Trouble viewing beyond 3GB of available 4GB memory using 64bit kernel

[stathy]

Hi,

I am using fiesty (7.04) on an IBM thinkpad lenovo t60 running Intel Core Duo2 with 4GB of memory. I only see 3GB of available memory though and want to be sure I am correctly using the 64bit kernel. I did install using the 64 bit enabled installer.

Is there something I need to do to utilize the full resources of my machine?

# free -m
                     total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3018 543 2474 0 15 316
-/+ buffers/cache: 211 2806
Swap: 1223 0 1223

# uname -a
Linux joe-bl 2.6.20-15-generic #2 SMP Sun Apr 15 06:17:24 UTC 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Thanks,

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please add the output of 'cat /proc/meminfo'? Thanks in advance.

[stathy (stouloumis)]

memtotal: 3090716 kB
memfree: 2692824 kB
buffers: 8840 kB
cached: 210972 kB
swapcached: 0 kB
active: 187752 kB
inactive: 154244 kB
swaptotal: 1253028 kB
swapfree: 1253028 kB
dirty: 208 kB
writeback: 0 kB
anonpages: 12225s kB
mapped: 37064 kB
slab: 26320 kB
sreclaimable: 11092 kB
sunreclaim: 15228 kB
pagetables: 11380 kB
nfs_unstable: 0 kB
bounce: 0 kB
commitlimit: 2798384 kB
committed_as: 432780 kB
vmalloctotal: 34359738367 kB
vmallocused: 1448
vmallocchunk: 34359736891 kB

[stathy (stouloumis)]

There is no Memory Remap option in the bios settings.

Also, the bios shows the full 4GB. It is just that Fiesty does not seem to be able to see the full 4GB.

[Joachim Beckers (jbeckers)]

I'm seeing the same thing on gutsy. gnome-system-monitor shows 3.2GB of ram, while I have 4GB installed. I have the latest bios available and it has no option to turn on a memory gap. this is on an asus m2a-vm hdmi (http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=101&l3=496&l4=0&model=1585&modelmenu=1) with an athlon 64 x2 5200+

joachim@madkeunnen:~$ cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 3402328 kB
MemFree: 2537992 kB
Buffers: 27468 kB
Cached: 560968 kB
SwapCached: 4 kB
Active: 455584 kB
Inactive: 311568 kB
SwapTotal: 7992328 kB
SwapFree: 7992032 kB
Dirty: 780 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 178752 kB
Mapped: 62772 kB
Slab: 49592 kB
SReclaimable: 32332 kB
SUnreclaim: 17260 kB
PageTables: 10600 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 9693492 kB
Committed_AS: 495252 kB
VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed: 24684 kB
VmallocChunk: 34359713663 kB
joachim@madkeunnen:~$ free -m
             total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3322 844 2478 0 26 547
-/+ buffers/cache: 269 3052
Swap: 7805 0 7804
joachim@madkeunnen:~$ uname -a
Linux madkeunnen 2.6.22-14-server #1 SMP Sun Oct 14 22:09:15 GMT 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux
joachim@madkeunnen:~$

[Joachim Beckers (jbeckers)]

just to make things clear: I'm running gutsy amd64, and I think this issue occurs with all available kernels (I'm on -server now but will try -generic in a couple of minutes)

[Joachim Beckers (jbeckers)]

This issue was fixed for me by upgrading to the latest bios.

[jgf (monkey-scatterbrained)]

I'm seeing a similar bug an my Dell 5150C using the latest Gutsy 64bit with 4gb ram

jgf@monster:~$ uname -a
Linux monster 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Sun Oct 14 21:45:15 GMT 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux
jgf@monster:~$ free -m
             total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3528 1606 1922 0 146 790
-/+ buffers/cache: 669 2859
Swap: 1906 0 1906

I'll look for an BIOS Update and report back if the issue could be fixed in this way.

[jgf (monkey-scatterbrained)]

An update to the latest BIOS version availiable from the dell support site did not fix this bug for me.

[Tobias McNulty (tmcnulty1982)]

I have a ThinkPad T60 and I'm running Gutsy with the Feisty kernel. I updated to the latest BIOS and I still have this problem.

[David Simmons (2-launchpad-tmp-davidsimmons-com)]

From what I've read, the Thinkpad T60 has a hardware limitation preventing the use of more than 3GB of memory, even when running a 64-bit operating system. It's a shame, really -- I have a T60p, and I'd love to have 4GB in it, but it wouldn't get me any more than 3GB.

