Re: lilo append mem problem in 2.4.20

[GertJan Spoelman <kl@gjs.cc>]

Hi Brad,

On Sunday 08 December 2002 04:28, rtilley wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Compaq proliant 5000 4 way Pentium Pro with 1 GB RAM only uses 12 to 13 MB
> of RAM when I use kernel 2.4.20 with ac1 patch even when I do
> append="mem=1024" in /etc/lilo.conf
>
> RH 7.2 is the distro and its default kernel (2.4.7-10smp), works flawlessly
> with the mem append, it sees and uses all the RAM. But, their latest kernel
> 2.4.18-18.7.xsmp fails to use the RAM as well; it too only sees 12 to 13
> MB... this is why I tried the kernel.org kernel.
>
> I used RH's 686-smp kernel config file to build the 2.4.20-ac1 kernel. I
> turned High Mem support off as I don't think 1 GB is high mem... is it?
> Anyone know how I can use all of the RAM?
>

I had the same problem on an old Compaq 2500 with 320Mb memory,
the following line used to work :
        append="mem=320M"
now I have to use:
        append="mem=exactmap mem=640K@0 mem=319M@1M"
to get the kernel to see all the memory.
So probably you can get it working again with:
        append="mem=exactmap mem=640K@0 mem=1023M@1M"
Maybe you also could do directly: exactmap mem=1024M@0
or 1G@0, but I haven't tried that yet.
It seems the mem parameter now only can be used to limit the amount of memory 
used by the kernel.
-- 

    GertJan