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Dude where's my extra RAM?

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mtb_mikey   11-25-2003 at 09:58:32 PM

Just upgraded from 512Mb to 1Gb RAM on a Gigabyte GA-7VTXH motherboard. Using Mandrake 8.2 if I run "top" or "system information" it shows physical memory as 900936 Kb. Rebooting into win2k the task manager shows 1048048 Kb. Is there some massive cache area that linux is reserving and this is not shown as part of the physical memory?

Mike

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poorboy   11-26-2003 at 04:22:37 AM
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That's odd. FWIW, my 1GB box here says 1030908k av.

<i>Knock Knock, Neo</i>

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silverpig   11-26-2003 at 07:04:52 AM
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That's odd too. My BIOS et al say 1040480 or whatever too.

Could it be a ram drive of some sort?

Some day I'll be rich and famous for inventing a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet.

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mtb_mikey   11-28-2003 at 01:25:45 AM
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Booted my PC into RedHat 7.2, top says 1,028,856 K av
I had installed Oracle 9i under Mandrake, I seem to recall it needing some kernel changes wonder if that has anything to do with it?

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mtb_mikey   11-28-2003 at 02:27:50 AM
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Found an entry in syslog, will only use 896Mb need HIGHMEM enabled kernel. After a bit of googling found that I needed to install the enterprise kernel. Did that and got most of my memory 1,029,612 but it fails to boot into X11, something to do with the Nvidia driver for my graphics card is now missing. Guess I have to install that for the new kernel.

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mtb_mikey   11-29-2003 at 03:13:36 PM
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Latest nvidia driver would not install but it "conveniently" uninstalled the old one :frown: . After a few hours of googling and trying different kernel header paths I gave up and went back to the old driver. I had to get the source code for this one and recompile, note I didn't have to set a different header path. Now the system runs with full 1Gb of memory and X11. Almost perfect except when I shut down it now doesn't power off the PC :mad: . So five minutes to install extra ram, five hours reconfiguring linux to use it :mad: :mad: . Luckily I had my trusty iMac near by, so I still had net access and could read documentation whilst trying to repair my PC.

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poorboy   11-29-2003 at 08:36:44 PM
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I'd call that one a bug in Mandrake 8.2, although with more RAM being common now it's probably a non-issue in the current 9.2. Out of interest, I checked the default RedHat kernel config, and it's got HighMem enabled... so I dunno where my few bytes went...

The shutdown issue is often bios/apm/kernel issue, and if you can be bothered you can likely fix it by setting the kernel config option "use real mode apm bios call to power off" to yes (or no if it was already yes) and recompiling.

Re the nvidia driver, there's three main parts to it - the X11 driver module, the GL libraries, and the kernel module. So as you found out, changing the kernel means you have to reinstall the nvidia module... and if you don't use a standard kernel that the installer knows, you need kernel headers so it can compile a new module.


<i>Knock Knock, Neo</i>

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silverpig   12-08-2003 at 04:44:46 AM
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Hmm, well my gentoo system with a fresh upgrade to 1 GB ram only shows up as 882 MB in system monitor. Highmem wasn't enabled in my kernel, so I'm recompiling now to see if that makes a difference.

Some day I'll be rich and famous for inventing a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet.

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silverpig   12-08-2003 at 10:37:56 PM
- 0 +

Enabled highmem, now I have 1008 MB. Close enough :)

Some day I'll be rich and famous for inventing a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet.

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