1GB system working with 64MB

Hello Folks,

Environment: linux 2.2.16smp
RedHat 7.0

I am setting up a system with 1GB RAM recongized by the BIOS during power-on procedure.

This system having troubles, I set a top command and with surprise I got this status:

4:33pm up 4:42, 3 users, load average: 4.18, 2.01, 1.09
125 processes: 123 sleeping, 2 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped

CPU0 states:  9.1% user,  9.0% system,  8.0% nice, 80.1% idle
CPU1 states: 20.0% user,  6.1% system, 20.1% nice, 72.0% idle
Mem:    63892K av,   62480K used,    1412K free,   15076K shrd,    5192K 

buff
Swap: 514040K av, 260556K used, 253484K free 11804K
cached

My problem are the 63892K

I remember there is a solution to turn around this problem forcing LILO to configure 1GB saying, I think but not sure:

append='memory=1024'

I searched in the lilo doc for memory parameter definition, but as being coverd by append parameter I found nothing.

Question 1:
Do you have an idea about the reason Linux is using 64MB ?

Question 2:
Is this append command correct to turn out this problem ?

Question 3:
Where can I found informations about append variables wich are related in fact with modules parameters ?
How to find on source code which module will read the memory parameter ?

Thanks in advance.

Bye

Add this:

append="mem=1024M"

to your lilo boot profiles.

... 2.4 correctly detects memory size more often than 2.2.16 ...

----- Original Message -----
From: "Edouard Soriano" <[email protected]>
Subject: 1GB system working with 64MB

"mem=" is documented in the kernel documentation
(...linux/Documentation/i386/boot.txt):

mem=<size>
<size> is an integer in C notation optionally followed by K, M or G (meaning << 10, << 20 or << 30). This specifies to the kernel the memory size.
[snip]

HTH,
Ray

Does Kibo SEE the FNORDS?

If you upgrade to the 2.2.19 kernel, this will just work, no need for extra options. (Red Hat also has a 2.2.19 kernel available as errata release for 7.0)