wapuwapu Posted December 26, 2008 Report Share Posted December 26, 2008 I recently installed the 64-bit version of Mandriva 2009. I was expecting it to register all 8 Gb of RAM that is installed on my system. Instead it only shows 4 Gb. Does anyone have any idea why? I installed 64-bit Kubuntu and it saw all of my RAM. Please help. Thank you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daniewicz Posted December 26, 2008 Report Share Posted December 26, 2008 Welcome to the MUB Have a look at this thread and see if there is any help: https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtop...4&hl=kernel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted December 26, 2008 Report Share Posted December 26, 2008 What's the output of "uname -a" in a root console? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapuwapu Posted December 27, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 27, 2008 What's the output of "uname -a" in a root console? Here is the output, [tom@localhost ~]$ su Password: [root@localhost tom]# uname -a Linux localhost 2.6.27.5-server-2mnb #1 SMP Thu Nov 20 16:22:43 EST 2008 x86_64AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Dual Core Processor GNU/Linux [root@localhost tom]# Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapuwapu Posted December 27, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 27, 2008 I tried another command that I found through the links given and here is the result: [root@localhost tom]# more /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 8200512 kB MemFree: 6992660 kB Buffers: 23284 kB Cached: 510780 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 773452 kB Inactive: 310204 kB SwapTotal: 8458180 kB SwapFree: 8458180 kB Dirty: 284 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 549596 kB Mapped: 116776 kB Slab: 42040 kB SReclaimable: 28124 kB SUnreclaim: 13916 kB PageTables: 18412 kB NFS_Unstable: 0 kB Bounce: 0 kB WritebackTmp: 0 kB CommitLimit: 12558436 kB Committed_AS: 884008 kB VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB VmallocUsed: 96420 kB VmallocChunk: 34359641083 kB HugePages_Total: 0 HugePages_Free: 0 HugePages_Rsvd: 0 HugePages_Surp: 0 Hugepagesize: 2048 kB DirectMap4k: 46016 kB DirectMap2M: 8341504 kB [root@localhost tom]# Does this mean that the system is actually using and seeing my 8Gb of RAM but not "reporting" it to the hardware management tool of the Mandriva Control Center? Thanks again!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg2 Posted December 27, 2008 Report Share Posted December 27, 2008 Does this mean that the system is actually using and seeing my 8Gb of RAM but not "reporting" it to the hardware management tool of the Mandriva Control Center? It appears that way. I would also like to see the output of free -m just for my curiosity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted December 27, 2008 Report Share Posted December 27, 2008 Have you really got 8.5Gb of Swap ???. If you have, what a great waste of space. You really don't need any more than 512Mb for practical purposes. Certainly no more than 1Gb and that is also unnecessary. Please keep in mind that this is Linux and not Windows. Linux uses memory in a different and far more efficient ways. Even on a large hard drive, 7.5Gb to 8Gb is still a lot of wasted space. Many Linux users who have 1Gb or more of hard memory don't even have a swap space and never have problems. I have 4Gb of memory and a swap of 512Mb and the swap only exists because it happened to be there when I had only 750Mb of hard memory. When I ultimately repartition the the entire hard drive for whatever reason, I will be eliminating swap entirely. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapuwapu Posted December 27, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 27, 2008 It appears that way. I would also like to see the output of free -m just for my curiosity. No problem! Here you go! [root@localhost tom]# free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 8008 1067 6940 0 21 447 -/+ buffers/cache: 598 7409 Swap: 8259 0 8259 [root@localhost tom]# Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapuwapu Posted December 27, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 27, 2008 Have you really got 8.5Gb of Swap ???.If you have, what a great waste of space. You really don't need any more than 512Mb for practical purposes. Certainly no more than 1Gb and that is also unnecessary. Please keep in mind that this is Linux and not Windows. Linux uses memory in a different and far more efficient ways. Even on a large hard drive, 7.5Gb to 8Gb is still a lot of wasted space. Many Linux users who have 1Gb or more of hard memory don't even have a swap space and never have problems. I have 4Gb of memory and a swap of 512Mb and the swap only exists because it happened to be there when I had only 750Mb of hard memory. When I ultimately repartition the the entire hard drive for whatever reason, I will be eliminating swap entirely. Cheers. John. Thanks John! I was under the impression that your swap space should be set to the same size as the amount of memory installed at the time of installation, or maybe what you dream of one day having installed. Fortunately I am using a DROBO for most of my storage. It would be nice to get a "smaller" drive these days since I don't really plan on needing all of the space that I have on this one. Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted December 27, 2008 Report Share Posted December 27, 2008 (edited) I hope you now understand that your impression was incorrect. In the early days when memory was extremely expensive and therefore usually low, the general rule was twice the swap space to the actual hard memory. Over the years this was modified to be up to a maximum of 512Mb of swap regardless of hard memory size. This recommendation has been around for quite some years now. Remember.....Quote -"Please keep in mind that this is Linux and not Windows. Linux uses memory in a different and far more efficient ways." Cheers and I hope you enjoy your Linux experience. John. Edited December 27, 2008 by AussieJohn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted December 27, 2008 Report Share Posted December 27, 2008 It's not actually been modified to 512MB, but generally what some people recommend now - since memory is now cheap and faster than swap. Red Hat Certified exams still use double the amount of ram principal and in some cases (depending on usage of your hardware), it still actually is required to have double your ram. Whilst for desktops, 512MB of ram or 1GB is fine for swap, based on the fact that you have 1GB or more physical memory. For servers, it's a different ballgame, and more swap is required. For laptops, you'd still need double the swap space based on ram for suspending to ram and hibernate. If you have 1GB of ram, fully utilised and try to suspend to ram with only 512MB of swap space, you'll have big problems. Therefore, at least 1GB would be required, but usually more, since some swap is likely to get used at some point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted December 27, 2008 Report Share Posted December 27, 2008 (edited) Con Colivas suggested that even 256M of swap space is actually more than sufficient for most desktops with 1gig of RAM (or more), and from my experience he is dead on the spot. The only case you will need your swap space being as large as your RAM is whenever you have a laptop and want to hibernate, but you don't wish to use Tuxonice (which can hibernate to some other place in your harddisk, and not the swap partition). Edited December 27, 2008 by scarecrow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapuwapu Posted December 28, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2008 First, Thank You all for your replies!!!! Second, I switched from the 64 bit version to the 32 bit version. While trying the 64 bit version I had difficulty with the website used for my online courses. It requires JRE 1.5 or greater. I have had no problems in the past with the site on the 32 bit version using Epiphany. For whatever reason, Firefox just doesn't seem to communicate to the site that I have JRE 1.6. On the 64 bit version Epiphany simply crashed every time I tried to login. Finally, I ran some of the commands given here in previous responses and it appears that even the 32 bit version is using all 8Gb of RAM!!! [root@localhost tom]# more /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 8307812 kB MemFree: 7393380 kB Buffers: 36400 kB Cached: 453220 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 536964 kB Inactive: 299776 kB HighTotal: 7470016 kB HighFree: 6653104 kB LowTotal: 837796 kB LowFree: 740276 kB SwapTotal: 8458180 kB SwapFree: 8458180 kB Dirty: 8700 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 347112 kB Mapped: 97340 kB Slab: 33964 kB SReclaimable: 24768 kB SUnreclaim: 9196 kB PageTables: 5556 kB NFS_Unstable: 0 kB Bounce: 0 kB WritebackTmp: 0 kB CommitLimit: 12612084 kB Committed_AS: 684696 kB VmallocTotal: 116728 kB VmallocUsed: 51632 kB VmallocChunk: 59380 kB HugePages_Total: 0 HugePages_Free: 0 HugePages_Rsvd: 0 HugePages_Surp: 0 Hugepagesize: 2048 kB DirectMap4k: 20480 kB DirectMap2M: 897024 kB [root@localhost tom]# free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 8113 958 7154 0 39 473 -/+ buffers/cache: 445 7667 Swap: 8259 0 8259 [root@localhost tom]# That being said, I will continue my move to Linux. I will also be searching the forums for a resolution to my lack of sound problem on my other system. I have already spotted a post for the c8738 sound card and will be looking further. Thank you all!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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