ianw1974 Posted December 2, 2005 Report Share Posted December 2, 2005 Installed Slackware, and then compiled and installed kernel 2.6.14.3 that I downloaded from kernel.org. The problem I'm having is that Slackware is only seeing 1GB of RAM. My output from running "free" is this: root@slackware:~# free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 903660 61680 841980 0 14940 26676 -/+ buffers/cache: 20064 883596 Swap: 2097136 0 2097136 And this is the output from dmesg: root@slackware:~# dmesg | grep highmem Memory: 903376k/917504k available (3796k kernel code, 13668k reserved, 1110k data, 228k init, 0k highmem) root@slackware:~# dmesg | grep HIGHMEM Use a HIGHMEM enabled kernel. I've enabled 4GB in the kernel when I compiled it, so cannot understand why it's behaving like this. The swap is configured for 4GB as well (don't ask!), but only sees 2GB. This I'm not really worried about. Any ideas, on what I can do to see more? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavaeolus Posted December 2, 2005 Report Share Posted December 2, 2005 If you use lilo, you can state the amount of memory in the append-line with mem=MEMORYSIZE, maybe this helps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted December 2, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 2, 2005 I tried adding the following to /etc/lilo.conf: append = "mem=4096M" but now I get this error message: Loading LinuxEBDA is big, kernel setup stack overlaps LILO second stage so that did something, but it doesn't work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavaeolus Posted December 2, 2005 Report Share Posted December 2, 2005 what is your physical memory (RAM) ? 2 or 4 (I'm jealous :D ) GB sorry, maybe I was a bit unclear, in the append line you must put in your available RAM > mem=2048M if you have 2 GB RAM, if you have 4 then I just don't know, why it does not work Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted December 2, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 2, 2005 Memory is 2GB on the system. I found somewhere that the append line just limits the memory, rather than tells the system to use it. Although not sure if this is true or not. Currently reinstalling slack now, as when I re-wrote the lilo config afterwards without the entry it borked the partitions! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavaeolus Posted December 2, 2005 Report Share Posted December 2, 2005 Linux in a Nutshell told me that append mem tells the system the amount of available memory (I think o'reilly's authors know what they write :D ), but I'm not really sure about this either sorry about the borked partition, this can be since lilo was literally writing into nowhere, believing there are 4 GB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted December 2, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 2, 2005 Hey no worries. It was OK writing the change, it was just reversing that borked it :P But then I was booted from gentoo live CD, and did chroot, etc, etc, but not sure it worked correctly for some bizarre reason! I think I needed a clean install anyway. Will try the new kernel again after I've installed Slack, and see how far I get after that. I'm not sure, but I have a funny feeling I might have told LILO to use 4GB of ram and not 2GB! :P So, I'll try the append line again, and see what happens. Then reinstall where necessary if LILO plays up again :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavaeolus Posted December 2, 2005 Report Share Posted December 2, 2005 Maybe GRUB will work better, as far as I know you can put that mem-thingie there under kernel or boot-options (it has something similar like the append-line in lilo, I just don't know the place, since I did not use GRUB very often, it seems it doesn't like my hardware :D ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted December 2, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 2, 2005 Think I'll stick with LILO, I never use grub myself either :P Will keep this updated if I get it figured out, else if anyone has some other ideas, do post :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavaeolus Posted December 2, 2005 Report Share Posted December 2, 2005 wish you good luck at this time (Maybe it helps :D ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted December 2, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 2, 2005 I've managed to do it, yay :P I was following kernel guides, and they were incorrect. The thing I was missing, was copying the /usr/src/linux/.config file to /boot/config, so it was missing the various parameters to set. I am now successfully running kernel-2.6.14.3. Compilation was with: make menuconfig make make modules_install then, I had to: cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.14.3 cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.6.14.3 cp .config /boot/config-2.6.14.3 then, after this update the symlinks for: System.map --> System.map-2.6.14.3 config --> config-2.6.14.3 and once I'd done all this, it was working fine. I never had to add the append="mem 2048M" to LILO at all. So this isn't required :P Neat! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavaeolus Posted December 2, 2005 Report Share Posted December 2, 2005 afaik, this mem-thing is an old remnant, but still is there as a last-chance option if your system is to silly to find the right amount of RAM :D Normally it's never needed nowadays (at least I have never needed it in the last 4-5 years) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted December 2, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 2, 2005 I had a look in my book tonight too. I also have the Linux in a Nutshell book. It didn't go into too much detail on the append parameter though. So the title is aptly named! About all it wrote about the append parameter could probably fit into a nutshell!! :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.