Intel SR1500AL doesn't see 4 GB

[Bernd Walter]

On Fri, Aug 31, 2007 at 10:31:44PM +0500, Rihad wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm attempting to install FreeBSD 6.2 on Intel Server System SR1500AL 
> with 4 gigs ram and CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU            5130  @ 2.00GHz 
> (2002.99-MHz 686-class CPU). The install goes OK, but FreeBSD doesn't 
> recognize that there's 4 gigs of ram unless I rebuild the kernel with 
> PAE enabled; it sees only ~2.5 gb otherwise. And there's a suspicious 
> white line emmited during boot: like "1.5 gigs above 4 were ignored". 
> What's up with that? As I'm new to high-end hardware, am I using the 
> right FreeBSD build of i386? Why can't it see 4 gigs without PAE?

You only have 4g physical address space without PAE and your board takes
1.5G for memory mapping and such, so you only have 2.5G for RAM.
Most boards just claim 0.5G, but 1.5G is not that unusual.
Either use PAE, install amd64 if your CPU is 64bit capable or live with
just 2.5G.
There is no other option, since this is a hardware limitation.

-- 
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