bigmem/4gb support?

Taz76 · 2004-12-12 10:05:32

Greets!

I will buy more RAM in a month or so I think.. to 1Gb since Maya eates memory like a hungry lion.. 8) But I've read that the kernel has to be compiled with support for bigmem or 4gb.. otherwise there was some limit at just below 900mb.. so my question is.. is the 2.6.9-kernel in arch 0.7 compiled with this support?

....and a suggestion: why not put up a page listing what features the kernel (and such) are compiled with? an arch feature-list... I can't find anything like that except that it's an i686-optimized distro.

Regards,
Taz - just one of those happy arch users

i3839 · 2004-12-12 14:32:48

I'd go for the 1gig lowmem patch, can be found here: http://ck.kolivas.org/patches/2.6/2.6.1 … 3/patches/ and here for the 2.6.9 version: http://ck.kolivas.org/patches/2.6/2.6.9 … _i386.diff

Of course you'll need to compile your own kernel then, as Arch's kernel is the vanilla one.

To see what config Arch uses for it's standard kernel then either look at CVS or do 'zcat /proc/config'.

Taz76 · 2004-12-12 15:04:03

how does those .diff-files work?

i3839 · 2004-12-12 15:10:37

I'll assume you know how to build yourown kernels, if not, then find out (plenty of readme's out there, also maybe even in the wiki). If you really have no clue you could use Arch's config (e.g. from /proc/config.gz).

If you have the kernel source somewhere, then to apply a patch, go into the kernel-2.6.* dir, and do `patch -p1 --dry-run < ../somewhere/patch.diff`. If that went ok without any errors you can repeat that without the "--dry-run" part. For more info see the manpages of diff and patch.

Taz76 · 2004-12-12 15:13:50

I did a zcat /proc/config.. looked at the results and found "CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y".. - so no support if I would buy to 1gb RAM in the kernel now without compiling myself?

Taz76 · 2004-12-12 15:15:25

Well.. I tried to compile my own kernel (2.6.9) but that failed completely... the kernel went all panic..

i3839 · 2004-12-12 15:29:00

The point of that patch was that you can have 1 gig mem without needed support for highmem, as highmem slows things down and is ugly. So either use the default Arch kernel if it has highmem support, or use your own one without highmem and that patch. I forgot to say this before, sorry. Also I didn't try out that patch myself as I don't have 1 gig mem, so can't guarantee that it will work (though it likely will if you use the correct one for your kernelversion).

When fiddling with cutom kernels make sure you have a working one somewhere so that you can fall back to that one when things don't work.

Taz76 · 2004-12-12 15:34:18

okey.. so, what's the difference between highmem and lowmem (the patch)? something about how linux adresses the memory? *guessing* if you know of a good page about this I'll be happy to read up on it

kleptophobiac · 2004-12-12 18:57:57

the stock kernel comes with 4GB support... you'll be fine.

Taz76 · 2004-12-12 20:31:20

okey

Win · 2004-12-14 04:27:41

Hi Taz76.

You can determine the compiled settings by inspecting /boot/kconfig26:

CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y

Regards,

Win

Arch Linux

#1 2004-12-12 10:05:32

bigmem/4gb support?

#2 2004-12-12 14:32:48

Re: bigmem/4gb support?

#3 2004-12-12 15:04:03

Re: bigmem/4gb support?

#4 2004-12-12 15:10:37

Re: bigmem/4gb support?

#5 2004-12-12 15:13:50

Re: bigmem/4gb support?

#6 2004-12-12 15:15:25

Re: bigmem/4gb support?

#7 2004-12-12 15:29:00

Re: bigmem/4gb support?

#8 2004-12-12 15:34:18

Re: bigmem/4gb support?

#9 2004-12-12 18:57:57

Re: bigmem/4gb support?

#10 2004-12-12 20:31:20

Re: bigmem/4gb support?

#11 2004-12-14 04:27:41

Re: bigmem/4gb support?

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