Hello all. I have 288MB installed in my system and the BIOS does see it all, but Debian is only recoginizing 220MB. I tried adding a boot parameter in GRUB using the mem command, but I ended up with only 64MB after booting. The command was:*


mem=68M@220M

I may be misunderstanding the syntax and have things totally wrong. In fact, I would say that is likely considering the results. I appreciate any help you can provide.

Isaac MacFarlane
*

Isaac MacFarlane wrote:
> Hello all. I have 288MB installed in my system and the BIOS does see it all,
> but Debian is only recoginizing 220MB.

What indicators show only 220M of memory? This problem sounds very
unusual to me. Also 288M seems like a lot of memory for the 770.

After boot the 'dmesg' command will report memory information. That
information will be logged in the /var/log/dmesg file. What
information is logged there?
Here is a sample from one of my systems:

BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000e0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000007000000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fffe0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
112MB LOWMEM available.
...
Memory: 106320k/114688k available (1499k kernel code, 7864k reserved, 599k data, 256k init, 0k highmem)

It would be useful to see the output from /proc/meminfo.
In particular what does MemTotal show? In the above system with 112M
the system shows the following.

cat /proc/meminfo

MemTotal: 110940 kB

> I tried adding a boot parameter in GRUB using the mem command, but I
> ended up with only 64MB after booting. The command was:
>
> mem=68M@220M
>
> I may be misunderstanding the syntax and have things totally wrong. In fact,
> I would say that is likely considering the results. I appreciate any help
> you can provide.

You probably want to try something more like this instead:

mem=288M

But if tell it more memory than you actually have available it will
cause the system problems.
This is documented in the linux source with various Documentation/*
files such as boot.txt, kernel-parameters.txt, and memory.txt.

A very good resource for ThinkPads is the ThinkWiki.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:770

Bob

Well, I was going by the System Monitor that is included with GNOME. The cat /proc/meminfo results in a MemTotal of 224436 kb. When I try the mem=288M it gives me an Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory. I find that puzzling since the BIOS reports the full 288M. Running dmidecode shows that the maximum memory for the system is actually 384M, but I don't have another chip to put in and I don't think that would be worthwhile anyway unless I can get this figured out. I actually know about the thinkwiki site. It helped me solve my audio problems, but there is very little info on there about memory issues. I'm beginning to wonder if I need to update the BIOS or maybe dmidecode is wrong about this system. It hasn't been wrong on other systems I used it with, but this could be a quirk of the IBM system.


On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 1:01 AM, Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:

Isaac MacFarlane wrote:

> Hello all. I have 288MB installed in my system and the BIOS does see it all,

> but Debian is only recoginizing 220MB.



What indicators show only 220M of memory? *This problem sounds very

unusual to me. *Also 288M seems like a lot of memory for the 770.



After boot the 'dmesg' command will report memory information. *That

information will be logged in the /var/log/dmesg file. *What

information is logged there?

Here is a sample from one of my systems:



*BIOS-provided physical RAM map:

* BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)

* BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)

* BIOS-e820: 00000000000e0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)

* BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000007000000 (usable)

* BIOS-e820: 00000000fffe0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)

*112MB LOWMEM available.

*...

*Memory: 106320k/114688k available (1499k kernel code, 7864k reserved, 599k data, 256k init, 0k highmem)



It would be useful to see the output from /proc/meminfo.

In particular what does MemTotal show? *In the above system with 112M

the system shows the following.



*cat /proc/meminfo



*MemTotal: * * * 110940 kB



> I tried adding a boot parameter in GRUB using the mem command, but I

> ended up with only 64MB after booting. The command was:

>

> mem=68M@220M

>

> I may be misunderstanding the syntax and have things totally wrong. In fact,

> I would say that is likely considering the results. I appreciate any help

> you can provide.



You probably want to try something more like this instead:



*mem=288M



But if tell it more memory than you actually have available it will

cause the system problems.

This is documented in the linux source with various Documentation/*

files such as boot.txt, kernel-parameters.txt, and memory.txt.



A very good resource for ThinkPads is the ThinkWiki.



*http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:770



Bob


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)



iD8DBQFIfu5J0pRcO8E2ULYRAn54AJ9yqSvV2rmCPpXNIXFrIb h2ho5EpwCfTw6+

y/gvX18eyg1tRYZI1vGDQb4=

=AhpL

-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Another thought, I'm using the default kernel that comes with Debian. Would I have better success with a custom compiled one that is for the Pentium chip in the system?

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 1:15 AM, Isaac MacFarlane <spideyfan1972@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, I was going by the System Monitor that is included with GNOME. The cat /proc/meminfo results in a MemTotal of 224436 kb. When I try the mem=288M it gives me an Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory. I find that puzzling since the BIOS reports the full 288M. Running dmidecode shows that the maximum memory for the system is actually 384M, but I don't have another chip to put in and I don't think that would be worthwhile anyway unless I can get this figured out. I actually know about the thinkwiki site. It helped me solve my audio problems, but there is very little info on there about memory issues. I'm beginning to wonder if I need to update the BIOS or maybe dmidecode is wrong about this system. It hasn't been wrong on other systems I used it with, but this could be a quirk of the IBM system.



