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128M memory

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Mathew E. Kirsch

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Sep 8, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/8/97
to Chih-chang Lin

Chih-chang Lin wrote:

> Please recommend high-end PCI motherboards which can
> support Linux Slackware 3.0 with more than 128 Mbytes Memory.
> My current PCI motherboard (Intel Atlantis) has 128 Mbytes memory,
> but Linux can only recongize 64M.

That's an oversight by Linux programmers. Linux uses an old BIOS call
that can only report up to 64M, but a new BIOS call has existed for some
time now that can return up to 4G of memory, I believe.

The new development kernels use this new call, but current kernels and
old ones (like 1.2.13 in Slackware 3.0) use the old call.

The solution is to add this to your /etc/lilo.conf:

append="mem=128M"

Then, re-run LILO to write the changes to disk.

Chih-chang Lin

unread,
Sep 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/14/97
to

Dear All,

Please recommend high-end PCI motherboards which can
support Linux Slackware 3.0 with more than 128 Mbytes Memory.
My current PCI motherboard (Intel Atlantis) has 128 Mbytes memory,
but Linux can only recongize 64M.

Thanks in advance!
------
Chih-chang Lin
San Jose

Cliff

unread,
Sep 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/15/97
to

Chih-chang Lin (lin...@violin.ece.ucsb.edu) wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Please recommend high-end PCI motherboards which can
> support Linux Slackware 3.0 with more than 128 Mbytes Memory.
> My current PCI motherboard (Intel Atlantis) has 128 Mbytes memory,
> but Linux can only recongize 64M.

Just specify to LILO how much memoty you have

i think its just

lilo: <image name> mem=128

something like that, see the lilo man page

Its not your motherboard im sure...


-- Cliff Wakefield

**********************************************************************
* Masters Student(Info Tech) * http://zulu.cs.rmit.edu.au/~cliff/ *
* WeBTESt Admin/Programmer * http://zulu.cs.rmit.edu.au/webtest *
* Distributed Lab Admin(Zulu)* Redhat Linux v4.2, Kernel 2.0.30 *
* CS109 Tutor, CS280 Staff * "Reboots are for upgrades!" *
**********************************************************************
* Office 251.2.33 Phone 9407-6131 Mobile 0411110687 *
**********************************************************************

Mark Heath

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Sep 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/15/97
to

Cliff (cl...@yallara.cs.rmit.edu.au) wrote:

: i think its just

: lilo: <image name> mem=128

Hi cliff !! I actually have this much memory now ;-)
the command is:

mem=131072

--
-- mark heath - Netspace Online Systems. http://www.netspace.net.au/
:wq

Nick Andrew

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Sep 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/15/97
to

>Please recommend high-end PCI motherboards which can
>support Linux Slackware 3.0 with more than 128 Mbytes Memory.
>My current PCI motherboard (Intel Atlantis) has 128 Mbytes memory,
>but Linux can only recongize 64M.

In /etc/lilo.conf:

append="mem=128M"

If you want to put up to 384MB on a motherboard, try ASUS P/I-P55T2P4S.

Nick.
--
Kralizec / Zeta Microcomputer Software Fax: +61-2-9233-6545 Voice: 9837-1397
G.P.O. Box 3400, Sydney NSW 1043 http://www.zeta.org.au/

Todd Anderson

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Sep 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/15/97
to

Nick Andrew (ni...@zeta.org.au) wrote:

: In /etc/lilo.conf:

: append="mem=128M"

If you want to put up to 512MB go with the Tyan Tomcat 3 or 4....
if you want to put up to 1024MB go with the Tyan Titan AT or ATX for Pent Pro

Todd Anderson

Donovan Ready

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Sep 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/15/97
to

The Asus P55T2P4 will run 512Mb, The P65UP5 will run 1Gb.
--

Donovan Ready,
Lindsay Computer Systems
http://www.jumpnet.com/~lcs

Graham Philip Crowe

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Sep 16, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/16/97
to

Chih-chang Lin (lin...@violin.ece.ucsb.edu) wrote:
: Dear All,

: Please recommend high-end PCI motherboards which can


: support Linux Slackware 3.0 with more than 128 Mbytes Memory.
: My current PCI motherboard (Intel Atlantis) has 128 Mbytes memory,
: but Linux can only recongize 64M.

I am running a Tyan Tomcat which supports up to 512M on board

Michael James

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Sep 16, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/16/97
to

Josh Yelon wrote:
>
> Does MS-DOS automatically recognize more than 64meg of ram? If so,
> how? And could linux do the same thing?
>
> - Josh

The problem is with lilo not linux. Linux gets several bits of
information
from lilo when booting hd specs, ram, etc.

Does DOS see >64MB I think so.

--
Anti spam email address == ro...@127.0.0.1

Email: q9722124~mail/connect/usq/edu/au

Josh Yelon

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Sep 16, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/16/97
to

Johan Kullstam

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Sep 16, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/16/97
to

In comp.os.linux Michael James <ro...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
:Josh Yelon wrote:
:> Does MS-DOS automatically recognize more than 64meg of ram? If so,


:> how? And could linux do the same thing?

:The problem is with lilo not linux. Linux gets several bits of


:information
:from lilo when booting hd specs, ram, etc.

:Does DOS see >64MB I think so.

ms-dos has a hard time with more than 640K! ;-)

the problem is that the BIOS doesn't see more than 64M.

just tack on that `append "mem=128M"' or whatever it is for your
system. while autodetection would be preferable, this workaround
isn't so bad. after all, how often do you change the amount of ram
you have?

--
Johan Kullstam [joh...@idt.net]

Mark Hahn

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Sep 16, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/16/97
to

: the problem is that the BIOS doesn't see more than 64M.

well, not quite: the bios call that linux uses to query memory size
simply cannot express >64M. later kernels improve on this.

regards, mark hahn.
--
operator may differ from spokesperson. ha...@neurocog.lrdc.pitt.edu
http://neurocog.lrdc.pitt.edu/~hahn/

ilya@home

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Sep 16, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/16/97
to

Chih-chang Lin wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> Please recommend high-end PCI motherboards which can
> support Linux Slackware 3.0 with more than 128 Mbytes Memory.
> My current PCI motherboard (Intel Atlantis) has 128 Mbytes memory,
> but Linux can only recongize 64M.
>

> Thanks in advance!
> ------
> Chih-chang Lin
> San Jose

If you are using lilo to boot, edit your lilo.conf, and add the
following line in the global section:
append="mem=128M"
Then reinstall lilo.
May be this will solve your problem. (To check , call top)
Good luck

Mark Heath

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Sep 17, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/17/97
to

Mark Hahn (ha...@neurocog.lrdc.pitt.edu) wrote:

: : the problem is that the BIOS doesn't see more than 64M.

: well, not quite: the bios call that linux uses to query memory size
: simply cannot express >64M. later kernels improve on this.

This is the problem with the old BIOS calls, could only pass max 64meg.
Of course new ones had to written when this limit was broken. Older
linux kernels still use the old bios calls.

FreeBSD has the same problem and the amount of memory has to be compiled
into the kernel. The FreeBSD manual says If the memory detection
routines used the new bios calls the freebsd loader wouldn't fit in the
boot block.

--
-- mark heath - Netspace Online Systems. http://www.netspace.net.au/

Obnoxious Usenet Habits #10. Reacquaint the readers of aus.jokes with the
"why did the chicken cross the road" joke.
:wq


Mark Heath

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Sep 17, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/17/97
to

Todd Anderson (tan...@news.ori.net) wrote:

: if you want to put up to 1024MB go with the Tyan Titan AT or ATX for Pent Pro

Im just about to purchase a tyan 1662 (dual PPro) it has 8 simms sockets.

Im not aware that 128M 72pin simms exist. Yet Tyan claims 1024M... 128M
simms must exist? correct?

--
-- mark heath - Netspace Online Systems. http://www.netspace.net.au/

Obnoxious Usenet Habits #9. Ask readers of rec.music.misc to post their
favorite Zeppelin tune "for a poll".
:wq

Dan Cook

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Sep 17, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/17/97
to

On Tue, 16 Sep 1997 21:28:41 -0700, ilya@home <il...@tamri.com> wrote:
>Chih-chang Lin wrote:
>
>If you are using lilo to boot, edit your lilo.conf, and add the
>following line in the global section:
>append="mem=128M"
>Then reinstall lilo.
>May be this will solve your problem. (To check , call top)

On the other hand, after you do this your system could fail to boot and
you could cry. I should know. I did what you said above and that's what
happened to me. So, the above just could be some rather 'incomplete' advice
(to put it politely).

