Redhat Linux 8 fail to boot on 1GB RAM

[Rakesh_27]

I want to use Redhat linux on HP Evo D530 SFF system with 1 GB RAM but linux failed to boot, while same OS (linux) work if i remove any one module whether 256 or 512 MB RAM, it works perfectly. please suggest me what to do, my requirement is 1 GB RAM for Redhat Linux 8.0

[Stuart Browne]

Have you tried appending the boot-string 'mem=1024M' ?

[Sergejs Svitnevs]

Linux can use up to 64 Gigabytes of physical memory on x86 systems.
If the machine has more then 1 Gigabyte physical RAM You need to compile High Memory Support in kernel config.

Regards,
Sergejs

[Stuart Browne]

Just reading through some of the kernel documentation:

...
CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM
Linux can use up to 64 Gigabytes of physical memory on x86 systems. However, the address space of 32-bit x86 processors is only 4 Gigabytes large. That means that, if you have a large amount of physical memory, not all of it can be "permanently mapped" by the kernel. The physical memory that's not permanently mapped is called "high memory".

If you are compiling a kernel which will never run on a machine with more than 960 megabytes of total physical RAM, answer "off" here (default choice and suitable for most users). This will result in a "3GB/1GB" split: 3GB are mapped so that each process sees a 3GB virtual memory space and the remaining part of the 4GB virtual memory space is used by the kernel to permanently map as much physical memory as possible.

If the machine has between 1 and 4 Gigabytes physical RAM, then answer "4GB" here.

If more than 4 Gigabytes is used then answer "64GB" here. This selection turns Intel PAE (Physical Address Extension) mode on. PAE implements 3-level paging on IA32 processors. PAE is fully supported by Linux, PAE mode is implemented on all recent Intel processors (Pentium Pro and better). NOTE: If you say "64GB" here, then the kernel will not boot on CPUs that don't support PAE!

The actual amount of total physical memory will either be auto detected or can be forced by using a kernel command line option such as "mem=256M". (Try "man bootparam" or see the documentation of your boot loader (grub, lilo or loadlin) about how to pass options to the kernel at boot time.)

If unsure, say "off".

...

I'm unsure what the default setting for a RH8 kernel is, I doubt it would be off. If you have the kernel-source package installed, check the /usr/src/linux-2.4/configs/kernel-2.4.xx-i686.config, and search for CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM, and there'll be 2-3 settings near there, i.e.:

# CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM is not set
CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y
# CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G is not set

This is a FC1 config file good for up to 4GB.

[Stuart Browne]

Oh, the short of that is try appending a boot string 'mem=960M' and see if it boots.. If it is, then you'll need the '-bigmem-' or SMP kernel.

[Gopi Sekar]

as the other members said, it is more likely that your kernel is not compiled with support for high mem.

During installation RH checks for available RAM and installs appropriate kernel. What is the amount of RAM you had when you installed RH.

RH has a kernel rpm having support for high memory. check your RH 8.0 distribution CD (mostly 2nd CD) and see whether it has any package by name kernel-bigmem* if so install that rpm and reboot your system, it will show up one more entry in grub pointing to high memory kernel. boot through it and see whether it solves your problem.

if the rpm is not there then you have no other go than recompiling your kernel with high memory support.

Regards,
Gopi

[nmrksharma]

Hi,

I tried installing the Red Hat on this version.I am unable to get the network drivers for this model of the HP Evo D530 SFF.Pls let me know which software is used for the network drivers.

Thanks for the help in advance.

Thanks & Regards
Sarma

[Vipulinux]

Hello
Try using BIGMEM kernel

Cheers

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Rakesh,

Possible that there is a bad chip? Many servers required memory to be paired to work properly. That means you need to of every chip.

Some servers require memory to be arranged from the largest to smallest on the system board. You might want to check into the arrangement of RAM.

SEP