On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 1:01 AM, Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:


Isaac MacFarlane wrote:

> Hello all. I have 288MB installed in my system and the BIOS does see it all,

> but Debian is only recoginizing 220MB.



What indicators show only 220M of memory? *This problem sounds very

unusual to me. *Also 288M seems like a lot of memory for the 770.



After boot the 'dmesg' command will report memory information. *That

information will be logged in the /var/log/dmesg file. *What

information is logged there?

Here is a sample from one of my systems:



*BIOS-provided physical RAM map:

* BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)

* BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)

* BIOS-e820: 00000000000e0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)

* BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000007000000 (usable)

* BIOS-e820: 00000000fffe0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)

*112MB LOWMEM available.

*...

*Memory: 106320k/114688k available (1499k kernel code, 7864k reserved, 599k data, 256k init, 0k highmem)



It would be useful to see the output from /proc/meminfo.

In particular what does MemTotal show? *In the above system with 112M

the system shows the following.



*cat /proc/meminfo



*MemTotal: * * * 110940 kB



> I tried adding a boot parameter in GRUB using the mem command, but I

> ended up with only 64MB after booting. The command was:

>

> mem=68M@220M

>

> I may be misunderstanding the syntax and have things totally wrong. In fact,

> I would say that is likely considering the results. I appreciate any help

> you can provide.



You probably want to try something more like this instead:



*mem=288M



But if tell it more memory than you actually have available it will

cause the system problems.

This is documented in the linux source with various Documentation/*

files such as boot.txt, kernel-parameters.txt, and memory.txt.



A very good resource for ThinkPads is the ThinkWiki.



*http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:770



Bob


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)



iD8DBQFIfu5J0pRcO8E2ULYRAn54AJ9yqSvV2rmCPpXNIXFrIb h2ho5EpwCfTw6+

y/gvX18eyg1tRYZI1vGDQb4=

=AhpL

-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 10:15:24PM -0600, Isaac MacFarlane wrote:
>
> Hello all. I have 288MB installed in my system and the BIOS does see
> it all, but Debian is only recoginizing 220MB. I tried adding a boot

likely it's reclaimed by the video system, seems it's ~64MB shared video
RAM.

-- pp


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-laptop-REQUEST@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org

Not on this system. It has a discrete video system builtin that has it's own memory.

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 2:48 AM, Paolo <oopla@users.sf.net> wrote:

On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 10:15:24PM -0600, Isaac MacFarlane wrote:

>

> * *Hello all. I have 288MB installed in my system and the BIOS does see

> * *it all, but Debian is only recoginizing 220MB. I tried adding a boot



likely it's reclaimed by the video system, seems it's ~64MB shared video

RAM.



-- pp





--

To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-laptop-REQUEST@lists.debian.org

with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org

Isaac MacFarlane wrote:
> The cat /proc/meminfo results in a MemTotal of 224436 kb.

Okay.

> When I try the mem=288M it gives me an Error 28: Selected item
> cannot fit into memory.

I believe that is a grub error. Grub doesn't believe there is that
much memory present.

> I find that puzzling since the BIOS reports the full 288M.

About the only suggestion I have left is to try running memtest.
Perhaps there is perhaps a bad memory dimm in the machine? Just
guessing but perhaps the memory is present but that it has errors?

Bob

I'll try that. It is worth a shot,but the BIOS test doesn't show any errors. One thing does occur to me. The modules I put in were PC133 not PC66. In theory, they should be backward compatible, but maybe they aren't fully. Does anyone have any experience with that sort of thing?


On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 9:25 PM, Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:

Isaac MacFarlane wrote:

> The cat /proc/meminfo results in a MemTotal of 224436 kb.



Okay.



> When I try the mem=288M it gives me an Error 28: Selected item

> cannot fit into memory.



I believe that is a grub error. *Grub doesn't believe there is that

much memory present.



> I find that puzzling since the BIOS reports the full 288M.



About the only suggestion I have left is to try running memtest.

Perhaps there is perhaps a bad memory dimm in the machine? *Just

guessing but perhaps the memory is present but that it has errors?



Bob


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)



iD8DBQFIgA0Z0pRcO8E2ULYRAlUtAJ9usnE6o0GjIfUvwX4cqg aQzFai+wCggCiR

NHf/yln+225plYz/TuHtTFw=

=rIB6

-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Did you mixed PC66 and PC133?

PC66 specifications are more strict than PC133. It could be problems iff
you've got an strict motherboard or you're mixing both standards.

El jue, 17-07-2008 a las 23:08 -0600, Isaac MacFarlane escribió:
> I'll try that. It is worth a shot,but the BIOS test doesn't show any
> errors. One thing does occur to me. The modules I put in were PC133
> not PC66. In theory, they should be backward compatible, but maybe
> they aren't fully. Does anyone have any experience with that sort of
> thing?
>

Regards,

Pedro

--
Pedro Martínez Juliá
pedromj@gmail.com
)| WebLog: http://www.pedromj.com/blog
/ Página web: http://www.pedromj.com
GoogleTalk: pedromj@gmail.com
Socio HispaLinux #311
Usuario Linux #275438 - http://counter.li.org
GPG Fingerprint: 488C 393E B2BD 998E 8998 3DF0 5293 B7A2 8EB7 9852


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-laptop-REQUEST@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org