[Compaq] - More then 16Mb memory ?

[Compaq] - More then 16Mb memory ?

[Cor Lem]

Hello,

I have a Compaq Prosignia Vs and a Proliant 800.

o) On the Prosignia Vs the bios reports  36864KB of memory
o) On the Proliant 800 the bios reports 131072KB of memory

In both cases Linux only sees 16384k (16Mb), so I went on a googling 
expedition ...


I've learned from this that it lies in Compaq not being so compatible with 
the standards and that I should specify 'mem= for older kernels and ' 
append mem= @' for the later ones (i'm using 2.4.20), where the number 
before the @ represents the memory installed and the number after the @ 
represents the detected amount.


Let's for now go with the Proliant of which the bios reports 131072KB and 
Linux 16384k.


I've tried, with no success;

linux mem=128M
linux mem=131072K
linux append=mem=128M
linux append=mem=131072K
linux append="mem=128M"
linux append="mem=131072K"
linux append mem=128M
linux append mem=131072K
linux mem=128M@16M -> crash
linux mem=131072K@16384k - crash
linux mem=131072K@16384K - crash
linux append=mem=128M@16M
linux append=mem=131072K@16384k
linux append=mem=131072K@16384K
linux append mem=128M@16M -> crash
linux append mem=131072K@16384k -> crash
linux append mem=131072K@16384K -> crash


I'm posting here in the hope someone has tackled this problem, or sees 
where I make a mistake.


Any help is greatly appreciated


Greetz,
Cor Lem

Re: [Compaq] - More then 16Mb memory ?

[Nico Schottelius]

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Hello!

> o) On the Prosignia Vs the bios reports  36864KB of memory
> o) On the Proliant 800 the bios reports 131072KB of memory
> 
> linux mem=128M

this is correct.

> linux mem=131072K

never used this, but should be correct, too.

> linux append=mem=128M

append is for lilo, don't use it at the boot prompt (see lilo.conf)

> linux mem=128M@16M -> crash

ahhhhhhhhhh!
no wonder.
try to interpret 128M@16M as an int+one char..

> I'm posting here in the hope someone has tackled this problem, or sees 
> where I make a mistake.

Try to start memtest and see what this detects.

Sincerly,

Nico

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Re: [Compaq] - More then 16Mb memory ?

[Cor Lem]

At 13:25 2-9-03 +0200, Nico Schottelius wrote:
>Hello!
>
> > o) On the Prosignia Vs the bios reports  36864KB of memory
> > o) On the Proliant 800 the bios reports 131072KB of memory
> >
> > linux mem=128M
>
>this is correct.
[snip]

First of; thanks for your response.

Even for 2.4.20 ? - (I'm using that kernel)

With some more digging I found the following information on:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/linux/15ad-0701a-wwen.html#_Toc519573010

[begin snippets compaq]
"Using more than 16 MEGABYTES of memory

On some older Compaq servers, the Linux installation procedure may only 
detect 16 MEGABYTES of memory ...[snip] ... the correct amount of memory 
specified at the boot prompt by typing linux mem=XM  ...[snip] ... To avoid 
having to type this command each time you boot Linux, edit the 
/etc/lilo.conf file and add an append line:

append="mem=48M" (M specifies memory)

This change must be added very close to the read-only line ...[snip]...

You may find that this memory command does not work for the 2.4.x Linux 
kernel."
[end snippets compaq]


> > linux append=mem=128M
>
>append is for lilo, don't use it at the boot prompt (see lilo.conf)

Dearly noted - should have been capable of finding that out with google - 
sorry ...


> > linux mem=128M@16M -> crash
>
>ahhhhhhhhhh!
>no wonder.
>try to interpret 128M@16M as an int+one char..

With the help of Linux from scratch -  http://linuxfromscratch.org/  - I've 
learned quite a lot but I'm a newbie when it comes to c or c++. So I can't 
(yet) ...

I posted here and not for instance to linux-newbie since I assumed that, 
since I am capable of building a Linux from source, a kernel and 
configuring services, this would be a more appropriate place.

As to why I tried it this way; I just followed the instructions I found in 
google results. Looking some more I found "Installing Red Hat linux on 
Compaq proliant servers" from "The Compaq ProLiant Linux Team", which 
describes em, to which I referred earlier. 
- 
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/linux/15ad-0701a-wwen.html#_Toc519573010

[begin more snippets compaq]
"Two other methods exist for specifying the amount of memory available:
<mailto:mem=320M@16M>mem=320M@16M (M specifies Memory)

or

mem=exactmap mem=0x9f000@0 mem=0x13f00000@0x100000

where 0x13f00000 = 319M.

To calculate an appropriate value for your amount of memory, take your 
amount of memory in megabytes, subtract 1 megabyte, multiply by 1024, then 
multiple by 1024 again, then convert to hexadecimal.

The following formula (where XM is your total memory specified in 
MEGABYTES) shows this calculation:

(XM - 1M)*1024*1024, then convert the value to hexadecimal."
[end more snippets compaq]


This last method is new to me, and a bit more then I understand.

mem in the proliant is 128M, minus 1M = 127M.

127 * 1024 * 1024 = 133169152

 From a google search for "how convert hexadecimal" I found:
http://www.statman.info/conversions/hexadecimal.html

Which gave as a result 7F00000


What would make (with my limited understanding):

mem=exactmap mem=0x9f000@0 mem=0x7F00000@0x100000

Lilo say's "Invalid number" and I'm still stuck at only 16Mb instead of 
128M - (


> > I'm posting here in the hope someone has tackled this problem, or sees
> > where I make a mistake.
>
>Try to start memtest and see what this detects.

On both pc's memtest reports 16M

Sorry for the late reply, but it's been busy here ...

Greetz,
Cor Lem