[Ivin (ivin-fox)]

I have R60 with the same problem on 8.04. But before update were the 4GB on 7,04 and 7,10 visible ...

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

The 18 month support period for Feisty Fawn 7.04 has reached it's end of life - http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-7.04-end-of-life . As a result we are closing the linux-source-2.6.20 task. Is this still an issue for anyone with the most recent Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release? Thanks.

[SpencerRussell (spencer-f-russell)]

I just upgraded from 32-bit hardy to 64-bit intrepid, hoping that it would fix the problem, but Ubuntu still only see 2.9gb of RAM out of my 4GB recognized by the bios.

I have a Thinkpad R60 with the newest firmware.

[Luegge (luegge)]

The problem persists for me too. It's the first time I installed a 64 bit kernel (intrepid, last time updated a few minutes ago), running on my intel Core 2 Quad Q6600. I have 8 GB of RAM installed, but only 3.2 GB are recognized.

Output asked for above gives me:
MemTotal: 3347080 kB
MemFree: 1688248 kB
Buffers: 258660 kB
Cached: 718196 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 757424 kB
Inactive: 647488 kB
SwapTotal: 7815612 kB
SwapFree: 7815612 kB
Dirty: 316 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 428096 kB
Mapped: 102060 kB
Slab: 153872 kB
SReclaimable: 84232 kB
SUnreclaim: 69640 kB
PageTables: 15728 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 9489152 kB
Committed_AS: 833572 kB
VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed: 316320 kB
VmallocChunk: 34359421435 kB
HugePages_Total: 0
HugePages_Free: 0
HugePages_Rsvd: 0
HugePages_Surp: 0
Hugepagesize: 2048 kB
DirectMap4k: 130752 kB
DirectMap2M: 3276800 kB

[Oliver (t.raum)]

I have the same problem: a ThinkPad R60 with Bios showing 4 GB of RAM but in ubuntu 8.10 amd64 only 3GB usable!

MemTotal: 3088272 kB
MemFree: 1758452 kB
Buffers: 25860 kB
Cached: 399620 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 815512 kB
Inactive: 280248 kB
SwapTotal: 4005880 kB
SwapFree: 4005880 kB
Dirty: 88 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 670424 kB
Mapped: 129940 kB
Slab: 59400 kB
SReclaimable: 28456 kB
SUnreclaim: 30944 kB
PageTables: 20244 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 5550016 kB
Committed_AS: 1327824 kB
VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed: 98384 kB
VmallocChunk: 34359639839 kB
HugePages_Total: 0
HugePages_Free: 0
HugePages_Rsvd: 0
HugePages_Surp: 0
Hugepagesize: 2048 kB
DirectMap4k: 301888 kB
DirectMap2M: 2842624 kB

[Andy Whitcroft (apw)]

Could you attach your dmesg output from a clean boot. Specifically we are interested in the e820 section of that output which shows how the hardware/BIOS has layed out the memory in your systems.

Here is an example from a 4GB machine which is showing 4GB of ram within the OS too:

    $ head -1 /proc/meminfo
    MemTotal: 4013952 kB
    [...]

    ] BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009c400 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 000000000009c400 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000000d2000 - 00000000000d4000 (reserved)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000000e0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
    ] BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000bd4a1000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd4a1000 - 00000000bd4a7000 (reserved)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd4a7000 - 00000000bd5ba000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd5ba000 - 00000000bd60f000 (reserved)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd60f000 - 00000000bd708000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd708000 - 00000000bd90f000 (reserved)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd90f000 - 00000000bd918000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd918000 - 00000000bd91f000 (reserved)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd91f000 - 00000000bd963000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd963000 - 00000000bd99f000 (ACPI NVS)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd99f000 - 00000000bd9e4000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd9e4000 - 00000000bd9ff000 (ACPI data)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd9ff000 - 00000000bda00000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 0000000100000000 - 0000000140000000 (usable)

Note that although I have 4GB of ram, the last GB is actually mapped at 4-5GB physical.

[Oliver (t.raum)]

here is my dmesg output.

