real memory falsely reports 8G, BIOS & avail memory reports 1G

[John Baldwin]

On Tuesday, August 17, 2010 7:49:22 am Julian H. Stacey wrote:
> John Baldwin wrote:
> > On Monday, August 09, 2010 8:13:03 am Julian H. Stacey wrote:
> > > Hi hackers at freebsd.org
> > > A laptop here emits a puzzlingly dmesg to both 8.1-RC2 & 8.1-RELEASE:
> > > 	real memory  = 8572108800 (8175 MB)
> > > 	avail memory = 1018789888 (971 MB)
> > > BIOS reckons it has 1G. No panel to unscrew to inspect memory. 
> > > I don't beleive 8G.
> > > 
> > > If this is a bug in FreeBSD detect code ?
> > > I am ready to run test kernel patches againt 8.1-RELEASE
> > > & report back if anyone has code.
> > > (I have room to install a current too if necessary)
> > > 
> > > Full dmesg here:
> > > http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/hardware/laptops/novatech-8355/dmesg/
> > > 
> > > Cheers,
> > > Julian
> > 
> > Hmm, do you have dmidecode output?
> 
> Hi, Thanks for interest, Yes here

Yeah, I saw you post the details later in the thread and had forgotten to
delete my reply.  At one point the code to print out "real memory" was
changed to use the DMI/SMBios information as when it is correct it gives
a more accurate looking number (an even 8GB for example vs some number that
is slightly smaller than 8GB).  It looks like your DMI info is just very
wrong resulting in a bogus number in the printf.  However, it is only a
cosmetic failure, it doesn't affect how the kernel runs or uses memory.

-- 
John Baldwin