[K12OSN] Slightly Off Topic (Hardware Question)

[Liam Marshall]

-----Original Message-----
From: k12osn-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:k12osn-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf
Of Petre Scheie
Sent: Tuesday, May 09, 2006 9:04 AM
To: Support list for opensource software in schools.
Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Slightly Off Topic (Hardware Question)



Liam Marshall wrote:
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: k12osn-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:k12osn-bounces at redhat.com] On
Behalf
> Of Robert Arkiletian
> Sent: Tuesday, May 09, 2006 1:17 AM
> To: Support list for opensource software in schools.
> Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Slightly Off Topic (Hardware Question)
> 
> On 5/8/06, Liam Marshall <k12ltsplover at stmaurice.mb.ca> wrote:
>> Anyone have any ideas?
>>
>>
>>
>> I am at a loss.  3.6ish Gb is better than 2, but I paid for 4.  Any ideas
> on
>> how I can get it all, or most?  What am I missing?
> 
> Your machine is fine. The limit for a 32 bit kernel is ~3.6G. Try
> running a 32 bit hugemem kernel or an smp kernel that supports over 4G
> (32 bit RHEL4 smp kernels do) and you will see all your ram. But there
> will be a small penalty for addressing over 32 address space. That's
> what 64 bit kernels are for.
> --
> Robert Arkiletian
> Fl_TeacherTool http://fltk.org/links.php?V269
> C++ GUI tutorial http://fltk.org/links.php?V19
> 
> 
> If that is true, is that a linux kernel issue?  I put the memory into an
old
> dumpy Windows Millenium machine and it recognized 4032Mb RAM.  That has to
> be bios/motherboard related, although I would have thought the asus server
> board I am using would be better than the one in the Millenium machine.
The
> ASUS board can't report close to 4 Gb even in the bios, before it ever
gets
> to the kernel
> 
FWIW, I've got some Compaq ProLiant servers with 4GB of RAM in them and free
reports the 
total RAM as 3921896, which seems a bit more than 3.6GB. Running RHAS 3,
with SMP but 
not bigmem kernel.  Or is this one of those '3.6GB is not 3.6 x 1000 but 3.6
x 1024' 
situations?

Petre


I did the math this way.  My bios reports in k so

1024x1024 will give 1 Gb value expressed as K, then I multiply by the number
of 1 gb sticks I put in to arrive at the theoretical total value of memory
in machine expressed in K, then I minus the 640K base memory to arrive at
the theoretical available memory.  My bios reports plus or minus a few
measly k of my calculated value if I have any 1, 2, or 3 of the 1 Gb sticks
in at a time, in any order but the moment I put all 4 in at the same time,
the bios reports a loss of approximately 537600 K from what I calculate it
to be

According to my calculations I should see

1024x1024x4= 4194304K total memory minus 640K base memory equals 4193664

Instead the bios reports 3656064