From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Oct 27 15:23:16 2004 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 91CF816A4CE for ; Wed, 27 Oct 2004 15:23:16 +0000 (GMT) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 47F2643D2F for ; Wed, 27 Oct 2004 15:23:16 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.12.11/8.13.1) id i9RFNFJb048477; Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:23:15 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan) Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:23:15 -0500 From: Dan Nelson To: Tom Gidden Message-ID: <20041027152315.GA62279@dan.emsphone.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-OS: FreeBSD 5.3-BETA7 X-message-flag: Outlook Error User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 5.3-RELEASE on Dell PowerEdge 2850 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 Oct 2004 15:23:16 -0000 In the last episode (Oct 27), Tom Gidden said: > I've recently got a few Dell PowerEdge 2850 machines with 4 GB RAM to > build a new database cluster. However, unlike our existing PowerEdge > 2650 machines, they're only recognising about 3.25 GB. The machines > are pretty much standard, with no extra cards (just the built-in > MegaRAID). > > As a last resort, I've tried rebuilding the kernel with > MAXMEM=(4*1024*1024), which produces some really fun crashes (which I > can supply if necessary). The BIOS seems to be devoid of anything > remotely useful to tweak. > > Any ideas? > > Here's a dmesg from the non-crashing kernel: [note, the first line > is from memory and might be incorrect] > > 786426K of memory above 4GB ignored It looks like you will need to enable PAE to access the rest of that memory (see the pae manpage; some hardware will not work with it enabled). Dell has apparently put quite a bit of your memory past the 4GB point, and left a 700MB hole somewhere in lower memory. I think if you do a boot -v, it will print the memory ranges. -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com