Re: The system works (2.6.14-rc2): functional k8n-dl

Nishanth Aravamudan
2005-09-23T17:37:51Z

On 23.09.2005 [10:22:15 -0700], Sean Bruno wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-09-23 at 10:20 -0700, Nishanth Aravamudan wrote:
> > On 23.09.2005 [10:08:16 -0700], Sean Bruno wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2005-09-22 at 17:29 -0400, Karim Yaghmour wrote:
> > > > Nish,
> > > >
> > > > OK, I can confirm that with version 1006 of the BIOS it works flawlessly
> > > > with Linux. I was able to install full FC4 and boot without a problem
> > > > even with the SATA disk plugged to the nVidia controller (reading the
> > > > archives you will see that the nVidia SATA controller is something I
> > > > was simply unable to get working.) I didn't need to recompile anything.
> > > > The kernel that came with FC4 worked just fine.
> > > I can also confirm these findings. However, I still have to boot the
> > > kernel with iommu=memaper=3 in order to get the system to work
> > > properly.
> >
> > You have 6GB of RAM, right? That must be the difference, as I only have
> > 2 GB (and the IOMMU is used when you have more than 3 GB according to
> > menuconfig?).
> >
> Yes 6GB of ram.

Odd, any ideas of why that is? What happens when you don't pass the
param? (sorry, haven't followed all the k8n-dl threads :)

A couple of points. Noticed that param is not documented in
Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt; care to make up a patch? Also,
after your message, I did a quick grep through my dmesg and see the
following:

[ 0.000000] Checking aperture...
[ 0.000000] CPU 0: aperture @ 4000000 size 32 MB
[ 0.000000] Aperture from northbridge cpu 0 too small (32 MB)
[ 0.000000] No AGP bridge found
[ 0.000000] Your BIOS doesn't leave a aperture memory hole
[ 0.000000] Please enable the IOMMU option in the BIOS setup
[ 0.000000] This costs you 64 MB of RAM
[ 0.000000] Mapping aperture over 65536 KB of RAM @ 4000000

Is the aperture memory hole necessary even without AGP? Does the ASUS
BIOS provide a means to change the aperture size (I didn't see one when
I looked, but I could easily have missed it).

[ 45.703183] PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing
[ 45.703194] PCI: If a device doesn't work, try "pci=routeirq". If it helps, post a report
[ 45.703286] PCI-DMA: Disabling AGP.
[ 45.703295] PCI-DMA: More than 4GB of RAM and no IOMMU
[ 45.703296] PCI-DMA: 32bit PCI IO may malfunction.<6>PCI-DMA: Disabling IOMMU.

I am not sure why the kernel thinks I have more than 4GB of RAM, when I
have 2 GB. Seems like a bug? Looks like that "Disabling IOMMU" printk is
b0rked...and why does it disable it if I don't have one? (according to
2 messages before that one?) Andi, do you have any input on this?

/proc/meminfo:

MemTotal: 1989424 kB
MemFree: 32896 kB
Buffers: 276924 kB
Cached: 1013852 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 1085736 kB
Inactive: 510788 kB
HighTotal: 0 kB
HighFree: 0 kB
LowTotal: 1989424 kB
LowFree: 32896 kB
SwapTotal: 0 kB
SwapFree: 0 kB
Dirty: 24 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
Mapped: 355348 kB
Slab: 340204 kB
CommitLimit: 994712 kB
Committed_AS: 432912 kB
PageTables: 6792 kB
VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed: 262572 kB
VmallocChunk: 34359475707 kB
HugePages_Total: 0
HugePages_Free: 0
Hugepagesize: 2048 kB

Thanks,
Nish