[Andy Whitcroft (apw)]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 10:16:49AM -0000, diefans wrote:
> here is my dmesg output.
>
> ** Attachment added: "dmesg.txt"
> http://launchpadlibrarian.net/20493232/dmesg.txt

[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000000000009f000 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000000dc000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000bfed0000 (usable)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000bfed0000 - 00000000bfedf000 (ACPI data)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000bfedf000 - 00000000bff00000 (ACPI NVS)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000bff00000 - 00000000c0000000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000f0000000 - 00000000f4000000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec10000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fed00000 - 00000000fed00400 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fed14000 - 00000000fed1a000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fed1c000 - 00000000fed90000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000ff800000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)

This e820 output implies there is not 4GB of ram in this system.
Only the usable sections are literally usable for storage by the kernel.
That is these two, which is memory from 0 to close to 3GB give or take a
few blocks. So the kernel is doing the right thing given the information
it appears to be being given by the BIOS.

[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000bfed0000 (usable)

Compare that to mine, where there is RAM from 4GB to 5GB physical and
all of the reserved areas are actually pulled down below 3GB.

    ] BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009c400 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000bd4a1000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd4a7000 - 00000000bd5ba000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd60f000 - 00000000bd708000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd90f000 - 00000000bd918000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd91f000 - 00000000bd963000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd99f000 - 00000000bd9e4000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd9ff000 - 00000000bda00000 (usable)
    ] BIOS-e820: 0000000100000000 - 0000000140000000 (usable)

Things to look at would include whether you have a BIOS option to shift
the RAM layout to keep the 3GB-4GB range free. Typically IO space and
the AGP aperture get dropped in there, which can wack a huge chunk of
ram. Not that I see that being mentioned in your dmesg.

[diefans (diefans)]

....hmmm

So what could it be that my bios is telling me I have 4 GB installed
(what I did) and is telling to the kernel that it could only use 3GB?

the bios has not that much options to play with....

thanks anyway
Oliver

Andy Whitcroft wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 10:16:49AM -0000, diefans wrote:
>> here is my dmesg output.
>>
>> ** Attachment added: "dmesg.txt"
>> http://launchpadlibrarian.net/20493232/dmesg.txt
>
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000000000009f000 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000000dc000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000bfed0000 (usable)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000bfed0000 - 00000000bfedf000 (ACPI data)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000bfedf000 - 00000000bff00000 (ACPI NVS)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000bff00000 - 00000000c0000000 (reserved)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000f0000000 - 00000000f4000000 (reserved)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec10000 (reserved)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fed00000 - 00000000fed00400 (reserved)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fed14000 - 00000000fed1a000 (reserved)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fed1c000 - 00000000fed90000 (reserved)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000ff800000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
>
> This e820 output implies there is not 4GB of ram in this system.
> Only the usable sections are literally usable for storage by the kernel.
> That is these two, which is memory from 0 to close to 3GB give or take a
> few blocks. So the kernel is doing the right thing given the information
> it appears to be being given by the BIOS.
>
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
> [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000bfed0000 (usable)
>
> Compare that to mine, where there is RAM from 4GB to 5GB physical and
> all of the reserved areas are actually pulled down below 3GB.
>
> ] BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009c400 (usable)
> ] BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000bd4a1000 (usable)
> ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd4a7000 - 00000000bd5ba000 (usable)
> ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd60f000 - 00000000bd708000 (usable)
> ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd90f000 - 00000000bd918000 (usable)
> ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd91f000 - 00000000bd963000 (usable)
> ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd99f000 - 00000000bd9e4000 (usable)
> ] BIOS-e820: 00000000bd9ff000 - 00000000bda00000 (usable)
> ] BIOS-e820: 0000000100000000 - 0000000140000000 (usable)
>
> Things to look at would include whether you have a BIOS option to shift
> the RAM layout to keep the 3GB-4GB range free. Typically IO space and
> the AGP aperture get dropped in there, which can wack a huge chunk of
> ram. Not that I see that being mentioned in your dmesg.
>

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Per a decision made by the Ubuntu Kernel Team, bugs will longer be assigned to the ubuntu-kernel-team in Launchpad as part of the bug triage process. The ubuntu-kernel-team is being unassigned from this bug report. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies for more information. Thanks.

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

This bug report was marked as Triaged a while ago but has not had any updated comments for quite some time. Please let us know if this issue remains in the current Ubuntu release, http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . If the issue remains, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[enos76 (enos76)]

This is not a bug this is not a bug this is not a bug... it's a specification of the Lenovo T60 notebook... happens with all OSs thus unless Ubuntu can do magic forget about having 4Gb on the Lenovo T60!

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

This bug report was marked as Incomplete and has not had any updated comments for quite some time. As a result this bug is being closed. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu release http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . Also, please be sure to provide any requested information that may have been missing. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]