Incorrect amount of RAM

[Lysdestic]

Okay, so this is probably the first thread I have posted since joining here or at the other forums before this one, so bear with me.

I just completed my install of OpenSUSE 11.0 and everything is running great, mostly at least. There are the usual XINE issues, and nvidia drivers, but I'll get to that soon.

Anyway, I went through the install, installed practically a full installation, and the system booted. I'm coming from a 10.3 install, so I had the installer format my root partition, and keep my home. No migration issues so far, except for a missing wallpaper, but I will download that later.

Since I kept my home, I still have my karamba applets on my desk and I noticed that my system monitor is showing that I have a whole gig less of memory than I did before the install. This is not good... ha ha.

One other thing that I did notice is that it is running a different kernel than before too. Previously on 10.3 I had the smp kernel, this time the installer went with the pae kernel. I really don't know the difference, I just want all of my Ram to be available.

Any ideas as to how I can find my missing gig? For the time being we will name it Waldo.

The system is an
AMD Athlon 64 5000+ Dual core at 2.6ghz
An Asus M2N-SLI motherboard
4GB of RAM (Well, Three of you ask the lizard. =\)
Nvidia Graphics

[microchip8]

can you post the output of free -m

[Lysdestic]

Sure thing.

travis@Jew-Oven:~> free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3295 3176 119 0 308 2158
-/+ buffers/cache: 708 2586
Swap: 4102 0 4102
travis@Jew-Oven:~>

I was actually tring to remember the command for that, since I thought the Karamba applet might have had something incorrect, but since yakuake isn't installed anymore I couldn't simply press the up arrow.

[microchip8]

hmm seems the kernel indeed isn't detecting all of your RAM. Can you boot with the below kernel parameter and see if it works?

mem=4096M

[Lysdestic]

Alright, I'm downloading the multimedia stuff at the moment, so as soon as that is done, I will try that.

I know very little about the different Kernel types, but that is my gut feeling as to what is causing the issue. This time it does pae, and last time I had the smp kernel. Of course, this guess only comes from the several years I have been using linux and the yast descriptions on the two kernels, but you never know.

[microchip8]

yeah, SUSE changed the default kernel from smp to pae, no idea why though.

[Lysdestic]

Booted with the boot parameter and the memory count is still the same. Ugh.

For the record, I made sure to take note of the screen when it booted and the BIOS is reporting the right amount of memory.

[idshark]

did you take a 32 bit install ? I didnt know they changed the kernel, but before even with 4GB + the bigsmp kernel could take care of that on a 32 bit system.

Dunno if this is an option in 11 , haven't played around with it yet. Maybe a bug in the install of a 32 bit system not setting the right kernel flags during install ?

[Lysdestic]

Yeah, I did a 32bit install. I looked in Yast, the smp kernel isn't even available there. There is the realtime, default, vanilla, and pae. I'm installing the default one now to see what happens.

EDIT: Booted with default, and still the same issue. Still missing one gig of RAM. I guess I will stick with the pae kernel then, since that is what the Suse gods made as default... but still... I want my full four gigs.

Where's Waldo?

[idshark]

this is strange , because pae *should have* the physical address extensions, hence the name (pae) .. Ill have to get back to you on this.