From: Marcelo Manzo <marcelomanzo@gmail.com>
To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org, qemu-arm@nongnu.org
Cc: "Peter Maydell" <peter.maydell@linaro.org>,
"Philippe Mathieu-Daudé" <philmd@oss.qualcomm.com>,
"Marcelo Manzo" <marcelomanzo@gmail.com>,
"Philippe Mathieu-Daudé" <philmd@mailo.com>
Subject: [PATCH v3 1/2] hw/arm/raspi4b: fix guest never seeing more than ~1 GiB of RAM
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:35:38 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260811143539.7835-2-marcelomanzo@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20260811143539.7835-1-marcelomanzo@gmail.com>
raspi4_modify_dtb() decides whether to add a second memory node above
the 1 GiB peripheral hole by checking info->ram_size -- but that field
is the boot loader's RAM budget for loading the kernel/initrd/dtb
image, itself always capped to at most UPPER_RAM_BASE - vcram_size by
raspi_base_machine_init(). Since that capped value can never exceed
UPPER_RAM_BASE by construction, the condition was never true for any
raspi4b configuration, and the second node was never added: the guest
never saw more than ~1 GiB of its nominal RAM, regardless of the
machine's actual size.
board_ram_size(info->board_id), computed one line above in the same
function, is the value that was actually needed -- the board's real
total RAM, not the boot loader's own budget for where it's allowed to
place the kernel image.
Confirmed via direct measurement inside the guest ("free -h" /
/proc/meminfo) on raspi4b's default 2 GiB configuration, before and
after:
before: MemTotal: 943524 kB (~921 MiB)
after: MemTotal: 1905824 kB (~1861 MiB)
Also verified against two real, unmodified Raspberry Pi OS releases
(Debian 11/Bullseye and Debian 13/Trixie): both now report ~1.8 GiB of
usable RAM instead of ~900 MiB, with clean boots, working SSH, and no
kernel errors on either.
Signed-off-by: Marcelo Manzo <marcelomanzo@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Philippe Mathieu-Daudé <philmd@oss.qualcomm.com>
---
hw/arm/raspi4b.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/hw/arm/raspi4b.c b/hw/arm/raspi4b.c
index b92840e1b6..821ddb42ed 100644
--- a/hw/arm/raspi4b.c
+++ b/hw/arm/raspi4b.c
@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ static void raspi4_modify_dtb(const struct arm_boot_info *info, void *fdt)
ram_size = board_ram_size(info->board_id);
- if (info->ram_size > UPPER_RAM_BASE) {
+ if (ram_size > UPPER_RAM_BASE) {
raspi_add_memory_node(fdt, UPPER_RAM_BASE, ram_size - UPPER_RAM_BASE);
}
}
--
2.47.1
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-08-11 14:37 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-08-11 14:35 [PATCH v3 0/2] hw/arm/raspi4b: fix guest RAM capped at ~1 GiB regardless of machine size Marcelo Manzo
2026-08-11 14:35 ` Marcelo Manzo [this message]
2026-08-11 14:35 ` [PATCH v3 2/2] tests/functional/aarch64: add raspi4b full-RAM regression test Marcelo Manzo
2026-08-12 10:24 ` [PATCH v3 0/2] hw/arm/raspi4b: fix guest RAM capped at ~1 GiB regardless of machine size Peter Maydell
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