryzen processors are very fussy about RAM.
These DIMMs don't appear on the memory supported list, as seen here.
memtest passed all tests.
When we look at sudo lshw -C memory we see that the DIMMs may be installed into incorrect slot locations. When using 2 equal size DIMMs, they should be installed into slots A2 and B2. Here's an image of the board layout, and the memory slots... taken from the User Manual at here... so just verify this...
