Re: [Kernel] 4GB of memory and NForce4SLI

On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 18:59:39 +0200
Giuseppe Ghib=C3=B2 <[email protected]> wrote:

| I tried currently 2006.0 with kernel 2.6.12.18mdksmp-x86_64 into
| a MSI K8N Diamond Plus motherboard with Athlon64-X2 4800. The
| motherboard has chipset Nforce4-sli and 4 modules of 1GB each.
|=20
| Currently the BIOS sees 3328MB of memory and in such way
| it correctly boots with 2.6.12.18mdksmp and free shows
| 3350260 kB free mem with the 'free' command.
| How to obtain the rest of 700MB of memory? OK, there is the addressing
| space for PCI, etc., but for instance other mobos shows more than 3.3GB=
.
| E.g. on Tyan 2885 I see 4096MB in BIOS and 3559132 with 'free'.

 It's a BIOS issue then, isn't it? When we talked via IRC, I thought it
was a kernel problem..

| The K8N Diamond has an option in BIOS to "Enable Hardware Memory Hole",
| which enable memory remapping around the memory hole. The CPU needed
| for this option is at least stepping E0. A64-4800X2 is stepping E6
| so should be supported. Once the "Hardware Memory Hole" has been
| enabled the BIOS sees 4096MB of memory. But the kernel is no
| longer able to boot. Latest logs were:
|=20
| ...
| Freeing unused kernel memory: 196k freed
| Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found. Try passing init=3D option t=
o kernel
|=20
| I tried also with kernel-2.6.14.2mdksmp-x86_64 but same results. Even
| with kernel-linus-2.6.16.15mdksmp-x86_64 gives the same (plus error
| during 3ware modules scsi probing:
|=20
| scsi: host 0 channel 0 id 0 lun 0x5a5a5a5a5a5a5a5ahas LUN larger than
| currently supported.

 That sequence '0x5a5a5a5a' is the kernel's poisoning patter, I can't
say whether it's happening due a kernel issue.

 Did you try to update your BIOS? And why do you need to change BIOS'
options? I mean, is it the _right_ way to do it?

| Bugs in kernel IOMMU?

 Better to try the simpler first.

--=20
Luiz Fernando N. Capitulino