On June 15, 2007 03:34:07 pm Nigel Henry wrote: > On Friday 15 June 2007 19:50, Stephen Cormier wrote: > > On June 15, 2007 12:33:04 pm Nigel Henry wrote: > > > On Friday 15 June 2007 16:46, arijit sarkar wrote: > > > > On Fri, 2007-06-15 at 08:02 -0500, Gary Rosenfeldt wrote: > > > > > Hello, > > > > > > > > > > I recently installed Debian Etch on my desktop system. My mobo is > > > > > an abit nf-7s with nforce2 chipset. I have 1 gig of ram installed > > > > > but debian only sees 885.5 MiB of my ram. Fortunately, I'm not > > > > > experiencing any stability issues. Anyone know the cause of this > > > > > oddity. > > > > > > > > > > Thanks, > > > > > > > > > > Gary > > > > > > > > It's obvious, your motherboard has 128mb shared memory. So debian > > > > sess only 885.5 mb. > > > > I also have 1gig RAM and 128 mb as shared graphics memory. My 'system > > > > monitor' shows ~885mb. > > > > check out your BIOS settings. :-) > > > > > > > > -- > > > > Arijit Sarkar > > > > Kolkata, India > > > > > > That's interesting. I was booted up in Lenny using the 2.6.11 kernel, > > > and usually see Gkrellm showing 885Mb of my 1Gb RAM. I've since > > > rebooted with the 2.6.17 kernel , and with that kernel, Gkrellm is > > > showing the full 1005Mb of RAM. The onboard graphics card is a > > > Cyberbladei1 (trident driver). > > > > > > Quite why booting with the 2.6.11 shows 885Mb, and booting with the > > > 2.6.17 shows 1005Mb is a bit bizarre. Probably some kernel thingy. > > > > Yes it is a kernel thingy around the .15, .16, .17 time I can't recall > > which first had it but there was a patch called the 1gb lowmem which you > > could apply to allow a machine with 1gb of ram use all of it as lowmem > > instead of having to use the highmem option this patch was incorporated > > into the mainline kernel so you no longer had to patch it yourself to get > > all your memory. For your udev situation I see in another post you can > > always compile/install your own kernel which will not have a dependency > > on it this is what I do so I don't have to use it or try making a udev > > rule(s) to assign your /dev/video? devices the same everytime. > > > > > Nigel. > > > > Stephen > > Ok. So what it comes down to then, is that earlier kernels, my 2.6.11 for > example arn't setup to use my 1GB of physical RAM, but just 885Mb of it. If > so, that's not really a problem, as 885Mb is a fair bit, and I've never > gone into the 1.5Gb of swap that's available. Yes the stock kernels do not have the highmem option enabled as that is really where the problem lies with a 32bit machine and the way the memory gets divided between the lowmem and highmem. You could install a highmem enabled kernel but the way I understand it there is a performance cost involved that is really not worth it for the tiny extra bit of memory you are using with 1gb installed that is why someone came up with the 1gb lowmem patch. > I'll look into the udev problem, and compiling my own kernel. (only done > this once before for Gentoo, and that with someones help from a list). If you are going to compile your own kernel you should probably do it the Debian way with the kernel-package package installed then after configuring it is only a matter of using the fakeroot make-kpkg kernel-image command which would build you a .deb to install and reboot into. A guide at the URL below is a place to start it is for an 2.4 kernel but the process remains the same for 2.6. http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/system/kernel-pkg.html > Many thanks. > > Nigel. aka farpoint. Your welcome, Stephen -- GPG Public Key: http://users.eastlink.ca/~stephencormier/publickey.asc
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