Dell PE 1950 - Only seeing 3.2 gigs of ram

[Bill Moran]

In response to "Jeff MacDonald" <bignose at gmail.com>:
> > Jeff MacDonald wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I put a fresh install of 6.1-RELEASE on a dell poweredge 1950 server.
> > > It's configured with 4 gigs of ram.
> > >
> > > However when I boot i get the following right before DMESG
> > >
> > > 786432k above 4GB ignored
> > >
> > > Which is strange, but then dmesg shows this
> > >
> > > real memory  = 3489300480 (3327 MB)
> > > avail memory = 3414659072 (3256 MB)
> > >
> > > Soo I'm at a bit of a loss.
> >
> > You're using the 32-bit version, right? The design of x86 architecture
> > (i.e. it's not FreeBSD's problem) is such that a part of memory
> > addresses needs to be set aside for hardware uses, such as the PCI bus,
> > AGP memory & others. This manifests as "holes" in memory that are not
> > accessible to OS.
> >
> > There are two possible solutions: you may try compiling a 32-bit kernel
> > with PAE (but not all drivers support PAE), or install the 64-bit
> > version of FreeBSD.
> 
> Well I hate when people say this, but I'm going to say it.. :)
> 
> When I did a default install of ubuntu, it saw all 4 gigs without a
> hitch. So does that mean it already includes PAE, or something else ?

One of those two.  You sure you didn't install a 64-bit version of Ubuntu?

> Aside, I will read up on PAE.  I'll read up about 64 bit as well, I've
> been hesitant to make the jump only cause any word of mouth i've heard
> said  that it's not ready for production. Maybe that's off base, it's
> only what "i've heard"

We're deploying a lot of 64 bit stuff around here.  Our experience has
been that the OS is as solid on amd64 as it is on i386.  Server applications
are the same.  There are, however, a lot of desktop applications that are
still flaky on 64-bit -- mostly non-mainstream ones.  We got in a crunch
and had to reinstall a workstation back to i386 because of it, or I would
have filed some bug reports.

-- 
Bill Moran
Collaborative Fusion Inc.