Re: a memory-related problem?

Ronald Bultje
2001-06-17T17:36:24Z

On 17 Jun 2001 06:10:02 -0700, Colonel wrote:
> In clouddancer.list.kernel, you wrote:
> >
> >Hi,
> >
> >I just added 128 MB of RAM to my machine which already had 128 MB and
> >which has 128 MB swap. 128 MB RAM + 128 MB swap (either the new or the
> >old 128 MB RAM) works, but the combination of that, 256 MB RAM + 128 MB
> >swap, crashes the compu during startup with either an "unresolved-
> >symbols in init" message (which is completely random, each boot shows
> >different unresolved references) or with oopses right after starting
> >init.
>
> It's more likely that the two RAM sticks differ. I had a similar
> problem in a Windoze machine awhile ago. Move one stick of RAM into
> another bank, i.e. with 4 memory slots, use #1 and #3. If you only
> have 2 memory slots, return/sell what you have and buy 2 sticks at the
> same time.

P6b has three mem-slots. I would get "unresolved errors in init" if I
had 2x64+1x128 sticks, and I would get oopses if I had 2x128M sticks. So
there is indeed a weird difference.
I just noticed this: if I supply "linux-2.4.4 mem=255M" instead of
"linux-2.4.4 mem=256M" at the lilo prompt, it does work. Is this a bug
in the code that handles options given at startup-time? (I only tried
this for 2x128 sticks but I suppose this is the same for 2x64+1x128
sticks - I guess I'm too lazy to try it out).

Regards,

Ronald Bultje