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When adding more RAM...


Guest KShots
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Guest KShots

When adding more RAM, do I need to make any modifications to Linux to let it know such? I'm asking because I've noticed some "problems" with some of my more CPU/RAM intensive programs... little to no hard drive activity and takes f o r e v e r to start... but it does seem to start.

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RAM can be testy. before you bought it, did you make sure it was compatable with your motherboard? with the other RAM that you put in? did it take you over the 1gig of RAM mark?

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Guest KShots

This RAM may very well be bad... I got it at a junk store. It was 64 megs of EDO which puts me at 96 megs total (was at 64, don't have 6 slots tho so had to replace 32 with 64), so I don't think I'm anywhere near any 1 gig threshold :). However, as it has been running and not crashing, I'm inclined to think the RAM isn't bad.

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Guest KShots
as root, does; 

cat /proc/meminfo 

show the new ram?

Yes, here's the output:
        total:    used:    free:  shared: buffers:  cached:

Mem:  96260096 93270016  2990080        0  1847296 12509184

Swap: 150069248 31502336 118566912

MemTotal:        94004 kB

MemFree:          2920 kB

MemShared:           0 kB

Buffers:          1804 kB

Cached:           8604 kB

SwapCached:       3612 kB

Active:          14640 kB

Inactive:        35996 kB

HighTotal:           0 kB

HighFree:            0 kB

LowTotal:        94004 kB

LowFree:          2920 kB

SwapTotal:      146552 kB

SwapFree:       115788 kB

You can use memtest86 to test it.
I'll look around for this... it is a linux prog I hope (I have no floppy/cdrom/keyboard/monitor/mouse)
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Yes, it's on the cd's. I don't know about mandrake/lilo but when it's installed on Libranet-2.8 it's atomatically put in grub. Hopefully it's part of the app and it'll do the same in mandrake. You use it by selecting it from the bootloader.

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Might also want to check out things like harddrive speed, dma transfer modes, and the ide cables... could be a hang up along there somewhere, not? Although I also would not expect too much of a difference going from 64 meg to 96.

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Guest KShots
Might also want to check out things like harddrive speed, dma transfer modes, and the ide cables... could be a hang up along there somewhere, not? Although I also would not expect too much of a difference going from 64 meg to 96.

 

Hard drive speed specs are about 10 megs/second, but the BUS speed maxes out at 8 megs/second (I tried 10 and got flaky results). I have no idea how to tell linux that I can go up to eight, or even if linux cares (goes at max hardware speed or not? I don't know :()

 

DMA transfer modes... I guess my SCSI card has a DMA channel (DMA 5), but again I have no idea how to screw with that in linux. The SCSI cable is fine (I have access to all seven drives), and I have no IDE cables :).

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This is a bit of a long shot but it has fixed this sort of problem twice in the past. The contacts in the connectors tend to stick if they aren't used frequently. The process of inserting a new memory module pushes the contacts apart but some don't spring back fully. This causes intermittent contact with the memory. Removing and re-inserting the memory module does not fix this problem. What you need to do is wiggle the memory module forward and backward after inserting it. It only takes a gentle wiggle (a few millimeters in each direction) and if you hear crackling/clicking noises this is the contacts springing back into position. Wiggle the memory until you don't hear these noises anymore.

 

A second possibility is dirt on the fingers of the memory modules. You can take a pencil eraser and gently rub the gold fingers (front and back side) to remove any dirt.

 

Glitz.

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Guest KShots
Doesn't Linux create a partition /swap, the size of which is dependent on how much RAM you have installed. Could the problem lie there?
That's what I was originally thinking. Is this possible?
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Guest KShots
possible......can you make it bigger or make another. You can have 2 swaps if necessarry just add pri=<n> as an option to the 2 swaps in fstab. They will be shown as one large swap in meminfo.
I doubt that's an option. I'm using all the space on all seven drives. Anyways, I'd think 128 M would be fine (higher than 1x, but not near 2x like I'd originally intended).
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Doesn't Linux create a partition /swap, the size of which is dependent on how much RAM you have installed. Could the problem lie there?

 

That's doubtful since obviously it worked before with the same swap size. Adding more memory to the system will reduce how much swap is used to run the same size program.

 

Glitz.

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Guest KShots

OK, after a talk with a good friend of mine, I came up with a possible solution to the problem: Arrange the memory (starting at DIMM 0) from largest to smallest. Apparently a lot of older computers had bad things happen when people didn't do this (I never ran into this before because all my chips were always identical). I'm going to give that a try and let you guys know if anything changed...

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