9

I'm running Debian Squeeze (x64):

# uname -srvmo
Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 #1 SMP Mon Jan 16 16:22:28 UTC 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I have 2 compatible 2 GB sticks of DDR2 in my G31M-S motherboard. It supports up to 8GB:

enter image description here

Since this is a server, I don't really care about graphics. So I set it to the lowest.

Internal Graphics Mode Select: Auto
                               Enabled, 1MB   <--
                               Enabled, 8MB
DVMT Mode Select:              Fixed Mode     <--
                               Auto
    DVMT/FIXED Memory:         128MB          <--
                               256MB

enter image description here

However, Linux is only detecting 3.19GiB of memory:

# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:        3350712 kB
...

Looking at the E820 map:

[    0.000000] BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f800 (usable)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 000000000009f800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000000e6000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000cfdb0000 (usable)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000cfdb0000 - 00000000cfdc0000 (ACPI data)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000cfdc0000 - 00000000cfdf0000 (ACPI NVS)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000cfdf0000 - 00000000cfe00000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000fed00000 - 00000000fed00400 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000ff380000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
[    0.000000] DMI present.
[    0.000000] AMI BIOS detected: BIOS may corrupt low RAM, working around it.
[    0.000000] e820 update range: 0000000000000000 - 0000000000010000 (usable) ==> (reserved)

And doing a little math:

>>> ((0x9F800 - 0x10000) + (0xCF6B0000 - 0x100000)) / 1024.0 / 1024.0 / 1024.0
3.240476608276367

We get just about the same answer.

What am I missing?

I'm not completely buying the "PCI address space" argument. Taking one of the two 2GB sticks out, the setup screen shows 2048MB.

# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:        2058432 kB

That's 1.96GB.

E820 map again:

[    0.000000] BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f800 (usable)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 000000000009f800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000000e6000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000007fdb0000 (usable)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 000000007fdb0000 - 000000007fdc0000 (ACPI data)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 000000007fdc0000 - 000000007fdf0000 (ACPI NVS)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 000000007fdf0000 - 000000007fe00000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000fed00000 - 00000000fed00400 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000ff380000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
[    0.000000] DMI present.
[    0.000000] AMI BIOS detected: BIOS may corrupt low RAM, working around it.
[    0.000000] e820 update range: 0000000000000000 - 0000000000010000 (usable) ==> (reserved)

And the math...

>>> ((0x9F800 - 0x10000) + (0x7fdb0000 - 0x100000)) / 1024.0 / 1024.0 / 1024.0
1.9973125457763672

So I got 2GB / 2GB. /proc/cpuinfo shows that my processor supports 36-bit physical addressing. 2^36 = 64GB, which I'm not even close to.

# ./smem -R 4G -w
Area                           Used      Cache   Noncache
firmware/hardware            843592          0     843592
kernel image                      0          0          0
kernel dynamic memory        181116     134616      46500
userspace memory             287784      19736     268048
free memory                 2881812    2881812          0
Jonathon Reinhart
  • 3,514

3 Answers3

5

PCI also uses some of the address space. Both PCI cards and PCI devices build into the motherboard (such as the chipset).

Usually this meant that out of 4GB only 3¼ to 3½ GB was available, even if you did not use a modern GPU with a lot of onboard RAM.

Hennes
  • 65,804
  • 7
  • 115
  • 169
5

You need to turn Memory Remapping ON in the BIOS. Otherwise, it won't remap memory above the 4GB boundary and some memory will be covered up by hardware mappings.

David Schwartz
  • 62,365
2

Your missing RAM is used by the firmware:

# ./smem -R 4G -w
Area                           Used      Cache   Noncache
firmware/hardware            843592          0     843592
kernel image                      0          0          0
kernel dynamic memory        181116     134616      46500
userspace memory             287784      19736     268048
free memory                 2881812    2881812          0

Summing up:

echo $((181116 + 287784 + 2881812 + 843592))
4194304

So you see, it sums up to 4GB. And here's the ~ 800M you report missing:

firmware/hardware            843592          0     843592
Izzy
  • 3,775