FreeBSD 7.0 and RAM limit

[Boris Kochergin]

Robert Heron wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I use:
>
> FreeBSD 7.0-R on i386 server with motherboard S5000VSA and 6GB RAM 
> onboard. BIOS version - 88 (the latest)
>
> Kernel includes: options        MAXMEM=(6*1024*1024)
>
> And FreeBSD reports only:
>
> real memory  = 2680160256 (2556 MB)
> avail memory = 2617892864 (2496 MB)
>
> Why? What is wrong that FreeBSD sees only about 2.5GB instead of 6GB?
>
> Robert
>
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You probably have to compile your kernel with the PAE(4) option, as the 
i386 architecture only supports up to 4 GiB without physical address 
extentions, and some of it (512 MiB, I believe) is made unavailable to 
the operating system because that address space is reserved for PCI.

-Boris