Hi, I just upgraded the BIOS of my A8V deluxe to the newest version (1014) und tried to boot with the Suse 9.3 Live-CD, distributed by the German magazine c't. If I activate "software memory hole" in the BIOS, I see only 3GB (with the "free" comand and also inside the BIOS system information) despite 4GB of physical RAM installed. dmesg says this: Linux version 2.6.11.4-20a-default (geeko@buildhost) (gcc version 3.3.5 20050117 (prerelease) (SUSE Linux)) #1 Wed Mar 23 21:52:37 UTC 2005 BIOS-provided physical RAM map: BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable) BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 00000000000e4000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000bffb0000 (usable) BIOS-e820: 00000000bffb0000 - 00000000bffc0000 (ACPI data) BIOS-e820: 00000000bffc0000 - 00000000bfff0000 (ACPI NVS) BIOS-e820: 00000000bfff0000 - 00000000c0000000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 00000000ff780000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 0000000100000000 - 0000000140000000 (usable) Warning only 4GB will be used. Use a PAE enabled kernel. 3200MB HIGHMEM available. 896MB LOWMEM available. Just as clarification of terms: - What is HIGHMEM and LOWMEM and shouldn't they be called the other way round as the big part is counted from 0x00000000 on? - Isn't PAE for 32bit OS only (I booted the 64bit version)? So after all, would a full 64bit installation of 9.3 install a "PAE enabled kernel", so that I would see all 4GB of installed RAM? Is this a special choice then or simply the standard kernel? Thanks in advance for your help! Ciao Siegbert
Siegbert Baude <siegbert.baude@gmx.de> wrote:
Hi,
I just upgraded the BIOS of my A8V deluxe to the newest version (1014) und tried to boot with the Suse 9.3 Live-CD, distributed by the German magazine c't.
Which is a 32 Bit version AFAIK.
So after all, would a full 64bit installation of 9.3 install a "PAE enabled kernel", so that I would see all 4GB of installed RAM? Is this a special choice then or simply the standard kernel?
No, it's the 64 bit kernel. -- Taxes, n.: Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get an extension.
Harald Milz schrieb:
Siegbert Baude <siegbert.baude@gmx.de> wrote:
I just upgraded the BIOS of my A8V deluxe to the newest version (1014) und tried to boot with the Suse 9.3 Live-CD, distributed by the German magazine c't.
Which is a 32 Bit version AFAIK.
I just checked this again. In the description they clearly speak about 32bit and 64bit variants. Also the installer offers both possibilities. I chose the 64bit method. Is the kernel booted from those Live-CDs different to the ones of a full installation? After all I didn't see the expected 4GB of RAM with the "free" command. How can I tell from the boot messages, if the kernel is a 32bit or a 64bit one? I would try a complete install, if anybody tells me, that this enables the 4GB, but as we have quite a few Suse computers and I don't want different versions on them, I only want to go this upgrade way, if it solves my problem. Ciao Siegbert P.S.: Sorry Harald, that you get this twice now, I forgot to reply to the group.
Harald Milz schrieb:
Siegbert Baude <siegbert.baude@gmx.de> wrote:
I just upgraded the BIOS of my A8V deluxe to the newest version (1014) und tried to boot with the Suse 9.3 Live-CD, distributed by the German magazine c't.
Which is a 32 Bit version AFAIK.
After some more experiments over the weekend, I found out, that the Live-CD is indeed 32bit only (despite the boot screen offering a 64bit version, too), but the "rescue" and "installer" options really offer a 64bit kernel. The bad thing is, that (with BIOS memory remapping enabled) booting the "rescue" option in 64bit mode fails. Still in the SCSI part, as it was already true for Suse 9.2. $ /sbin/lspci|grep SCSI 0000:00:0d.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AIC-7892B U160/m (rev 02) Just to mention: Booting 64bit mode without BIOS memory remapping works as well as 32bit mode with BIOS memory remapping. In the latter case I only get 3GB of RAM, because the 32bit kernel on this Live_CD is not PAE enabled. Can any of the Suse people here have a look at the error messages, I get when booting our SCSI system? On tty1 I see: scsi0 : Adaptec AIC7XXX EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 6.2.36 (scsi0:A:6): 160.000MB/s transfers (80.000MHz DT, offset 127, 16bit) scsi0:A:6:0: Tagged Queuing enabled. Depth 32 Then on tty2 there is a storm of messages always repeating th same two lines: scsi0: PCI error Interrupt at seqaddr=0x97 scsi0: Received a Master Abort Then after some time this stops and I see: irq185: nobody cared! call trace: <IRQ> <ffffffff801532c0> {__report_bad_irq+48} <ffffffff80153389> {note_interrupt+89} <ffffffff80152e48> {__do_IRQ+216} <ffffffff80111132> {do_IRQ+66} <ffffffff8010ecc7> {ret_from_intr+0] <EOI> <ffffffff8010d560> {default_idle+0} <ffffffff8010d580> {default_idle+32} <ffffffff8010d986> {cpu_idle+54} <ffffffff804d670a> {start_kernel+442} <ffffffff804d6240> {_sinittext+576} handlers: [<ffffffff8815fa0>] (ahc_linux_isr+0x0/0x220 [aic7xxx]) Disabling IRQ #185 Afterwards the machine is frozen. Any insight? Is anybody running a 9.3 system on an A8V with SCSI, >=4GB RAM and BIOS memory remapping enabled? Should I direct this problem to the linux kernel mailing list or who else could be interested in those BIOS memory remapping problems? Ciao Siegbert
This problem is solved finally by the following kernel changes in the SCSI code. http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commi... See kernel bug: http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5489 Is there any chance this will be backported to 9.x or 10.0? Ciao Siegbert
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Harald Milz -
Siegbert Baude