Topic: Getting E-Smith to detect all memory

[Rob Hillis]

I've just run into a problem that I've heard the current Linux kernel has - incorrectly detecting the amount of memory available.

My machine is a P3-667 with 128mb of RAM.  It's running off a Gigabyte GA6VXE7+ (VIA chipset) motherboard, but E-Smith only detects 64mb of RAM.

I know it's a fairly simple paramater that needs to be sent to the kernel at bootup to fix this problem, but I can't remember what it is...

Can anyone help?

[Pierre DEDIEU]

I had this problem with a E-SMith server, but it is not specific
to this distribution. In fact the detected memory size depends on the PC BIOS, some of which do net correctly report memory size above 64Mb

In this case you just have to force the memory size to the correct value by appending
mem=128kb
at the lilo prompt (ex: Linux mem=128MB)

With the NEC computer I had, it didn't work because the real available memory was not 128MB (physical RAM) but 127MB (the remainder is user by theis PC BIOS for caching...)

When you have the correct value, the best thing is to add a line
in /etc/lilo.conf:
append="mem=127MB"
then run lilo to update...

   Hope it helps!

[Rob Hillis]

Pierre DEDIEU wrote:
> I had this problem with a E-SMith server, but it is not
> specific
> to this distribution. In fact the detected memory size
> depends on the PC BIOS, some of which do net correctly report
> memory size above 64Mb

Odd... I knew this was a "problem" with the Linux kernel and not specific to e-smith.  I also knew the fix was a parameter to the kernel, I just didn't know how to get Lilo to add it.

Most distributions I've seen ask if they've got the amount of memory correct at installation, and put this patch in automatically.

> When you have the correct value, the best thing is to add a
> line
> in /etc/lilo.conf:
> append="mem=127MB"
> then run lilo to update...
>    Hope it helps!

That's it precisely.  Thanks very much...