No big problems after high mem support was compiled in - no need to
specify boot flags or anything of the like. Only a cosmetic problem -
when creating the login message (/etc/rc.d/rc.local) using linux_logo -
the available RAM comes out to be 512M instead of 1024M (which is
correctly reported in /proc/meminfo). So, I created a patch against the
latest version of linux_logo. I only patched the PPC specific file
because I don't have an x86 machine w/ 1G of RAM! Apparently the
problem is the way linux_logo goes about determining the RAM size (stat
/proc/kcore). I'm not sure why kcore is only 512M, didn't look too deep
into that, but in any case - it is. So, I kept the bit about statting
kcore and added a look into /proc/meminfo to see what was being reported
as 'high memory' (HighTotal:) and added that in.
I imagine this is prone to bugs, though I don't have a diverse number of
systems to test against!
In any case - (Stew) - the patch is attached. I integrated the patch
into the .spec file, and created an RPM for those of you out there who'd
like it - but I'm not sure how to create a src.rpm now. If someone
would like to enlighten me, I'd be happy to learn :)
download location: http://www.webprojkt.com/mandrake.html
Cheers,
Brice
Brice D Ruth wrote:
> Hi there. Back again with some news.
>
> I recently got my new memory (2 sticks of 512MB each) for my iMac DV
> (memory is so incredibly inexpensive now!). I installed the memory &
> booted into Linux - only to find that only 512MB was detected. Damn.
> My first thought was that it was a hardware problem - maybe my iMac
> wasn't *really* capable of handling 1G of memory. So, I booted into
> MacOS (native) - and it saw 1G of memory, no hardware problem here,
> apparently. Rebooted and somehow OS 9.1 had scrambled my bootstrap,
> because I only got a '?' folder - then a boot into MacOS :( - this
> happened before and I knew how to take care of it - boot into rescue
> from the CD and chroot/ybin - no problem. Except that apparently the
> kernel on the CD (2.2.19) can't handle having that much memory around
> - I didn't really know what to do at first, then I hit on some notes
> and booted into rescue mode with the flag 'mem=128M' - which worked
> fine. I did my thing and got back into Linux. I supplied my
> 2.4.4-6.2 kernel with the flag 'mem=1024M' - but it still didn't see
> the 1G of memory, only 512MB. So, I'm recompiling the kernel w/ High
> Memory Support enabled - hopefully that's what I need and hopefully it
> works well on Mandrake PPC :)
>
> I'll report back if I have any problems - just wanted to throw this
> out in case (a) anyone else runs into the problem or (b) you want to
> specify something in the install instructions or modify the boot
> kernel in some way shape or form to automagically figure this out.
> Basically an FYI like the subject says :)
>
> -Brice
>
linux_logo-mem.patch.bz2