The exact number one should put in lilo.conf is the number one's bios reports
at bootup. In my case, this is 130688k. So, the line append="mem=130688k"
works for me. append="mem=128M" caused lilo to report that the kernel image
was corrupt and would not decompress, followed by a HALT. It did that for
my backup kernel too and for all kernels. I was truely screwed. I drove
across town and got a standalone boot floppy from my brother, booted up
with it, and removed the append line from my lilo.conf. Ah, that was better.

- Dan

Bradley Broom

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Sep 17, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/17/97
to

Mark Heath wrote:

> Im not aware that 128M 72pin simms exist. Yet Tyan claims 1024M... 128M
> simms must exist? correct?

I've seen them advertised in the classified section at the back
of Australian Personal Computer. Price per bit is a lot more
than for 32M simms, but that might change in a year or two ...


Bradley Broom

Ian COWELL

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Sep 18, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/18/97
to

This topic has been discussed at length in most Linux news
groups.

Please read the BootPrompt-HOWTO where in section 3.3 (html
version), to quote:

NOTE NOTE NOTE: some machines might use the top of memory for BIOS
cacheing or whatever, so you might not
actually have up to the full 96MB addressable. The reverse is also true:
some chipsets will map the physical memory
that is covered by the BIOS area into the area just past the top of
memory, so the top-of-mem might actually be 96MB
+ 384kB for example. If you tell linux that it has more memory than it
actually does have, bad things will happen: maybe
not at once, but surely eventually.''
End of quote.

That is, Dan is correct to raise the note of caution.
We are all guilty at times of "when all else fails read the
instruction manual" -- or in this case the HOWTO.

There are many different configurations of Personel Computers
and it is difficult to cover all cases. That is why we need
these newsgroups. But when it is covered in the available
documentation...

By the way that documentation is available from the Linux
Documentation Project (LDP) site is at:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/
with mirror sites listed at:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/hmirrors.html

From the LDP page there is:
Installation and Getting Started Guide, version 2.3 by
Matt Welsh, is available in HTML (online), HTML (tared and
gziped), plain text, DVI, PostScript and PDF.
Note: version 2.2.2 and 2.3 are identical except for the
copyright.

The Linux HOWTO documents are at:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX-3.html
Just replace the sunsite.unc.edu with your mirror site. For example:
http://www.localnet.com.au/LDP/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX-3.html


Followup set to: comp.os.linux.setup
--
Ian Cowell
ico...@mpce.mq.edu.au
----------------------

o r c e l l . p o r t l a n d . o r . u s

unread,
Sep 18, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/18/97
to

In article <341E532B...@127.0.0.1>,

Michael James <ro...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>Josh Yelon wrote:
>>
>> Does MS-DOS automatically recognize more than 64meg of ram? If so,
>> how? And could linux do the same thing?
>>
>> - Josh

>
>The problem is with lilo not linux.

Nope. Look in arch/i386/boot/setup.S; the kernel does an
int15,ah=088h call to get memory size, and that call returns the
memory size in kbytes in a 16-bit register, thus no more than 64mb.
2.1.x (x>23) supports a better memory detection scheme that uses a
modern bios call that works on most of the hardware out there and
returns the correct amount of memory (except for Compaq EISA
machines, where it LIES through its teeth) and you can get patches to
put this memory detection scheme into earlier Linuxes from (formerly
linuxhq :-() and from http://www.pell.chi.il.us/~orc/memory.html

____
david parsons \bi/ lots of machines with >64mb memory.
\/

o r c e l l . p o r t l a n d . o r . u s

unread,
Sep 18, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/18/97
to

In article <5vnneq$3b8$4...@otis.netspace.net.au>,

Mark Heath <mhe...@netspace.net.au> wrote:
>Mark Hahn (ha...@neurocog.lrdc.pitt.edu) wrote:
>
>: : the problem is that the BIOS doesn't see more than 64M.
>
>: well, not quite: the bios call that linux uses to query memory size
>: simply cannot express >64M. later kernels improve on this.

>FreeBSD has the same problem and the amount of memory has to be compiled

>into the kernel. The FreeBSD manual says If the memory detection
>routines used the new bios calls the freebsd loader wouldn't fit in the
>boot block.

Which is somewhat odd, because it looks like with a little bit of
tightening up of the various prompts it gives, you could pretty easily
fit the additional code in (I count about 30 bytes additional in this
patch to /usr/src/sys/i386/boot/biosboot; you could get that back by
pulling the `use wd(...' line from the boot prompt; it doesn't seem
like that much of a sacrifice to have for getting memory detection.
I don't run FreeBSD, alas (my last freeBSD machine snuffed it when
it complained bitterly about being a test machine on the inside of
a test WebShield box; it is not Yet Another Orcware Linux machine),
but I did do a memory patch for it, which some bold person might
want to patch into their system and see what happens:

*** bios.S~ Thu Sep 18 23:09:59 1997
--- bios.S Thu Sep 18 23:15:26 1997
***************
*** 308,315 ****
push %ebp
mov %esp, %ebp
push %ebx

! mov 8(%ebp), %ebx

call EXT(prot_to_real) /* enter real mode */

--- 308,317 ----
push %ebp
mov %esp, %ebp
push %ebx
+ push %ecx
+ push %edx

! mov 16(%ebp), %ebx

call EXT(prot_to_real) /* enter real mode */

***************
*** 323,340 ****
data32
jmp xdone

! xext: movb $0x88, %ah
sti
! int $0x15
cli

xdone:
mov %eax, %ebx
!
data32
call EXT(real_to_prot)

mov %ebx, %eax
pop %ebx
pop %ebp
ret
--- 325,359 ----
data32
jmp xdone

! xext:
!
! mov $0xe801, %ax
sti
! int $0x15
cli
+ jc xoldstylemem
+
+ and $0xffff, %ebx ! clear sign extend
+ shl $6, %ebx ! and go from 64k to 1k chunks
+
+ and $0xffff, %eax ! clear sign extend
+ add %eax, %ebx
+ jmp xfinis

+ xoldstylemem:
+ movb $0x88, %ah
+ sti
+ int $0x15
+ cli
xdone:
mov %eax, %ebx
! xfinis:
data32
call EXT(real_to_prot)

mov %ebx, %eax
+ pop %edx
+ pop %ecx
pop %ebx
pop %ebp
ret


____
david parsons \bi/ clean and simple horrific kludges 'R us.
\/

John Saunders

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Sep 19, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/19/97
to

Mathew E. Kirsch <kir...@wycol.com> wrote:

> Chih-chang Lin wrote:
>
> > Please recommend high-end PCI motherboards which can
> > support Linux Slackware 3.0 with more than 128 Mbytes Memory.
> > My current PCI motherboard (Intel Atlantis) has 128 Mbytes memory,
> > but Linux can only recongize 64M.
>
> That's an oversight by Linux programmers. Linux uses an old BIOS call
> that can only report up to 64M, but a new BIOS call has existed for some
> time now that can return up to 4G of memory, I believe.
>
> The new development kernels use this new call, but current kernels and
> old ones (like 1.2.13 in Slackware 3.0) use the old call.

I previously had a Gigabyte motherboard with 128M of RAM. Linux would
only use 64M unless I used the LILO trick. Then I upgraded to a Tycan
Tomcat III dual CPU motherboard. Image my surprise that Linux now
managed to detect the 128M all on it's own with any LILO help. This
was with Kernel 2.0.27. Possibly the "new" BIOS call was broken on
the Gigabyte?

> append="mem=128M"

Tip 'o the day: While searching for this I also found append="panic=30"
which is handy to use for unattended servers. Causes kernel panics to
auto-reboot after 30 seconds.

