Memory and 64bit

[sapabt]

Memory and 64bit *Solved*

Hi. I'm a noob to bsd and freenas, I like to think I'm handy at linux.

I installed the 32 bit freenas to poke at it. The box then had 2 gig ram. I got some more memory for the box, total of 8 gig, and upgraded to 64 bit. The system now reports it has 3 gig of ram.

The box config now is a single core celeron proc, 8 gig ram, 1 pata cd drive, 1 pata 160 gig hard drive (for booting), and 6 sata 1TB drives in 1 zfs volume.

I've upgraded, and done a complete wipe and install. The system still only sees 3 gig ram. All 8 gig are seen in bios. I've not done a memtest yet.

I found the arc_summary.py from another thread and it also reports a total of 3 gig "Real Installed" ram.

I've verified I'm running a 64 bit version, but I'm confused with the uname -a report. I got the 8.0.4-p1 iso, the name of the iso matches, but uname reports:

Code:

FreeBSD mikiho.castlevega.com 8.2-RELEASE-p6 FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE-p6 #0: Wed Apr 11 10:19:51 PDT 2012     jpaetzel@build.ixsystems.com:/home/jpaetzel/fn_build/8.0.4/obj.amd64/build/home/jpaetzel/fn_build/8.0.4/FreeBSD/src/sys/FREENAS.amd64  amd64

Is this saying I really got the 8.2 beta, or the 8.0.4-p1 release? I kinda indicates both.

Any thoughts on the memory issue?

Cheers,
bt

 

[ProtoSD]

Hi bt,

You have the right version, the 8.2 is the version of FreeBSD that FreeNAS is built on top of.

I'm not sure what to tell you about your memory at the moment. I don't think memtest is going to find a problem. You might check the BIOS for some different settings, sometimes there's timing or reserving some for video, but 5G is an awful lot to be missing.

Maybe someone else will have some other ideas.

 

[TehTux]

If the hardware itself only supports 4GB (due to limitations with the motherboard chipset) and you have a 1GB graphics card, that will account for your 3GB RAM.

Can you post your motherboard model?

 

[sapabt]

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies. I probably should have figured out the versioning in the uname . :o

The motherboard is an AS Rock G31M Newegg listing.

According to the book, it will accept a max of 8 gig. I went through the bios options, but didn't find anything out of the ordinary. The bios showed 2 sticks of 4 gig each in dual channel mode. Ther's a total of 8 meg shared with the video, which is onboard. I'm not overclocking, at least not intentionally. :)

After work today, I can throw my linux cd at it and see what that reports.

Cheers,
bt

 

[sapabt]

Solved.

Stoopid BIOS.

I put an x64 gentoo linux cd in and it only saw 3 gig.

I started poking around in the BIOS, reset to factory defaults, no joy.

I found a setting in the memory area that was an enable/disable to remap memory over the limit. I enabled it and there it was.

I also had to tell BIOS that the ram was ddr2-800. When set to autodetect, it would always default to ddr2-667.

I'll see how stable this board is, I may get another one. It kinda bothers me that I have to tell it to remap the ram to see all of it installed. I wonder what else could be lurking?

Thanks protosd and TehTux for the help and suggestions.

Cheers,
bt