memory reported less

English Hardware
#1

Story is as follows

The Suse Enterprise Linux 9 Operating system was installed by
some one else.

I am a newbie to Linux

The server was having 2 GB RAM
uname -r gives output as 2.6.5-7.244-smp

we added more ram to the server to upgrade it to 6 GB
the server can see

cat /proc/meminfo|grep Mem
MemTotal: 3630956 kB

I have a SUSE Enterprise SP3 cd with the following two
rpm’s

kernel-bigsmp-2.6.5-7.244.i586.rpm
kernel-smp-2.6.5-7.244.i586.rpm

a) How do I install the new kernel - do i rpm -ivh kernel-bigsmp-2.6.5-7.244.i586.rpm
b) what is the impact of installing a new kernel -
will I have to rebuild any jar files or compile any applications ?

#2

You need to use the PAE kernel to address that memory - else use _64bit OS

#3

what is the PAE Kernel for SLES 9 - Please explain further.

#4

Sorry I wasn’t reading carefully.
You should ask your question in
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) - NOVELL FORUMS

#5

These are my steps

a) Insert cd SLES9 SP3 disk 1 in cd drive
b) YAST2 - install software choose kernel - select bigsmp kernel and accept
c) YAST2 handles all the work required and requests for reboot
d) Reboot confirms that memory is now reported correctly at approx 6 GB

cat /proc/meminfo|grep Mem
MemTotal: 6163452 kB
MemFree: 4925760 kB

checked /boot
and found

initrd -> initrd-2.6.5-7.244-bigsmp

Thanks a lot to all users who contributed