[K12OSN] 8 GB RAM on 32-bit Edubuntu with AMD 64 processors

[James P. Kinney III]

On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 12:09 -0500, Tom Wolfe wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> a.k.a. the never-ending quest for sound with flash on 64-bit con't
> 
> I've been running gnash for a few weeks now as a solution to 
> flash-with-sound-and-64-bit-edubuntu. For the most part it works fine, but 
> I've noticed that it does a poor job with text in some cases.
> 
> A few teachers are demanding a better solution.
> 
> So I've decided to give the 32-bit Edubuntu a shot to put my eternal 
> struggles with 64-bit to rest for a while. I know this is the tact that 
> Jim K. has taken.

Sort-of. The solution I found that does work is:

64 bit OS to make use of greater than 4GB RAM. Now also load 32-bit
applications for firefox, flash, sound and all related libs (ugh). No
use official Adobe flash code (32-bit) and magic (often. usually)
happens. Be sure to remove the 64-bit firefox or BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN
(tm).
> 
> I'm wondering though about how to use > 4GB RAM. Is this possible on a 
> 32-bit Edubuntu with AMD 64 CPUs? If not, is PAE the solution, or is PAE 
> only for Pentium CPUs?

The PAE will be a nightmare for the heavily shared setup of LTSP. In
short, the system will thrash doing high page swaps to access RAM. If
all processes under current request are spread over multiple pages, the
performance will be beyond horrible. 

If you _must_ use 32-bit on a AMD-64 bit machine, put no more than 4GB
RAM in the system. Even then you may loose 512MB (depends on mainboard
chipset). I'm not sure if the Nvidia chips will loose RAM as all of my
servers using those have 8GB or higher and 64-bit OS.
> 
> Can anyone point me in a direction to get me going with this?
> 
> Thanks,
> Tom Wolfe
> 
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> 
-- 
James P. Kinney III          
CEO & Director of Engineering 
Local Net Solutions,LLC        
770-493-8244                    
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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