memory not being utilized
 

I have a web server using slackware 8.1 and kernel 2.4.18. I used a precompiled kernel ,adaptec.s. I have increased my ram to 2 gb but if I do cat /proc/meminfo Memtotal is 900212 kb. I tried to recompile kernel by doing
cd /usr/src/linux
make menuconfig ( select Processor type then high mem support and 4GB , leave the rest alone)
make dep
make clean
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install
cat arch/i386/boot/bzImage > /boot/vmlinuz
cp System.map /boot/System.map
I then rebooted, and checked memory and it was still the same.
Please can anyone help?
Thanks so much
...Wendy

Have you tried to pass 'mem=' option to kernel with the right memory size?

may be a hardware problem
 

The days when Linux did not automatically recognize the memory size are pretty much history. If Mara's suggestion does not fix the problem then recheck your hardware install .

I tried passing mem=2048M, did not work. then tried 2000M, did not work. then tried 1000M, did not work. 512M did work. It appears there is a limit on amount of memory that can be passed this way.
Do you think problem is slackware?
Thanks
...Wendy

Most likely you have a hardware problem.
 

You cannot use the mem= parameter to set the amount of memory to greater than actually exists. Left to its lonesome the kernel detects 900212 kb. If you tell the kernel that you have more than 900212 kb it does not believe you. If you tell it less than 900212 kb it will use the lesser amount and ignore the extra memory.

So you have only 900212 kb of memory usable. This is quite likely a gigabyte of memory less some memory allocated for video memory or some such.

I would check your bios settings. Does your bios have the total amount of memory specified somewhere? Does it set aside some memory for the video card? Does the video set aside chop memory in half now that you have two gigabytes?

And finally are the new memory sticks correctly paired (if your hardware requires memory sticks to be paired). Are they seated correctly. If your various memory sticks are different sizes then there may be a seating order and pairing requirement.

did you run lilo?

I did need to run lilo after recompiling kernel
Thanks to all who responded. Wendy