Cheers.
-- +------------------------------------------------------------+
. | John Saunders mailto:John.S...@scitec.com.au (Work) |
,--_|\ | mailto:jo...@nlc.net.au (Home) |
/ Oz \ | http://www.nlc.net.au/~john/ |
\_,--\_/ | SCITEC LIMITED Phone +61 2 9428 9563 Fax +61 2 9428 9933 |
v | "By the time you make ends meet, they move the ends." |
+------------------------------------------------------------+

Chih-chang Lin

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Sep 19, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/19/97
to

Dear All,

I have a Brother MFC 4550 FAX printer.
It works fine as a printer on window95.
However, I have trouble to install it on Linux.
I can type lpr and lpq without seeing error message.
But nothing comes out from the printer.
Please advise if you have a solution!

Thanks in advance!
------
Chih-chang Lin
San Jose

--
Chih-chang Lin

Andrew Fidel

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Sep 19, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/19/97
to

Graham Philip Crowe wrote:
>
> Chih-chang Lin (lin...@violin.ece.ucsb.edu) wrote:
> : Dear All,
>
> : Please recommend high-end PCI motherboards which can

> : support Linux Slackware 3.0 with more than 128 Mbytes Memory.
> : My current PCI motherboard (Intel Atlantis) has 128 Mbytes memory,
> : but Linux can only recongize 64M.
>
> I am running a Tyan Tomcat which supports up to 512M on board
try disabling the memory hole at 64 MB option in your BIOS. some MB's
support this for OS/2 and it accidentaly get turned on.

Andrew Fidel

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Sep 19, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/19/97
to

mac...@s03-pm09.snwestsac.campus.mci.net

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Sep 23, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/23/97
to

What is the story on memory caching above the 64 meg memory threshold?
I have heard this is supported by some PCI chipsets.

Mathew E. Kirsch

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Sep 23, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/23/97
to mac...@s03-pm09.snwestsac.campus.mci.net

The Triton HX is the only one that caches more than 64MB that I know of.
At least it's the only Intel chipset that does.

This isn't a problem with PPro and P2 processors, since the L2 cache is
on the CPU itself, independent of the motherboard's control.

Rod Smith

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Sep 23, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/23/97
to mac...@s03-pm09.snwestsac.campus.mci.net

mac...@s03-pm09.snwestsac.campus.mci.net wrote:
>
> What is the story on memory caching above the 64 meg memory threshold?
> I have heard this is supported by some PCI chipsets.

The Intel TX and, I believe, VX, chipsets do *NOT* support cacheing more
than 64MB of RAM. The Intel HX chipset and VIA Apollo VP-2 *DO* support
it, though I don't know precisely what their limits are. Also, boards
using the Intel HX and VIA VP-2 may or may not IMPLEMENT this feature; a
specific board can cripple itself in this respect, so it's wise to check
with the board manufacturer or with other users of a specific model
before buying, if this is important to you.

--
--Rod Smith
rods...@linc.cis.upenn.edu

Graham Philip Crowe

unread,
Sep 24, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/24/97
to

mac...@s03-pm09.snwestsac.campus.mci.net wrote:
: What is the story on memory caching above the 64 meg memory threshold?
: I have heard this is supported by some PCI chipsets.

--
I have a Tyan Tomcat board with 128MB and want to have the second 64 cached as
well. All I need to do this is the second tag ram.

Any hints as to where to get this from?????

jtu...@wcc.net

unread,
Sep 24, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/24/97
to

On Tue, 23 Sep 1997 12:29:12 -0400, "Mathew E. Kirsch"
<kir...@wycol.com> wrote:

>mac...@s03-pm09.snwestsac.campus.mci.net wrote:
>
> > What is the story on memory caching above the 64 meg memory
>threshold?
> > I have heard this is supported by some PCI chipsets.
>

>The Triton HX is the only one that caches more than 64MB that I know of.
>At least it's the only Intel chipset that does.
>
>This isn't a problem with PPro and P2 processors, since the L2 cache is
>on the CPU itself, independent of the motherboard's control.


Most of the chipsets from VIA, SIS, and AMD also cache more than 64
Meg. The VIA VP2/97 (which is them same as the AMD 640) is supposed to
be very high in performance, caches all the memory on the mother
board, and supports up to 1 meg of cache ram. Might want to check out
VIA's web site. Have used mother boards with their chipset before, and
the work very well.

Ann Conn

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Sep 24, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/24/97
to

Graham Philip Crowe wrote:
>
> mac...@s03-pm09.snwestsac.campus.mci.net wrote:
> : What is the story on memory caching above the 64 meg memory threshold?
> : I have heard this is supported by some PCI chipsets.
>
> --
> I have a Tyan Tomcat board with 128MB and want to have the second 64 cached as
> well. All I need to do this is the second tag ram.
>
> Any hints as to where to get this from?????

You should be able to get this from any competent mobo dealer, it is
simply an SRAM DIP chip, 15ns or faster, often 32kx8. Check with
www.aberdeeninc.com to see what they can do for you.
.B.

Thomas A. Kyle

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Sep 26, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/26/97
to

On Tue, 23 Sep 1997, Mathew E. Kirsch wrote:

> mac...@s03-pm09.snwestsac.campus.mci.net wrote:
>
> > What is the story on memory caching above the 64 meg memory
> threshold?
> > I have heard this is supported by some PCI chipsets.
>

> The Triton HX is the only one that caches more than 64MB that I know of.
> At least it's the only Intel chipset that does.

The upcoming VIA/AMD chipset will also cache more than 64mb (with 2mb L2
cache I think it can take 256mb, maybe more)...I'm pretty sure Micron's
new Samurai chipset will as well....

It's a shame that Asus is dropping their best HX board, the T2P4...I
can't say I like the TX's RAM limitations...

Tom


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem. Tom Kyle
http://www.inlink.com/~rkyle/tomsweb/tom.html tom...@umsl.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Grahame Jordan

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Sep 29, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/29/97
to

--------------3EAA758129BD8DC94B1D05FD
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hi!

There is a parameter you can pass to lilo or use kernel 2.0.30 eg RH4.2.

I have 96MB of ram and a Tyan TomcatII. works fine.

Grahame

Andrew Fidel wrote:

--
"Do or do not; There is no try"
Yoda

--------------3EAA758129BD8DC94B1D05FD
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<HTML>
Hi!

<P>There is a parameter you can pass to lilo or use kernel 2.0.30&nbsp;
eg RH4.2.
<BR>I have 96MB of ram and a Tyan TomcatII. works fine.

<P>Grahame

<P>Andrew Fidel wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE>Graham Philip Crowe wrote:
<BR>>
<BR>> Chih-chang Lin (lin...@violin.ece.ucsb.edu) wrote:
<BR>> : Dear All,
<BR>>
<BR>> : Please recommend high-end PCI motherboards which can
<BR>> : support Linux Slackware 3.0 with more than 128 Mbytes Memory.
<BR>> : My current PCI motherboard (Intel Atlantis) has 128 Mbytes memory,
<BR>> : but Linux can only recongize 64M.
<BR>>
<BR>> I am running a Tyan Tomcat which supports up to 512M on board
<BR>try disabling the memory hole at 64 MB option in your BIOS. some MB's
<BR>support this for OS/2 and it accidentaly get turned on.</BLOCKQUOTE>
&nbsp;
<PRE>--&nbsp;
"Do or do not; There is no try"
Yoda</PRE>
&nbsp;</HTML>

--------------3EAA758129BD8DC94B1D05FD--


Ross Crawford

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Oct 1, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/1/97
to

I remember reading somewhere that it's not Linux that's the problem - it's
LILO. If you're not using LILO, then obviously I'm wrong, and unfortunately
I can't put my finger on the info, but you had to add something like:

append="mem=128"

to the /etc/lilo.conf file. (Probably in the section relating to your Linux
partition). If you want, e-mail me, and I'll have a more concerted look for
the info.

Regards,

ROSCO

John Lellis

unread,
Oct 2, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/2/97
to

John Saunders (jo...@rd.scitec.com.au) wrote:

: Tip 'o the day: While searching for this I also found append="panic=30"


: which is handy to use for unattended servers. Causes kernel panics to
: auto-reboot after 30 seconds.

This is a joke, right?

