Incorrect memory size reporting in RHL ES 2.1

[venkatakrishna]

Hi,
We have installed RHL ES 2.1 (Panama) 2.4.9-e.57 on 2 servers both servers are reporting incorrect RAM size. 4GB of RAM available, it is correctly reported while POST and in BIOS, but Linux reports it as 3072260K.

Is this is a bug with 2.4.9-e.57 version of kernel?
Is there any patch avaliable to fix this??

Thanks in advance..

Krishna

[renarios]

Hi Krishna,

Have you installed the bigmem rpm?

Take a look at this: http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/redhat/9/i386/kernel-bigmem-2.4.20-8.i686.html
Maybe that helps.

Cheers,

Renarios

[venkatakrishna]

Hi Renarios,
Thanks for your info.. But in that site kernel-bigmem rpm for RHL ES 2.1 is not found, can we find RPM/source for RHL ES 2.1?

Thanks and Regards,

Krishna.

[renarios]

Hi Krishna,

On Fedora you can use yum to update the servers, but i don't know if RH AS also uses it. The installation CD should contain it too.
Did you search the download site of Redhat too?

Cheers,

Renarios

[Stuart Browne]

But he's not using Fedora.

Have you tried 'up2date install kernel-bigmem' ?

Failing that, go to the RedHat Network page, log in, and download the RPM's that way.

[venkatakrishna]

Hi,
This RPM fix is not available in Installation media or even it is not found in RHN.
But i found kernel-hugemem-2.4.21-27.0.4.EL.i686 for RHL ES 3.0 on installation media and in RHN.This Kernel is applied, for machines with more than 16 Gigabytes of memory.

Can we find hugemem/bigmem kernel source??

Krishna.

[Ermin Borovac]

RHL AS 2.1 has kernel-enterprise RPM that can cope with memory size >= 4GB. There does not seem to be similar package for RHL ES.

You may be able to download kernel-source package, compile it enabling high memory option and get it to recognise 4G of RAM that way.

[kcpant]

Hi Krishna,

Which servers are you using? ( I forgot the exact models, but some servers show less memory on OS if exactly 4 GB RAM is installed, typically it's a behaviour of some Intel based mainboards, and this can be corrected out by changing some settings in BIOS setup).

[venkatakrishna]

Hi KCPant,
Server is Dell PE 2850, but BIOS reports RAM size correctly.

Krishna

[Andrew Cowan]

Try booting with "linux mem=4196M" and possibly "noprobe" to see if Linux is having problems with what the BIOS is telling it.

[W.C. Epperson]

Andrew's probably close, but "mem=4196M" may cause you to sail off the edge of the earth when you get close. You'd probably want "mem=4096M". Some of the 2.4 kernels oddly couldn't autodetect 4Gb properly, but do fine if explicitly told in this way. The usual symptom is hanging or panicking, however.