not recognizing the ram
 

Hello,

I am useing woody-Damn Small Linux and I upgraded my ram from 32 mb to 160 mb (additional 128 mb). I am sure my new ram is working perfectly, but DSL is only recognizing the 32 mb onboard, not the ram in the socket. The windows ce I had before was recognizing all 160 mb. What could be the problem? I found it out with the command free....only 32 mb :-(

Kind regards

Hello,

This sounds like a very unusual configuration. How many sockets do you have altogether? Many systems require that all sockets contain the same capacity cards, i.e. 32x32x32x32 = 128 and also have an even number of sockets/cards.

Do you really have 32x32x32x32x32 = 160 ?? If you have six sockets, you might put another 32 mb card in. Or if you have 32x32x32x32x16x16 = 160 the order in which the cards are placed into the sockets is important.

Either way, if you had this working before, I am very surprised. You might check your BIOS to see whether any settings affecting RAM need to be changed and/or whether all your RAM is being loaded on POST.

Are you certain that your hardware will support that much RAM?

Hope this is helpful.

thank you for reply. There are 32 mb onboard and with the 128 mb I thought it would be 160 mb. There is only one socket and I am almost certain that the board will carry it. There is no affects in the bios.

regards,

OK. When you say 32 mb onboard, do you mean on the motherboard, or is that what your BIOS POST is reading out? Or do you mean plus the socket with 128 mb?

Hello,

this means on the motherboard fix installed. Additionally there is a socket for further 128 mb ram. The 32 mb onboard will be recognized but the 128 mb ram bar installed on the socket won't be. I am sure the bar is fully functional.

Thank you

IMO, your best bet will be to add another swap partition to your hard disk, assuming you have space for it.

The one you have plus the new one should be at least 1.5 times RAM or in your case 254 mb total. According to this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paging you don't need to reinstall with a larger swap file, you can just add another. That is one of the advantages of Linux.

If that doesn't work, check the following.

Can you say more about the motherboard and hardware in general? Is it possible to print your BIOS screens? What Linux kernel are you using? What Windows version were you using? The Linux kernel design is different, so it is possible there is a jumper setting on your motherboard.

thank you for the information.

I got an old thin client and tried to do on this page (its the same client): http://www.x95.us/winterm/3230/

Any idea?

Regards

Careful!
 

fdisk is what you need - ordinarily it would require a partition for Linux, one for swap and one for your programs and files. I don't want to give too much advice, because I don't know what would happen if you partition your drive this way - you might lose all data or worse, you might not be able to install *any* software on your particular machine - other machines are no big deal, so you probably could reinstall using a USB, but if you depend on CE as it says in the page you provided, then you're going to have a problem. READ and UNDERSTAND before you attempt to partition your drive! I still think this would solve your problem though.

I don't think that will help the system to recognize the RAM module.

@rasidrasid: Please post the output of

Hello,

first of all thank you. I did everything who is writen in this site.
for free -m:
BusyBox v1.00 (2005.05.27-19:51+0000) multi-call binary

Usage: free

Displays the amount of free and used system memory

for dmidecode -t memory:
-bash: dmidecode: command not found

@larrym82: what you mean with Read and understand, where...i did exactly what is writen.

Thanks. Regards

Is your problem fixed? If not there is another good post here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-a-t22-252984/

The suggestion by nhs might work.

Your command "free" works in an unusual way. You got an older version of busybox but compare what my newer version says.

My "free --help" does what your "free -m" does.

If your program "free" is there maybe you'll get some useful output playing around with it or looking up the Internet how your older version is supposed to work.


# free --help
BusyBox v1.18.5 (2011-11-04 23:24:28 PDT) multi-call binary.

Usage: free

Display the amount of free and used system memory

# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 53328 11148 42180 0 0
-/+ buffers: 11148 42180
Swap: 0 0 0
# free -m
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 53328 11288 42040 0 0
-/+ buffers: 11288 42040
Swap: 0 0 0
#

PS:
# dmidecode -t memory
sh: dmidecode: command not found

Hello,

first of all thank you. Second, i did not got a email to look by answer.

@larrym82:
I dont have a lilo. Everything is automated like is writen on this site. There is only a menu.lst under boot/grub and it looks like:

# This sets the default entry to boot.
# Remember that GRUB counts from 0, so 1 is the second entry.

default 0

# This sets the length of time in seconds that grub will wait for the user to select an OS
# before it boots the default on. I reccommend at least 15 seconds.

timeout 15

# Enter the entry for DSL here. Something like this.

title DSL
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/hda2 quiet vga=normal noacpi noapm nodma noscsi frugal
initrd /boot/minirt24.gz

Where can i write mem=512M? Under initrd?

@dilbert_uk:
You mean free --help works for better insight of used memory? I will try it.

Thank you.

sorry, i forgot it. In a second internet site (http://www.marlwifi.org.nz/projects/winterm) is writen:

"Problems

Unfortunately Winterm DSL is not perfect, so you will encounter the following issues that I am trying to fix. If you come up with a fix, please post a comment below and share it with the rest of the community!

The current kernel only supports up to 32MB RAM.
"

What can i do?

CU

rasid,

nodma stands for 'no dynamic memory allocation' and deleting this line *might* allow your system to recognize the RAM

Note: commands are set apart with 'command' (for example) so leave the ' ' out when typing them in.

BEFORE you start, backup menu.lst with 'cp menu.lst menu.lst.bak'

Then try this: In the line below delete the nodma from your menu.lst you'll need a text editor like gedit or vi

If you don't know how to use these:

enter 'gedit menu.lst' or 'vi menu.lst' once you have the file up in an editor delete nodma
(gedit is far easier, but you probably don't have it - be careful with vi - use your arrow keys to place your cursor at the front of nodma, press 'dw' and then ':wq' or ':x' if you mess up just press ':q!' and your file won't be changed.

(your system won't have this highlighted in red as here)

# Enter the entry for DSL here. Something like this.

title DSL
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/hda2 quiet vga=normal noacpi noapm nodma noscsi frugal
initrd /boot/minirt24.gz

If this causes any problem, just go back and run 'cp menu.lst.bak menu.lst