Proliant 1500, Linux [Slackware, 2.4.26] and memory recognition

Hi, everyone,

I was wondering whether anyone could help me out with the problem of
memory recognition with a recently purchased ProLiant 1500.

I managed to install Slackware 9.1 on it [having to modify an
installation CD so that I had a kernel which would support SMART/2 and
SCSI at the same time, sheesh] and everything is going smoothly except
for memory recognition. I seem to be unable to make Slackware recognize
more than 16 MB of RAM [the server has 128 MB].

Of course this problem is known to me and I've fixed it before [I used to
have the same model in one of my previous jobs but it had Debian
installed]. However, none of the tried methods seem to work:

append="mem=128M" - doesn't work [sees 16M]

append="mem=131072k" - doesn't work [as above] - I've read somewhere that
some LILO versions had problems understanding M, so it would be fixed by
converting to kB

append="mem=127M" - doesn't work [as above] - I've also read that it's
safer to specify 1MB less than the physical memory

append="mem=...M" - where ... is 64, 32 or any other number - doesn't
work [still sees 16M]

append="mem=exactmap mem=640K@0 mem=127M@1M" - doesn't work - kernel
panic, general protection error [!!!] - some weird numbers appear when
booting in the middle of the process and kernel says "trying to overwrite
init" or something similar and then panics...

append="mem=112M@16M" - as above

for that matter - any other similar specification [as said in
http://www.cpqlinux.com/memory.html] produces the same results - kernel
panic... And the old format [used in 2.2.x kernels] doesn't work...

I'm wondering what might be wrong in this case? Any help would be greatly
appreciated as I've spent hours googling for an answer and failed to find
any... Trying to compile 2.6.x kernel now, maybe it'll give better
results...

--
tomasz 'tonid' nidecki, zoliborz, warszawa, poland
http://tonid.net http://endemic.org
jabber: registered linux user #308829
'nie przejmuj sie, przytul glonojada' (c)hubertus

Tomasz Nidecki wrote in message ...
Hi, everyone,

I was wondering whether anyone could help me out with the problem of
memory recognition with a recently purchased ProLiant 1500.
snip
append="mem=128M" - doesn't work [sees 16M]
snip
append="mem=112M@16M" - as above

Did you try:
mem=exactmap mem=640k@0M mem=127M@1M

(VinceV) wrote in
om:

I was wondering whether anyone could help me out with the problem of
memory recognition with a recently purchased ProLiant 1500.
snip
append="mem=128M" - doesn't work [sees 16M]
snip
append="mem=112M@16M" - as above

Did you try:
mem=exactmap mem=640k@0M mem=127M@1M

Yes, I did, as I said:

append="mem=exactmap mem=640K@0 mem=127M@1M" - doesn't work - kernel
panic, general protection error [!!!] - some weird numbers appear when
booting in the middle of the process and kernel says "trying to overwrite
init" or something similar and then panics...

Didn't try with the trailing "M" after @0 though, but the cpqlinux site
gave examples without it...

Perhaps I've made some errors with compiling the kernel? What options are
responsible for memory recognition? I didn't turn on memory-type
registers [or something similarly named] - perhaps this could be the
cause?


--
tomasz 'tonid' nidecki, zoliborz, warszawa, poland
http://tonid.net http://endemic.org
jabber: registered linux user #308829
'nie przejmuj sie, przytul glonojada' (c)hubertus

"Tomasz Nidecki" skrev i meddelandet
...
(VinceV) wrote in
om:

I was wondering whether anyone could help me out with the problem of
memory recognition with a recently purchased ProLiant 1500.
snip
append="mem=128M" - doesn't work [sees 16M]
snip
append="mem=112M@16M" - as above

Did you try:
mem=exactmap mem=640k@0M mem=127M@1M

Yes, I did, as I said:

append="mem=exactmap mem=640K@0 mem=127M@1M" - doesn't work - kernel
panic, general protection error [!!!] - some weird numbers appear when
booting in the middle of the process and kernel says "trying to overwrite
init" or something similar and then panics...

Didn't try with the trailing "M" after @0 though, but the cpqlinux site
gave examples without it...

Perhaps I've made some errors with compiling the kernel? What options are
responsible for memory recognition? I didn't turn on memory-type
registers [or something similarly named] - perhaps this could be the
cause?


--

Just a thaught here, are you absolutely shure the memory modules are the
same type and in pairs?
ECC, EDO ? And not mixed somehow......

Conny

"Conny" wrote in
:

Just a thaught here, are you absolutely shure the memory modules are
the same type and in pairs?
ECC, EDO ? And not mixed somehow......

Well, I didn't think it could be a hardware problem, since the machine
says that it detects all the RAM [when starting up]:

131072 KB Detected

However, the ROM-based diags seem to show only 32 MB RAM:

Testing System Memory
Checking RAM (Write, Read, Compare)
Base Memory: From 0 to 640 KB
Extended Memory: From 1024 to 16384 KB
Extended Memory: From 16384 to 32768 KB
Checking Address Lines
Base Memory: From 0 to 640 KB
Extended Memory: From 1024 to 16384 KB
Extended Memory: From 16384 to 32768 KB
09:13:27 Test loop complete

and Inspect Computer shows:

Memory Detected at Power-On
Base Memory 640 KB
Extended Memory 31744 KB
Total Memory 32768 KB

I guess I'll have to check the chips then...

--
tomasz 'tonid' nidecki, zoliborz, warszawa, poland
http://tonid.net http://endemic.org
jabber: registered linux user #308829
'nie przejmuj sie, przytul glonojada' (c)hubertus

"Tomasz Nidecki" skrev i meddelandet
...
"Conny" wrote in
:

Just a thaught here, are you absolutely shure the memory modules are
the same type and in pairs?
ECC, EDO ? And not mixed somehow......

Well, I didn't think it could be a hardware problem, since the machine
says that it detects all the RAM [when starting up]:

131072 KB Detected

However, the ROM-based diags seem to show only 32 MB RAM:

Testing System Memory
Checking RAM (Write, Read, Compare)
Base Memory: From 0 to 640 KB
Extended Memory: From 1024 to 16384 KB
Extended Memory: From 16384 to 32768 KB
Checking Address Lines
Base Memory: From 0 to 640 KB
Extended Memory: From 1024 to 16384 KB
Extended Memory: From 16384 to 32768 KB
09:13:27 Test loop complete

and Inspect Computer shows:

Memory Detected at Power-On
Base Memory 640 KB
Extended Memory 31744 KB
Total Memory 32768 KB

I guess I'll have to check the chips then...

--

Seems strange, I had machines if I took out the memorys and put them back
again it worked. If the machine has been unused for a long time.

"Conny" wrote in
:

Seems strange, I had machines if I took out the memorys and put them
back again it worked. If the machine has been unused for a long time.

Problem solved.

I took them out, put them in back again in another order - no change.

However, I decided to have a look a the system configuration.

The interesting thing was that it said I had 112 M total mem at 16 M, but
the details said there is only a 16 M system at 16 M. Therefore, I
changed it to a 64 M system at 16 M and 48 M system at 80 M and now
passing the parameters to kernel works and I've got all 128 M available.

Thx for all the help and hope this comes in useful to someone in the
future as well.

--
tomasz 'tonid' nidecki, zoliborz, warszawa, poland
http://tonid.net http://endemic.org
jabber: registered linux user #308829
'nie przejmuj sie, przytul glonojada' (c)hubertus