command "free -b"

[Zoltan Boszormenyi]

Joachim Backes írta:
> reading the man page of the command free with option -b:
>
>   The  -b  switch  displays  the amount of memory in bytes
>
> But: I have 2 Gigbyte memory machine, and the command "free -b" 
> displays 2109034496.
> But (((2109034496/1024)/1024)/1024) is not the integer 2.
>
> Can somebody explain this? BIOS effect?

Look at dmesg and for the e820 info and the line starting with "Memory: ..."
It's BIOS and the kernel keeps some memory for internal administration.