From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 11 13:44:56 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4383D16A412 for ; Thu, 11 Jan 2007 13:44:56 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wmoran@collaborativefusion.com) Received: from mx00.pub.collaborativefusion.com (mx00.pub.collaborativefusion.com [206.210.89.199]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0AB8A13C43E for ; Thu, 11 Jan 2007 13:44:55 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wmoran@collaborativefusion.com) Received: from vanquish.pgh.priv.collaborativefusion.com (vanquish.pgh.priv.collaborativefusion.com [192.168.2.61]) (SSL: TLSv1/SSLv3,256bits,AES256-SHA) by wingspan with esmtp; Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:44:54 -0500 id 0005644C.45A63F56.000167A8 Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:44:54 -0500 From: Bill Moran To: "Jeff MacDonald" Message-Id: <20070111084454.0ba4c327.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com> In-Reply-To: References: Organization: Collaborative Fusion X-Mailer: Sylpheed 2.3.0 (GTK+ 2.10.6; i386-portbld-freebsd6.1) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, Ivan Voras Subject: Re: Dell PE 1950 - Only seeing 3.2 gigs of ram X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 13:44:56 -0000 In response to "Jeff MacDonald" : > > Jeff MacDonald wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > I put a fresh install of 6.1-RELEASE on a dell poweredge 1950 server. > > > It's configured with 4 gigs of ram. > > > > > > However when I boot i get the following right before DMESG > > > > > > 786432k above 4GB ignored > > > > > > Which is strange, but then dmesg shows this > > > > > > real memory = 3489300480 (3327 MB) > > > avail memory = 3414659072 (3256 MB) > > > > > > Soo I'm at a bit of a loss. > > > > You're using the 32-bit version, right? The design of x86 architecture > > (i.e. it's not FreeBSD's problem) is such that a part of memory > > addresses needs to be set aside for hardware uses, such as the PCI bus, > > AGP memory & others. This manifests as "holes" in memory that are not > > accessible to OS. > > > > There are two possible solutions: you may try compiling a 32-bit kernel > > with PAE (but not all drivers support PAE), or install the 64-bit > > version of FreeBSD. > > Well I hate when people say this, but I'm going to say it.. :) > > When I did a default install of ubuntu, it saw all 4 gigs without a > hitch. So does that mean it already includes PAE, or something else ? One of those two. You sure you didn't install a 64-bit version of Ubuntu? > Aside, I will read up on PAE. I'll read up about 64 bit as well, I've > been hesitant to make the jump only cause any word of mouth i've heard > said that it's not ready for production. Maybe that's off base, it's > only what "i've heard" We're deploying a lot of 64 bit stuff around here. Our experience has been that the OS is as solid on amd64 as it is on i386. Server applications are the same. There are, however, a lot of desktop applications that are still flaky on 64-bit -- mostly non-mainstream ones. We got in a crunch and had to reinstall a workstation back to i386 because of it, or I would have filed some bug reports. -- Bill Moran Collaborative Fusion Inc.