--

John Lellis (lel...@dmccorp.com)

--
... Our continuing mission: To seek out knowledge of C, to explore
strange UNIX commands, and to boldly code where no one has man page 4.


mac...@s05-pm21.snwestsac.campus.mci.net

unread,
Oct 2, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/2/97
to

In article <610iqn$e...@igate.dmccorp.com>,

lel...@igate.dmccorp.com (John Lellis) writes:
> John Saunders (jo...@rd.scitec.com.au) wrote:
>
>: Tip 'o the day: While searching for this I also found append="panic=30"
>: which is handy to use for unattended servers. Causes kernel panics to
>: auto-reboot after 30 seconds.
>
> This is a joke, right?
>

Nah its a feature.

Toni Nikkanen

unread,
Oct 3, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/3/97
to

guym...@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) writes:

> I just got Linux up for the first time ever for me, and I put it
> on an Intel dual 200MHZ Pentium pro motherboard with 256 MB of RAM.
>
> What do I type to see if Linux only sees 64MB? (please use full
> detail / explain to clueless newbie mode)

dmesg|grep Memory, or free.

The Central Scrutinizer

unread,
Oct 3, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/3/97
to

Ross Crawford wrote:
>
> I remember reading somewhere that it's not Linux that's the problem - it's
> LILO. If you're not using LILO, then obviously I'm wrong, and unfortunately
> I can't put my finger on the info, but you had to add something like:
>
> append="mem=128"
>
> to the /etc/lilo.conf file. (Probably in the section relating to your Linux
> partition). If you want, e-mail me, and I'll have a more concerted look for
> the info.
>
> Regards,
>
> ROSCO

That should be append="mem=128M" otherwise it will try to load the
kernel into 128 bytes!

I did the very same thing myself earlier this week.
Regards
CMS

Matt Kirsch

unread,
Oct 3, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/3/97
to Guy Macon

Guy Macon wrote:
> I just got Linux up for the first time ever for me, and I put it
> on an Intel dual 200MHZ Pentium pro motherboard with 256 MB of RAM.

Holy crap! You've got that much system, and you don't even know if you
like Linux yet?



> What do I type to see if Linux only sees 64MB? (please use full
> detail / explain to clueless newbie mode)

With that system, you're more of a Psycho-newbie on crack :)

"dmesg | more" will show the bootup messages, including a memory count.
"top" will list memory usage. If it adds up to close to 64MB, it's only
seeing 64MB of memory.
"ls -la /proc/kcore" and look at its size. /proc/kcore is a link to main
memory. If it's only 64MB in size, it's only seeing 64MB.

As you can see, there are several ways.

Basically, if you've got more than 64MB of RAM, and you haven't added
the 'append="mem=256M"' line to your /etc/lilo.conf, you are only using
64MB of RAM for Linux.

Guy Macon

unread,
Oct 3, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/3/97
to

Chih-chang Lin (lin...@violin.ece.ucsb.edu) wrote:


> Please recommend high-end PCI motherboards which can
> support Linux Slackware 3.0 with more than 128 Mbytes Memory.
> My current PCI motherboard (Intel Atlantis) has 128 Mbytes memory,
> but Linux can only recongize 64M.

I just got Linux up for the first time ever for me, and I put it


on an Intel dual 200MHZ Pentium pro motherboard with 256 MB of RAM.

What do I type to see if Linux only sees 64MB? (please use full

Holger Lenz

unread,
Oct 4, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/4/97
to

The Central Scrutinizer wrote:

> That should be append="mem=128M" otherwise it will try to load the
> kernel into 128 bytes!

Be careful though that your BIOS doesn't snip off some memory on
top. You might have to specify 128MB - 384KB as xxxK.

FYI see the LINUX Bootprompt HOWTO with an excellent comment
by Linus on this.

regards

--
Holger J. Lenz <holge...@franken1.de> Munich, Germany
voice: +49-89-6379838

lenz@hal: rm -rf /mnt/windows

Jeff Marcks

unread,
Oct 8, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/8/97
to

Check out Tyan. I have one and it will support 1 gig of ram.

Lewis E. Wolfgang

unread,
Oct 10, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/10/97
to

It seems as if certain ROM-BIOS don't correctly report the total
of installed RAM to Linux. In my case, with 128-Mb of ram,
the BIOS reported (during setup) 127-Mb. This make sense,
1-Mb for the base, 127 for extended.

Alas, the Linux bootup message reported only 64-Mb.
(grep Memory /var/log/syslog)

The solution was to explicitly tell Linux how much ram was present
using the following entry in /etc/lilo.conf:

append = "mem=127M"

Bootup now reports "126796k/130048k available", which I don't
entirely understand, but it works.

Regards,
Lew Wolfgang

ra...@ebony.torolab.ibm.com

unread,
Oct 10, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/10/97
to

Lewis E. Wolfgang (wolf...@cx48762-a.cv1.sdca.home.com) wrote:
: Bootup now reports "126796k/130048k available", which I don't

: entirely understand, but it works.

Easy: 127*1024=130048

So, you are using 127Mb of memory. Actually, you should specify
mem=128 instead, to use the full 128Mb. Otherwise, you are wasting a
whole MB of ram.

-My opinions only


John Winters

unread,
Oct 10, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/10/97
to

In article <Pine.VMS.3.91-vms-b9.97...@HAL.LAMAR.EDU>,
KAHLA, GERALL E. <CS_...@hal.lamar.edu> wrote:

>On 3 Oct 1997, Guy Macon wrote:
>
>> Chih-chang Lin (lin...@violin.ece.ucsb.edu) wrote:
>>
>>
>> > Please recommend high-end PCI motherboards which can
>> > support Linux Slackware 3.0 with more than 128 Mbytes Memory.
>> > My current PCI motherboard (Intel Atlantis) has 128 Mbytes memory,
>> > but Linux can only recongize 64M.
>>
>> I just got Linux up for the first time ever for me, and I put it
>> on an Intel dual 200MHZ Pentium pro motherboard with 256 MB of RAM.
>>
>> What do I type to see if Linux only sees 64MB? (please use full
>> detail / explain to clueless newbie mode)
>>
>>
>>
>>
> Well, to start off, get root access. Then 'cd' into the /proc directory.
>type the following command:
>
>cat meminfo > ../data.txt

This seems an astoundingly perverse way of doing it. The only reason you
need root access is in order to write the output into a place where it's
silly to put it anyway. There's a reason why some directories are
writable only to root. Here's a better way:

$ cat /proc/meminfo

You want to be able to keep it? OK then:

$ cat /proc/meminfo >/tmp/memdata.txt

John

--
John Winters. Wallingford, Oxon, England.

Want to buy Linux CDs cheaply in the UK? Join the Linux Buyers' Consortium.
See <http://www.polo.demon.co.uk/lbc.html>

Lewis E. Wolfgang

unread,
Oct 10, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/10/97
to

ra...@ebony.torolab.ibm.com wrote:

> Lewis E. Wolfgang (wolf...@cx48762-a.cv1.sdca.home.com) wrote:
> : Bootup now reports "126796k/130048k available", which I don't
> : entirely understand, but it works.
>
> Easy: 127*1024=130048

I did'nt understand the "126796k" portion of the message.

> So, you are using 127Mb of memory. Actually, you should specify
> mem=128 instead, to use the full 128Mb. Otherwise, you are wasting a
> whole MB of ram.

I thought about this, but remain confused about the "baroque" Wintel
architecture. The ROM-BIOS claims to move portions of itself into
RAM (shadowing?) for performance reasons. I was under the impression
that other stuff was reserved between 640-Kb and 1-Mb too. Do
these reservations go away when the x86 is running in protected mode?
Does Linux use the ROM-BIOS? Does it care if it doesn't get mapped?

Not knowing about these matters, I felt that specifying 127-MB of RAM
was the safer thing to do.

Regards,
Lew Wolfgang


Guy Macon

unread,
Oct 11, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/11/97
to

In article <343FC9A1...@earthlink.net>, scar...@earthlink.net wrote:
>
>Chih-chang Lin wrote:
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I configure the Linux to have a 500M swap partition.
>> However, if I type "free" command, I see only 128M is used as swap
>> space.
>> Please suggest fix for this .
>
>IIRC, a single swap partition is limited to 128MEg. Try setting up as
>four partitions and it should work.

