Slackware only seeing 1GB [solved]

[ianw1974]

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?

[lavaeolus]

If you use lilo, you can state the amount of memory in the append-line with mem=MEMORYSIZE, maybe this helps

[ianw1974]

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.

[lavaeolus]

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

[ianw1974]

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!

[lavaeolus]

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

[ianw1974]

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

[lavaeolus]

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 )

[ianw1974]

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

[lavaeolus]

wish you good luck at this time (Maybe it helps :D )

[ianw1974]

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!

[lavaeolus]

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)

[ianw1974]

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