Top not reporting full ram

satinet · 02-04-2006, 03:46 PM

Hello,

I added another 512mb of RAM to my system (to make 1 gig).

The bios reports this ram. but when i run 'top' in linux, it reports that i only have 900mb of ram. Could this be a hardware problem or soemthing to do with top. wierd eh?

HappyTux · 02-04-2006, 04:36 PM

Kernel limitation you need to either install a kernel with highmem support or compile your own if you are taking the compile your own route you may want to look into the Con Kolivas kernel patch sets or at least the 1gb low memory patch he includes which allows you to use the full gig as low memory.

satinet · 02-04-2006, 04:37 PM

really?

i'm very surprised.

it also is a slightly different anount of ram each time....

gilead · 02-04-2006, 04:40 PM

You need to compile support into your kernel for that much RAM. There's a setting called CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G that should be set to y.

satinet · 02-04-2006, 04:48 PM

i'll take a look at that.

thanks....

J.W. · 02-05-2006, 03:28 PM

This question comes up pretty frequently - this article does a pretty good job of explaining how memory management works under Linux