Three questions:

Just out of curiousity, how many of those 128M swap partitions can I have?

Is there a limit to how much RAM I can have?

Why do I read about a 16MB swap space limit? Did this change?


I am using Slackware Linux, latest version.


Chih-chang Lin

unread,
Oct 11, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/11/97
to Lewis E. Wolfgang

Hi All,

I have a HP laster Jet 5SE.
Please suggest how to setup /etc/printcap for linux.

I add the following line in /etc/printcap.
lp|lp1:lp=/dev/lp1:sd=/usr/spool/lp1:sh

For regular text, it printed the text like a stairway.
For postscript file, it printed nothing but a lot of empty pages

Thanks!
Andy Lin
San Jose

Chih-chang Lin

unread,
Oct 11, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/11/97
to lin...@violin.ece.ucsb.edu

Hi All,

I configure the Linux to have a 500M swap partition.
However, if I type "free" command, I see only 128M is used as swap
space.
Please suggest fix for this .

Thanks!
Andy Lin
San Jose

Marcus Sundberg

unread,
Oct 11, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/11/97
to

Chih-chang Lin wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I configure the Linux to have a 500M swap partition.
> However, if I type "free" command, I see only 128M is used as swap
> space.
> Please suggest fix for this .

Swap partitions can only be 128MB each in Linux.
You'll have to split it into several partitions <= 128MB.

//Marcus
--
-------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Marcus Sundberg | WWW: http://www.e.kth.se/~e94_msu/
Royal Institute of Technology | E-Mail:
Stockholm/Sweden | e94_msu-nospam-@-nospam-e.kth.se

Michael Meissner

unread,
Oct 11, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/11/97
to

guym...@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) writes:

> Is there a limit to how much RAM I can have?

8 I believe, though there has been patches floating around the kernel list to
bump it up to 16.

> Why do I read about a 16MB swap space limit? Did this change?

A long time ago (I believe 0.99, but I wasn't using Linux back then). Its
amazing how these old FAQs seem to hang around forever.

--
Michael Meissner, Cygnus Solutions (East Coast)
4th floor, 955 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
meis...@cygnus.com, 617-354-5416 (office), 617-354-7161 (fax)

Stephen Carville

unread,
Oct 11, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/11/97
to

Chih-chang Lin wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I configure the Linux to have a 500M swap partition.
> However, if I type "free" command, I see only 128M is used as swap
> space.
> Please suggest fix for this .

IIRC, a single swap partition is limited to 128MEg. Try setting up as


four partitions and it should work.

--
Stephen Carville
scar...@earthlink.net
=========================================================
Civilization, as we know it today, owes it's existence to the
engineers. These are the men who, down the long centuries, have learned
to exploit the properties of matter and the sources of power for the
benefit of mankind.
L. Sprague DeCamp
=========================================================

Craig Nelson

unread,
Oct 12, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/12/97
to

Chih-chang Lin (lin...@violin.ece.ucsb.edu) wrote:
: Hi All,
:
: I configure the Linux to have a 500M swap partition.
: However, if I type "free" command, I see only 128M is used as swap
: space.
: Please suggest fix for this .
[edit]

You must split them into multiple partitions.

One question - Why the heck do you need *500* megs of swap space?
Your box will be weighed down with so much I/O, you'll never
get anything done!

--
Craig Alan Nelson * c n e l s on [at] c l a r k [dot] n e t


Brian Olmsted

unread,
Oct 12, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/12/97
to

Guy Macon (guym...@deltanet.com) wrote:
: In article <343FC9A1...@earthlink.net>, scar...@earthlink.net wrote:
: >

: >Chih-chang Lin wrote:
: >>
: >> Hi All,
: >>
: >> I configure the Linux to have a 500M swap partition.
: >> However, if I type "free" command, I see only 128M is used as swap
: >> space.
: >> Please suggest fix for this .
: >
: >IIRC, a single swap partition is limited to 128MEg. Try setting up as

: >four partitions and it should work.

: Three questions:

: Just out of curiousity, how many of those 128M swap partitions can I have?

: Is there a limit to how much RAM I can have?

: Why do I read about a 16MB swap space limit? Did this change?


Question: Why do you need 500MB of swap space? You would be better of
spending your money on more RAM than wasting it on so much swap space,
considering that it would most likely never be used anyways.

The RAM will be limited to the size of RAM that it can take in each slot
times the number of slots (ie probably 32MB simm X 4 == 128MB)
although you can get machines that can have 384MB, 1GB of memory.

I don't know how many swap partitons you can have but that's a riduculous
amount of swap space. You can use swapfiles as well.


: I am using Slackware Linux, latest version.


--

--
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
Brian Olmsted, 4th year Honour BSc, Computer Science Dept, Brock U
bolm...@cosc.brocku.ca || bo9...@badger.ac.brocku.ca ||
bolm...@mergetel.com || bolm...@starmist.dyn.ml.org
www.cosc.brocku.ca/~bolmsted || www.mergetel.com/~bolmsted
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Shane

unread,
Oct 12, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/12/97
to

On 11 Oct 1997 21:28:26 -0400, Michael Meissner <meis...@cygnus.com>
wrote:

>guym...@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) writes:
>
>> Is there a limit to how much RAM I can have?
>

>8 I believe, though there has been patches floating around the kernel list to
>bump it up to 16.

It's 16...

>> Why do I read about a 16MB swap space limit? Did this change?
>

>A long time ago (I believe 0.99, but I wasn't using Linux back then). Its
>amazing how these old FAQs seem to hang around forever.

The problem is that there are quite a few versions floating around
that hasn't been updated thoroughly.

Shane
-- Please speak clearly into the mouse... --

Visit http://home.earthlink.net/~webspot/

Andy Adler

unread,
Oct 12, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/12/97
to

Craig Nelson (cne...@127.0.0.1) wrote:
: One question - Why the heck do you need *500* megs of swap space?
: Your box will be weighed down with so much I/O, you'll never
: get anything done!

There are _plenty_ of good reasons for lots of swap space,
such as a decent 3D finite element model.

Just because the kind of applications you have doesn't need that
doesn't mean nobody does...

_____________________________________________________________________
Andy Adler, | Pulmonary Physiology Unit | Lab 303-398-1626
adlera at njc org | National Jewish Center,Denver,USA | Fax 303-398-1607

For the Snark _was_ a Boojum, you see. -Lewis Carroll

Robert Brockway

unread,
Oct 13, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/13/97
to

John Lellis (lel...@igate.dmccorp.com) wrote:
: John Saunders (jo...@rd.scitec.com.au) wrote:

: : Tip 'o the day: While searching for this I also found append="panic=30"
: : which is handy to use for unattended servers. Causes kernel panics to
: : auto-reboot after 30 seconds.

: This is a joke, right?

Not at all. Think about it - it is worth allowing this on an unattended
server if travelling to reboot it would take some significant time. There
are security reasons to not do this, but it comes down to the choice of
the Sysadmin of the organistion.

btw, this is the first post I have made from this news server, and we
only installed it the other day, so if the headers are ugly thats why :)
Cheers,
-Robert


--Robert Brockway. Email: rob...@zen.humbug.org.au, pres...@humbug.org.au
unrb...@dingo.uq.edu.au
WWW: http://www.humbug.org.au/~robert
"Do not sell IP routers to hostile governments." Harley Hahn, 1993.

Guy Macon

unread,
Oct 13, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/13/97
to

>Question: Why do you need 500MB of swap space? You would be better of
>spending your money on more RAM than wasting it on so much swap space,
>considering that it would most likely never be used anyways.

I work with systems that have between 256MB and 1GB of RAM and
between 4GB and 16GB available for Linux. My experience with other
operating systems is that swap should be 2X to 3X RAM, so I should
have at least 512MB of swap space, and maybe 3GB. 3GB is 24 swap
partitions at 128MB each. I figure that a bunch of logical partitions
in one big extended partition will do, but how many can I have?

The RAM and HD is needed for Win NT applications, and I am just
playing around with Linux.

Or maybe the answer is *no* swap partition, because I won't use
the 256MB.


