linux doesnt see all the ram i have
 

I have 2 sticks of 512kb of ram in my computer, windows picks it up as being 1 gig, my bios picks it up as 1 gig, linux picks it up as being 884mbs of ram. why does linux find less ram? I am using debian unstable.


is what i see with free:

ekaqu@debian:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 884 809 74 0 124 364
-/+ buffers/cache: 320 563
Swap: 611 8 603

is what i see with top:

Mem: 905332k total, 829604k used, 75728k free, 127468k buffers
Swap: 626524k total, 8244k used, 618280k free, 373340k cached

Have you tried enabling High Memory Support? (ie 4GB)

Does it see all mem when the kernel is compiled with the High Memory Support option?

im still using the kernel that came with the install (2.4.36) and i dont know if high memory support is on it, how would i check?

Probably not with the default kernel, tho easy to add in when you compile the kernel...

This article does a good job of explaining this phenomenon. -- J.W.