From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 27 13:57:32 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 83D0C16A4BF for ; Wed, 27 Aug 2003 13:57:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mwinf0103.wanadoo.fr (smtp8.wanadoo.fr [193.252.22.30]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4DBBD43FE0 for ; Wed, 27 Aug 2003 13:57:31 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from david@landgren.net) Received: from landgren.net (APastourelles-107-1-21-104.w81-51.abo.wanadoo.fr [81.51.116.104]) by mwinf0103.wanadoo.fr (SMTP Server) with ESMTP id D59D91BFFF2D for ; Wed, 27 Aug 2003 22:57:29 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <3F4D1B93.3070905@landgren.net> Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 22:58:59 +0200 From: David Landgren Organization: Oh smear this man across the walls/Like strawberries and cream/It's the only way to be User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <20030827133322.X83260@fling.sanbi.ac.za> <3F4CE8D2.6010605@landgren.net> <20030827210405.E28625@fling.sanbi.ac.za> In-Reply-To: <20030827210405.E28625@fling.sanbi.ac.za> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: Large memory issues X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:57:32 -0000 Irvine Short wrote: [...] >>>and then later it says on the console something like: >>>256MB of RAM over 4GB ignored. >>> >>>Seems silly to waste 256MB RAM so any hints would be appreciated here >>>too. >> >>How can you address more than 2^32 bytes of RAM with a 32 bit >>processor? :) > > > Yeah, I know about PAE, but it's a 4GB machine so why is there 256MB over > the 4GB limit? I dunno, if you count the chips what do you come up with? I recently bought a whole pile of servers (HP DL380s if you've been following my trials and tribulations) that are designed to accept up to 6Gb on the motherboard. I think it's a bit of a gimmick really. One of the servers came bundled with 4.5Gb RAM. We wanted 4Gb, but the machine comes with 512 by default (2x256 chips [1]). Our supplier just stuck in 4x1Gb chips without bothering to remove the existing chips. As the servers all had different chip sizes, 256Mb, 512 and 1Gb, by mixing and matching I was able to remove the wasted 512Mb and install it in another server. Maybe you can do something like that. Or put it on a shelf for spare parts. David [1] DIMMs, SIMMs, whatever they call them these days.