Andre van Eyssen

unread,
Oct 13, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/13/97
to

In article <syu3enn...@wogglebug.cygnus.com>, Michael Meissner wrote:
>guym...@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) writes:
>
>> Is there a limit to how much RAM I can have?
>
>8 I believe, though there has been patches floating around the kernel list to
>bump it up to 16.
>
>> Why do I read about a 16MB swap space limit? Did this change?
>
>A long time ago (I believe 0.99, but I wasn't using Linux back then). Its
>amazing how these old FAQs seem to hang around forever.

Especially considering that 0.01% of users actually read FAQs.

--
(new-style low-fat sigfile)
_____________________________________________________________________________
Andre van Eyssen, | "It was a piece of subtle refinement that God
Kaelos Computing (T4216908), | learnt Greek when he wanted to be a writer -
Deputy Coordinator, | and that he did not learn it better"
Hunter Region APANA. | Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (Maxims 121)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The Americans spent $500,000 developing a pen that would work
in a weightless environment. The Russians used a pencil."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Señor Bueno

unread,
Oct 13, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/13/97
to

Guy Macon wrote:
>
> In article <61p9iu$e...@butler.ac.BrockU.CA>, bolm...@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca wrote:
>
> >Question: Why do you need 500MB of swap space? You would be better of
> >spending your money on more RAM than wasting it on so much swap space,
> >considering that it would most likely never be used anyways.
>
> I work with systems that have between 256MB and 1GB of RAM and
> between 4GB and 16GB available for Linux. My experience with other
> operating systems is that swap should be 2X to 3X RAM, so I should
> have at least 512MB of swap space, and maybe 3GB. 3GB is 24 swap
> partitions at 128MB each. I figure that a bunch of logical partitions
> in one big extended partition will do, but how many can I have?
>
The info that I have read about Linux is that the 2x for swap space is
only for those running less than 16mb of ram. Your swap space could be
equal to your ram. This should cut down on the number of partitions.
However, the bottom line depends on what you expect to process with
Linux.

Marcus Sundberg

unread,
Oct 13, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/13/97
to

Guy Macon wrote:
>
> In article <61p9iu$e...@butler.ac.BrockU.CA>, bolm...@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca wrote:
>
> >Question: Why do you need 500MB of swap space? You would be better of
> >spending your money on more RAM than wasting it on so much swap space,
> >considering that it would most likely never be used anyways.
>
> I work with systems that have between 256MB and 1GB of RAM and
> between 4GB and 16GB available for Linux. My experience with other
> operating systems is that swap should be 2X to 3X RAM, so I should
> have at least 512MB of swap space, and maybe 3GB.

I know there are broken OSes out there where it's recomended to
have 2x RAM swapspace, but Linux is not broken in that way.
With Linux you should have <Max needed memory> - <RAM> swapspace,
and depending on your needs that might range from 0 to infinity
MBs of swap.

But even if you don't really need swapspace att all it might
increase performance if you ad a few megs of it. That's because
you often have programs like gettys and the like that are seldom
used, and it is nice to swap these programs out and use those
extra megs for diskcache instead.

//Marcus
--
-------------------------------+------------------------------------


Marcus Sundberg | WWW: http://www.e.kth.se/~e94_msu/
Royal Institute of Technology | E-Mail:

Stockholm, Sweden | e94_msu-nospam-@-nospam-e.kth.se

Matt Kirsch

unread,
Oct 13, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/13/97
to Lewis E. Wolfgang

Lewis E. Wolfgang wrote:
> The solution was to explicitly tell Linux how much ram was present
> using the following entry in /etc/lilo.conf:
>
> append = "mem=127M"
>
> Bootup now reports "126796k/130048k available", which I don't
> entirely understand, but it works.

What's not to understand? It's a fraction, telling you how much of the
total memory is available for program use. The kernel takes at least two
megabytes for itself and its overhead, more depending on what drivers
and modules you're using. The rest is left for disk cache and programs.

ilya@home

unread,
Oct 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/14/97
to

To see what the system is doing with your memory type the command 'free'
(you don't need to be root to type it)
To add memory (beyond 64M), put "addmem = 128" in lilo.conf

> Well, to start off, get root access. Then 'cd' into the /proc directory.
> type the following command:
>

> cat meminfo ? ../data.txt
>
> 'cat' creates a file of the meminfo file in the root directory called,
> "data.txt". (Notice the Messy-DOS feel to the filename? I was a DOS
> user, too once...) Fire up your text editor and see what your system is
> doing with it's memory. Simple as that.
> ???WORD OF WARNING???: the /proc directory is being used by the system!!
> DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CHANGE ANYTHING IN THERE!! BAD things will happen to
> that nice, expensive motherboard and OS you just got running.
>
> Good luck!
>
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> Hackin' cuz the Goddess left the cage open--
> --=? Chrome
> ?chr...@tex-is.net?
> ?cs_...@hal.lamar.edu?


ilya@home

unread,
Oct 14, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/14/97
to

> Well, to start off, get root access. Then 'cd' into the /proc directory.
> type the following command:
>
> cat meminfo ? ../data.txt
>
> 'cat' creates a file of the meminfo file in the root directory called,
> "data.txt". (Notice the Messy-DOS feel to the filename? I was a DOS
> user, too once...) Fire up your text editor and see what your system is
> doing with it's memory. Simple as that.
> ???WORD OF WARNING???: the /proc directory is being used by the system!!
> DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CHANGE ANYTHING IN THERE!! BAD things will happen to
> that nice, expensive motherboard and OS you just got running.
>
> Good luck!

This all is not necessary, just type 'free' (you don't need to be root).If you want
more than 64M, just tell the kernel how much you want (see man for lilo)

Greg Fausak

unread,
Oct 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/15/97
to

ilya@home wrote:
>
> To see what the system is doing with your memory type the command 'free'
> (you don't need to be root to type it)
> To add memory (beyond 64M), put "addmem = 128" in lilo.conf

I haven't tried that syntax. This works for me:

append = "mem=256M"

as a line before the 'image' lines in the lilo.conf file.
Then, don't forget to run lilo after saving the file!

---greg
--
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Greg Fausak 14999 Preston Rd D212-570 Dallas TX 75240
Pager 214-798-4605 Work 972-393-7976 Fax 972-355-2445
mailto:gr...@ZOOBERaugust.net http://www.august.com/

remove ZOOBER for the real deal
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Dagurashibanipal

unread,
Oct 15, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/15/97
to

On Sat, 11 Oct 1997 10:29:20 -0700, Chih-chang Lin
<lin...@violin.ece.ucsb.edu> wrote:

>Hi All,
>
>I configure the Linux to have a 500M swap partition.
>However, if I type "free" command, I see only 128M is used as swap
>space.
>Please suggest fix for this .
>

As others have pointed out: a swap partition can only be 128 M

But, if dealing with varying application (one time you use ure
computer as a better pocket calculator (--> no swap needed), another
time as a video processing machine (--> get the swap full and
more...), couldn't one set up a set of scripts, that get started by a
daemon whenever swap is low? Say, on a machine with 64M RAM and 64M
swap (default), let the scripts start when there is less than 16M free
swap and do (with very high priority) something like
dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/.swap/$1 bs=32k count=2048
mkswap 64M /tmp/.swap/$1
sync
swapon /tmp/.swap/$1
And as soon as there is more than 112M free swap space, we can do a
swapoff /tmp/.swap/$1
rm -f /tmp/.swap/$1

Has anybody any ideas how to get these scripts started at the
appropriate time? So this question (swap = ??? x RAM) would be a
nonissue (But we could have nice hot discussions about the right
values for MINFREESWAP and MAXFREESWAP to start the rmswap/addswap
scripts).

Greets from over there
Dagurashibanipal
avbi...@datacomm.ch

Herbie van Tetering

unread,
Oct 20, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/20/97
to

What the fuck do you need so much RAM for? I believe it's not even
possible to have that much RAM, or maybe it is, but then you must have a
huge simm module of about 8GB RAM.

THIS IS CRAZY!!!! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE F--K YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.

Fool!

--
Name: Edgar Herbie Antonius van Tetering

Address: Korte Voorhout 1a
2511 CW Den-Haag
The Netherlands

Organization: BSDCG (Boolean Software Developers & Consultancy Group)

Function: Programmer / Student IT / Musician

Private-mail: H.Tet...@inter.NL.net (Home E-mail)
General-mail: v96...@si.hhs.nl (College E-mail)

Note: It is better use the Private mail address, for the College mail
server isn't always functional.

