From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 14 Jan 2003 09:31:06 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 14 Jan 2003 09:31:06 -0500 Received: from ns.tasking.nl ([195.193.207.2]:44036 "EHLO ns.tasking.nl") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Tue, 14 Jan 2003 09:31:05 -0500 Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 15:38:54 +0100 From: Dick Streefland To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: 2.4.19 - 2.4.20 : Boot parameter MEM= doesn't work anymore Message-ID: <20030114143854.GA4289@altium.nl> References: <20030114133944.GB8978@efrei.fr> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030114133944.GB8978@efrei.fr> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.27i Organization: Altium BV, Amersfoort, The Netherlands X-Subliminal-Message: Use Linux! Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tuesday 2003-01-14 14:39, Guillaume Allard wrote: | Hi | It seems that the boot parameter MEM= doesn't work anymore with the | kernel 2.4.19 and 2.4.20. | This parameter allows to force the amount of RAM for old computer that | linux kernel doesn't found. | | I am using a debian woody with lilo 22.2. | The computer is an old compaq with a pentium 150MHz and 64Mb of memory. | The kernel only see 16Mb of memory. | | Here you can find the kernel boot messages, we can see that the kernel | receve the parameters (Kernel command line: auto BOOT_IMAGE=Linux ro | root=802 mem=64M) but that it doesn't work (Memory: 13608k/16384k | available (1327k kernel code, 2388k reserved, 410k data, 256k init, 0k | highmem). For some reason, the interpretation of the mem= kernel parameter was changed. I ran into this myself. The value is now used to limit the memory size, not overrule it. There is a different syntax for adding memory. One of my computers has 128 Mb, of which only 64 Mb are detected. I had to add the "mem=63m@65m" kernel parameter, resulting in: BIOS-provided physical RAM map: BIOS-88: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable) BIOS-88: 0000000000100000 - 00000000040ffc00 (usable) 128MB LOWMEM available. On node 0 totalpages: 32768 zone(0): 4096 pages. zone(1): 28672 pages. zone(2): 0 pages. Unfortunately, this is not documented. Look at arch/i386/kernel/setup.c for details. -- Dick Streefland //// Altium BV dick.streefland@altium.nl (@ @) http://www.altium.com --------------------------------oOO--(_)--OOo---------------------------