Bug#339304: linux-image-2.6.14-2-k7: please supply kernels capable of addressing > 4Gb of memory
Package: linux-image-2.6.14-2-k7
Version: 2.6.14-3
Severity: wishlist
I've got a couple of machines based on amd64 with 4Gb of memory. With
the stock k7 and k7-smp debian supplied kernels, I can only see 3Gb of
this memory when booted. Although I can fiddle with the BIOS settings on
one of the machines to get around 3.8Gb of memory visible when booted,
on the other, no amount of BIOS fiddling gets me above 3Gb. What I've
had to on both machines is to take the config options for the k7 and
k7-smp versions and then enabled 64Gb support so that PAE can be used to
access the physical memory above 4Gb (the BIOS has made a hole in the
physical memory map). dmesg shows:
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000e4000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000bffb0000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 00000000bffb0000 - 00000000bffc0000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 00000000bffc0000 - 00000000bfff0000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 00000000bfff0000 - 00000000c0000000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000ff780000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000100000000 - 0000000140000000 (usable)
Warning only 4GB will be used.
Use a PAE enabled kernel.
I've also noticed this problem on some P4 machines too.
Now that machines with 4Gb or more of memory are becoming more
prevalent, please either build the stock k7, k7-smp, 686 and
686-smp kernels with memory support for 64Gb or supply extra
packages that include this support.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.14-1-k7
Locale: LANG=en_GB, LC_CTYPE=en_GB (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Versions of packages linux-image-2.6.14-2-k7 depends on:
ii module-init-tools 3.2-pre9-4 tools for managing Linux kernel mo
ii yaird [linux-initramfs-tool] 0.0.11-12 Yet Another mkInitRD
linux-image-2.6.14-2-k7 recommends no packages.
-- no debconf information
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