Oper.syst.: UNIX (Linux slackware '97 (Linux 2.1.13 i586))
Shells: bourne again shell, cshell.
Languages: C, JAVA

win.man.: olvwm, nextstep, enlightenment.

Machine: Hyper Pentium 150Mhz,
100MB Extended Data Out RAM,
Logicode 115200bps 16550A UART,
ASUS PCI/ISA-P55T2P4 Motherboard.

Homepage: Not under construction.


Johan Kullstam

unread,
Oct 20, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/20/97
to

In comp.os.linux Herbie van Tetering <H.Tet...@inter.NL.net> wrote:
:What the fuck do you need so much RAM for? I believe it's not even

:possible to have that much RAM, or maybe it is, but then you must have a
:huge simm module of about 8GB RAM.

:THIS IS CRAZY!!!! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE F--K YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.

:Fool!

what on earth prompted you to write this? go away. no one wants to
see gratuitous flames about nothing. also you might want to look into
that caps lock key. it seems a bit sticky. did you spill a coke on
it?

--
Johan Kullstam [joh...@idt.net]

Guy Macon

unread,
Oct 20, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/20/97
to

In article <344AA2E6...@wdc.com>, aaron.d...@wdc.com wrote:
>
>Guy Macon wrote:
>
>> In article <61p9iu$e...@butler.ac.BrockU.CA>, bolm...@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca wrote:
>>
>> >Question: Why do you need 500MB of swap space? You would be better of
>> >spending your money on more RAM than wasting it on so much swap space,
>> >considering that it would most likely never be used anyways.
>>
>> I work with systems that have between 256MB and 1GB of RAM and
>> between 4GB and 16GB available for Linux. My experience with other
>> operating systems is that swap should be 2X to 3X RAM, so I should
>> have at least 512MB of swap space, and maybe 3GB. 3GB is 24 swap
>> partitions at 128MB each. I figure that a bunch of logical partitions
>> in one big extended partition will do, but how many can I have?
>>
>> The RAM and HD is needed for Win NT applications, and I am just
>> playing around with Linux.
>>
>> Or maybe the answer is *no* swap partition, because I won't use
>> the 256MB.
>
> Hmm, that's odd. Since when did Linux begin supporting over
> 512MB RAM. This is new ?

As far as I can tell, Linux only uses the first 64MB, but I can make
that bigger as I leave clueless newbie mode and learn how to configure.

My situation is like many newbies; I use NT for serious work and am
just learning Linux, with an eye to using it for serious work later.
As such, my PC's are all set up to be good NT boxes (lots of RAM, huge
fast disks, and fast multiple pentium pro processors). I could learn
Linux on a 486, but I am interested in using all of the resources that
my systems have, because I will need those resources when I start doing
serious work with Linux.

Watching the Galaxy Screen saver tends to make me believe that
Linux will beat NT in graphics performance...


Guy Macon

unread,
Oct 20, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/20/97
to

In article <344AF8D4...@inter.NL.net>, H.Tet...@inter.NL.net wrote:
>
>What the fuck do you need so much RAM for? I believe it's not even
>possible to have that much RAM, or maybe it is, but then you must have a
>huge simm module of about 8GB RAM.
>
>THIS IS CRAZY!!!! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE F--K YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.
>
>Fool!
>

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As we say
in Texas. I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions
on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather
kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.

You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm
deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a
weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a
revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

You are a bleating foal, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared
richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth
into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody,
abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and
then killed themselfs in recognition of what they had done.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as
you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought
of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are
vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of
this earth. And did I mention you smell?

Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting to
impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop
will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it
more rapidly.

You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive
its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to
fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame
of your ignoble blood. May you ckoke on the queasy, convulsing nausea
of your own trite, foolish beliefs.

You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty
and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus.
Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are
unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that
reality forgot.

And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements
of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you
hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more
weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle,
waiting for the bite of the snake?

You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and
obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living
emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease,
you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.

On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient
in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are
dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all
unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.

You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off, pillock.
You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john. You clouted boggish
foot-licking twit. You dankish clack-dish plonker. You gormless
crook-pated tosser. You churlish boil-brained clotpole ponce. You
cockered bum-bailey poofter. You craven dewberry pisshead cockup pratting
naff. You gob-kissing gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You dread-bolted
fobbing beef-witted clapper-clawed flirt-gill.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate,
noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise
everything about you, and I wish you would go away.

I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid.
Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond
the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are
trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far
that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no
intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on
Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire
galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll.
Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some
primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure
essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond
the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is
an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again
for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant
questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of
the rest of this drivel. Duh.

the only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped
away most of your of whay you wrote, because, well... it didn't really
say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative flame was pitiful.
I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a load of
babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in life, after you have
learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success.
True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take
for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes
forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these
things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I
would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right".
Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck
in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a
demand on you.

---------------------------------cut here-------------------------------

STANDARDIZED BONEHEAD REPLY FORM
(c) copyright 1999 by
someone else.

(check all boxes that apply)

Dear:

[ ] Clueless Newbie [ ] Lamer [ ] Flamer
[ ] Loser [ ] Spammer [ ] Troller
[ ] "Me too" er [ ] Pervert [ ] Geek
[ ] Freak [ ] Nerd [ ] Elvis
[ ] Racist [ ] Fed [ ] Freak
[ ] Fundamentalist [ ] Satanist [ ] Homeopath
[ ] Unbearably self-righteous person


I took exception to your recent:

[ ] Email [ ] Post to ____________________.
(newsgroup)

It was (check all that apply):

[ ] Lame [ ] Stupid [ ] Abusive
[ ] Clueless [ ] Idiotic [ ] Brain-damaged
[ ] Imbecilic [ ] Arrogant [ ] Malevolent
[ ] Contemptible [ ] Libelous [ ] Ignorant
[ ] Clueless [ ] Stupid [ ] Fundamentalist
[ ] Boring [ ] Dim [ ] Cowardly
[ ] Deceitful [ ] Demented [ ] Self-righteous
[ ] Crazy [ ] Weird [ ] Hypocritical
[ ] Loathsome [ ] Satanic [ ] Despicable
[ ] Belligerent [ ] Mind-numbing [ ] Maladroit
[ ] Much longer than any worthwhile thought of which you may be capable.


Your attention is drawn to the fact that:

[ ] You posted what should have been emailed
[ ] You obviously don't know how to read your newsgroups line
[ ] You are trying to make money on a non-commercial newsgroup
[ ] You self-righteously impose your religious beliefs on others
[ ] You self-righteously impose your racial beliefs on others
[ ] You posted a binary in a non-binaries group
[ ] You don't know which group to post in
[ ] You posted something totally uninteresting
[ ] You crossposted to *way* too many newsgroups
[ ] I don't like your tone of voice
[ ] What you posted has been done before.
[ ] Not only that, it was also done better the last time.
[ ] You quoted an *entire* post in your reply
[ ] You started a long, stupid thread
[ ] You continued spreading a long stupid thread
[ ] Your post is absurdly off topic for where you posted it
[ ] You posted a followup to crossposted robot-generated spam
[ ] You posted a "test" in a discussion group rather than in alt.test
[ ] You posted a "YOU ALL SUCK" message
[ ] You posted low-IQ flamebait
[ ] You posted a blatantly obvious troll
[ ] You followed up to a blatantly obvious troll
[ ] You said "me too" to something
[ ] You make no sense
[ ] Your sig/alias is dreadful
[ ] You must have spent your life in a skinner box to be this clueless.
[ ] You posted a phone-sex ad
[ ] You posted a stupid pyramid money making scheme
[ ] You claimed a pyramid-scheme/chain letter for money was legal
[ ] Your margin settings (or lack of) make your post unreadable. Each line
just goes on and on, not stopping at 75 characters, making it hard to read.
[ ] You posted in ELitE CaPitALs to look k0OwL
[ ] You posted a message in ALL CAPS, and you don't even own a TRS-80
[ ] Your post was FULL of RANDOM CAPS for NO APPARENT REASON
[ ] You have greatly misunderstood the purpose of this newsgroup.
[ ] You have greatly misunderstood the purpose of the Internet.
[ ] You are a loser.
[ ] This has been pointed out to you before.
[ ] You didn't do anything specific, but appear to be so generally
worthless that you are being flamed on general principles.


