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I have just bought a new laptop, an Acer Swift 3 SF314-57, and I have dual booted Arch and Windows 10.
Just about everything seems to be working okay except that my system can only 'see' (I don't know what the correct term is) 1/10 of the RAM available.
'uname -r' returns (if necessary):
'5.4.70-1-lts'
Although my machine has 16GB of RAM, 'free -m' returns:
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 1630 1080 202 222 348 192
Swap: 1958 1071 887
I have done a hardware probe which may provide more information: https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=c49aa23f27
What confuses me further though is that '# dmidecode' returns:
Handle 0x000F, DMI type 16, 23 bytes
Physical Memory Array
Location: System Board Or Motherboard
Use: System Memory
Error Correction Type: None
Maximum Capacity: 16 GB
Error Information Handle: No Error
Number Of Devices: 2
I think (although I may be completely wrong) that it has something to do with the UEFI settings as neofetch when booted in a live EndeavourOS environment also shows 1630MB of RAM.
I would also just like to thank you all, I am new to Arch (and to asking on forums) and I have already been amazed by how helpful and supportive this community is! If I have worded this wrong, been too verbose, etc please let me know, I am not familiar with forums.
Last edited by mipy (2020-10-16 12:29:31)
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/proc/meminfo shows the full amount: https://linux-hardware.org/index.php?pr … og=meminfo
What does `top` show?
What's the output of `\free -m` (with the leading \ at the start)
And welcome to the forums
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BlueHackers // fscanary // resticctl
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Wow thank you for such a fast response.
'top' returns (in part):
top - 17:56:53 up 2:19, 3 users, load average: 1.20, 0.99, 0.78
Tasks: 202 total, 1 running, 201 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 1.5 us, 0.0 sy, 0.0 ni, 98.5 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 1630.9 total, 169.1 free, 944.8 used, 516.9 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 1959.0 total, 552.4 free, 1406.6 used. 199.3 avail Mem
'\free -m' returns the same:
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 1630 970 126 271 534 229
Swap: 1958 1390 568
That seems so bizarre though. Why would it 'know' that the memory hardware is there but not be able to access it all?
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Why would it 'know' that the memory hardware is there but not be able to access it all?
Well it doesn't. According to the output of /proc/meminfo you posted on linux-hardware, it only recognizes 1670.032 megabytes of RAM.
macro_rules! yolo { { $($tokens:tt)* } => { unsafe { $($tokens)* } }; }
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Maximum Capacity: 16 GB
It means the maximum supported RAM size is 16GB, not the actual size.
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But when I'm booted into Windows 10 I have a full 16GB available. So how why would it be different in Linux?
Last edited by mipy (2020-10-16 08:29:28)
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I agree, that this is weird. Is Windows maybe in some suspended state, that allocates most of the RAM when you boot Arch?
Maybe boot and run memtest once, just to check whether it recognizes all of the RAM.
macro_rules! yolo { { $($tokens:tt)* } => { unsafe { $($tokens)* } }; }
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[ 0.000000] BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0000000000000000-0x000000000009efff] usable
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x000000000009f000-0x00000000000fffff] reserved
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0000000000100000-0x0000000067947fff] usable
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0000000067948000-0x0000000068247fff] reserved
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0000000068248000-0x000000006a05efff] usable
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x000000006a05f000-0x000000006a42efff] type 20
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x000000006a42f000-0x000000006b4defff] reserved
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x000000006b4df000-0x000000006bbcefff] ACPI NVS
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x000000006bbcf000-0x000000006bc4efff] ACPI data
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x000000006bc4f000-0x000000006bc4ffff] usable
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x000000006bc50000-0x00000000cfffffff] reserved
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x00000000fc800000-0x00000000fe7fffff] reserved
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x00000000fed00000-0x00000000fed00fff] reserved
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x00000000fed10000-0x00000000fed17fff] reserved
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x00000000fed20000-0x00000000fed7ffff] reserved
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x00000000feda0000-0x00000000feda1fff] reserved
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x00000000fee00000-0x00000000fee00fff] reserved
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x00000000ff600000-0x00000004827fffff] reserved
Only 1.6GB are marked usable, the rest is in reserved (the last "reserved" block alone is 15.64GB - if I didn't cnp garbage, but I didn't check for overlaps)
Most likely suspended windows or maybe hibernated (disable windows fastboot)
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That would make sense because when I boot into Arch, the Acer logo that appears when I boot into Windows 10 appears for half a second. But I don't know how to stop that as fastboot is disabled already in the Windows power settings and in the EFI settings (and I have deleted the old hibernation file).
EDIT: I might also add that secureboot is also disabled in EFI settings
Last edited by mipy (2020-10-16 10:26:09)
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Reboot into windows, enable fast-boot, reboot windows (do not boot linux or any other OS at all during this), disable fast-boot, reboot windows, reboot into linux.
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Ah I found a solution!
I am not quite sure why, but when I made the grub bootloader the number 1. in the EFI boot order, all my RAM appeared.
It may have been what you suggested seth (in which case thank you!) but the first time I booted linux after doing what you suggested it didn't seem to work and I changed the boot order right after.
I'm just curious, why would this matter? Is it possible that by holding down f12 when booting to bring up the default boot menu it started windows?
Also how do I mark a topic as solved?
Thank you guys so much for your help, I would not have looked at the EFI settings had you guys not helped. As my first experience with this community I am so glad to be a part of it.
Last edited by mipy (2020-10-16 11:14:26)
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Also how do I mark a topic as solved?
Edit your first post and add [SOLVED] to the title.
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Great, thank you
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it only recognizes 1670.032 megabytes of RAM.
Oops, my bad. Misread that one.
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BlueHackers // fscanary // resticctl
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