5.3-RELEASE on Dell PowerEdge 2850

[Tom Gidden]

Hi,

I've recently got a few Dell PowerEdge 2850 machines with 4 GB RAM to  
build a new database cluster.  However, unlike our existing PowerEdge  
2650 machines, they're only recognising about 3.25 GB.  The machines  
are pretty much standard, with no extra cards (just the built-in  
MegaRAID).

As a last resort, I've tried rebuilding the kernel with  
MAXMEM=(4*1024*1024), which produces some really fun crashes (which I  
can supply if necessary).  The BIOS seems to be devoid of anything  
remotely useful to tweak.

Any ideas?

Here's a dmesg from the non-crashing kernel:  [note, the first line is  
from memory and might be incorrect]

786426K of memory above 4GB ignored
Copyright (c) 1992-2004 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
         The Regents of the University of California. All rights  
reserved.
FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE #1: Wed Oct 27 15:39:35 BST 2004
     root at db2.lonres.com:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/PE2850_2
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz (2793.01-MHz 686-class CPU)
   Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0xf34  Stepping = 4
    
Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE 
,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
real memory  = 3489398784 (3327 MB)
avail memory = 3418533888 (3260 MB)
ACPI APIC Table: <DELL   PE BKC  >
FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 2 CPUs
  cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID:  0
  cpu1 (AP): APIC ID:  6
ioapic0: Changing APIC ID to 7
ioapic1: Changing APIC ID to 8
ioapic1: WARNING: intbase 32 != expected base 24
ioapic2: Changing APIC ID to 9
ioapic2: WARNING: intbase 64 != expected base 56
ioapic3: Changing APIC ID to 10
ioapic3: WARNING: intbase 96 != expected base 88
ioapic0 <Version 2.0> irqs 0-23 on motherboard
ioapic1 <Version 2.0> irqs 32-55 on motherboard
ioapic2 <Version 2.0> irqs 64-87 on motherboard
ioapic3 <Version 2.0> irqs 96-119 on motherboard



Thanks,
-- 
Tom Gidden
Lonres.com Limited
t: 020 7924 6622