It is recommended that you:

[ ] Get a clue
[ ] Get a life
[ ] Go away
[ ] Grow up
[ ] Never post again
[ ] Read every newsgroup you posted to for a week
[ ] stop reading Usenet news and get a life
[ ] stop sending Email and get a life
[ ] Bust up your modem with a hammer and eat it
[ ] Have your medication adjusted
[ ] Jump into a bathtub while holding your monitor
[ ] find a volcano and throw yourself in
[ ] get a gun and shoot yourself
[ ] Actually post something relevant
[ ] Read the FAQ
[ ] stick to FidoNet and come back when you've grown up
[ ] Apologize to everybody in this newsgroup
[ ] consume excrement
[ ] consume excrement and thus expire
[ ] Post your tests to alt.test/misc.test
[ ] Put your home phone number in your ads from now on
[ ] Refrain from posting until you have a vague idea what you're doing


In Closing, I'd Like to Say:

[ ] You need to seek psychiatric help
[ ] Take your gibberish somewhere else
[ ] *plonk*
[ ] Learn how to post or get off the usenet
[ ] Most of the above
[ ] All of the above
[ ] Some of the above, not including All of the above
[X] You are so clueless that I didn't even bother filling in this form.


------------------------end "standardized form"----------------------------

P.S.:
You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful, cowardly,
deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable, belligerent,
opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal, fascistic, bigoted,
racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic, brain-damaged, imbecilic,
insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame, self-righteous, byzantine,
conspiratorial, satanic, fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic,
spastic, ignorant, clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb,
evasive, double-talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative,
paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic,
diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive,
dim, crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim,
unsympathetic, jargon-spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive,
mind-numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant, self-destructive, abusive,
socially-retarded, puerile, clueless, and generally Not Good.

Do I Win?


Andrew Milleville

unread,
Oct 20, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/20/97
to

In comp.os.linux.setup Herbie van Tetering <H.Tet...@inter.NL.net> wrote:
Must be recess time for this guy's kindergarten class. BTW, your signature
is far too long.

: What the fuck do you need so much RAM for? I believe it's not even


: possible to have that much RAM, or maybe it is, but then you must have a
: huge simm module of about 8GB RAM.

: THIS IS CRAZY!!!! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE F--K YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.

: Fool!

: --


: Name: Edgar Herbie Antonius van Tetering

: Address: Korte Voorhout 1a
: 2511 CW Den-Haag
: The Netherlands

: Organization: BSDCG (Boolean Software Developers & Consultancy Group)

: Function: Programmer / Student IT / Musician

: Private-mail: H.Tet...@inter.NL.net (Home E-mail)
: General-mail: v96...@si.hhs.nl (College E-mail)

: Note: It is better use the Private mail address, for the College mail
: server isn't always functional.

: Oper.syst.: UNIX (Linux slackware '97 (Linux 2.1.13 i586))
: Shells: bourne again shell, cshell.
: Languages: C, JAVA

: win.man.: olvwm, nextstep, enlightenment.

: Machine: Hyper Pentium 150Mhz,
: 100MB Extended Data Out RAM,
: Logicode 115200bps 16550A UART,
: ASUS PCI/ISA-P55T2P4 Motherboard.

: Homepage: Not under construction.


--


+---------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| Andrew Milleville | Out the ethernet, through the router, |
| Dept. of Computer Science | down the fiber, off another router, down |
| Tops Markets Help Desk | the T1, over the firewall, through one |
| Retail Support Specialist | last router, nothin' but Net. |
| mill...@cs.buffalo.edu | |
+---------------------------+----------------------------------------------+

Stephen Ashley

unread,
Oct 23, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/23/97
to

You do really need to look (read/understand) before you leap. Of course you
are probable a lame brained twit that likes this sort of flaming. Kinda like
the attention do you? So I reluctantly write this.
Yes there are jobs and uses for computers with more than 640k of memory, now
theirs a good boy and run along and play with your ‘little’ toys.
Stephen Ashley.
Digital Equipment Corp.
P.S. I do like Guy Macon's response. Yes you win. Trouble is guy like this
usually just love to receive this much attention. And alias I am
contributing.

>
>: What the fuck do you need so much RAM for? I believe it's not even
>: possible to have that much RAM, or maybe it is, but then you must have a
>: huge simm module of about 8GB RAM.
>
>: THIS IS CRAZY!!!! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE F--K YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.
>
>: Fool!

{snip}

Kevin R. Ray

unread,
Oct 25, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/25/97
to

In comp.os.linux.setup Stephen Ashley <stephen...@digital.com> wrote:
: >: What the fuck do you need so much RAM for? I believe it's not even

: >: possible to have that much RAM, or maybe it is, but then you must have a
: >: huge simm module of about 8GB RAM.
: >: THIS IS CRAZY!!!! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE F--K YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.
: >: Fool!
: {snip}
: You do really need to look (read/understand) before you leap. Of course you

: are probable a lame brained twit that likes this sort of flaming. Kinda like
: the attention do you? So I reluctantly write this.
: Yes there are jobs and uses for computers with more than 640k of memory, now
: theirs a good boy and run along and play with your ‘little’ toys.
: Stephen Ashley.
: Digital Equipment Corp.
: P.S. I do like Guy Macon's response. Yes you win. Trouble is guy like this
: usually just love to receive this much attention. And alias I am
: contributing.

Agreed -- very lame indeed. I've got a friend working on a dual
pentium based (P-266,MMX) box with a 8M video card, dual channel
ultra-wide SCSI, and all 8 of the EDO memory sockets populated with
256M simms (not running Linux though). That's 2 GIG of memory. And the
machine *still* slows down from time to time with the CAD work he does.

I guess this guy must still go, "oohhhhh" when he sees Pong (tm/c)...

Simon Karpen

unread,
Oct 25, 1997, 3:00:00 AM10/25/97
to

guym...@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) writes:

> As far as I can tell, Linux only uses the first 64MB, but I can make
> that bigger as I leave clueless newbie mode and learn how to configure.

Linux can see as much RAM as you have with certain patches, otherwise
you can make it see all by adding append="mem=megsm" to your /etc/lilo.conf,
i.e. append="mem=112m" in my case.

--
Simon Karpen
kar...@rpi.edu s...@acm.rpi.edu s...@wormhole.stu.rpi.edu
"Those that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--Ben Franklin

Dennis Murphree

unread,
Oct 26, 1997, 2:00:00 AM10/26/97
to

Aaron Newsome` wrote in message <344AA2E6...@wdc.com>...

>Guy Macon wrote:
>
>> In article <61p9iu$e...@butler.ac.BrockU.CA>,
bolm...@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca wrote:
>>
>> >Question: Why do you need 500MB of swap space? You would be better of
>> >spending your money on more RAM than wasting it on so much swap space,
>> >considering that it would most likely never be used anyways.
>>
>> I work with systems that have between 256MB and 1GB of RAM and
>> between 4GB and 16GB available for Linux. My experience with other
>> operating systems is that swap should be 2X to 3X RAM, so I should
>> have at least 512MB of swap space, and maybe 3GB. 3GB is 24 swap
>> partitions at 128MB each. I figure that a bunch of logical partitions
>> in one big extended partition will do, but how many can I have?
>>
>> The RAM and HD is needed for Win NT applications, and I am just
>> playing around with Linux.
>>
>> Or maybe the answer is *no* swap partition, because I won't use
>> the 256MB.
>
> Hmm, that's odd. Since when did Linux begin supporting over 512MB RAM.
This is new ?
>
>Thanks, Aaron Newsome
>

I was under the impression that Linux could access up to (theoritically)
4Gigs of RAM... (i don't think i'm confusing hard drive space with RAM
either) if such a system existed that had that much...has this number
changed? Does Linux have a lower amount of supported RAM? Was I on a
hallucinogenic mind trip caused by eating chocolate with too much sugar in
it?

thanks for reading,
Daniel Murphree


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