Memory 64bit see 8gigs but can only use 4gigs

[Chris Miller]

On Fri, 2005-09-30 at 18:55, Dave Jones wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2005 at 06:48:16PM -0400, Chris Miller wrote:
>  > On Fri, 2005-09-30 at 18:23, Dave Jones wrote:
>  > > On Fri, Sep 30, 2005 at 06:06:59PM -0400, Chris Miller wrote:
>  > >  >  kernel: Memory: 3992156k/8388608k available (2242k kernel code, 0k
>  > >  > reserved, 1322k data, 224k init)
>  > >  > 
>  > >  >              total       used       free     shared    buffers    
>  > >  > cached
>  > >  > Mem:       3993352    2541436    1451916          0     526208    
>  > >  > 481032
>  > >  > -/+ buffers/cache:    1534196    2459156
>  > >  > Swap:            0          0          0
>  > >  > 
>  > >  >  2.6.13-1.1526_FC4smp #1 SMP Wed Sep 28 19:28:24 EDT 2005 x86_64 x86_64
>  > >  > x86_64 GNU/Linux
>  > >  > 
>  > >  > Any idea why I can see all 8gigs but can only use 4gigs?
>  > > 
>  > > Try booting with numa=noacpi
>  > > If this works, it's a buggy bios.
>  > 
>  > That is the fix thank you.
>  > Was starting to think it was me =)
> 
> There are two means of finding the total amount of ram.
> The old legacy 'e820' tables, and the newer 'srat' tables.
> A while ago, we started using srat on x86-64, as it allows
> us to determine how much memory is local to each cpu, rather
> than the 'global' view that e820 gives us.
> 
> In an ideal world, the two should be in sync.
> Some vendors however seem to create tables that don't tally,
> so ram disappears when you use the srat approach.
> 
> Is this a Tyan board by any chance ?
> They seemed to be quite badly affected by this issue, and
> did put out bios updates for some, but not all boards.
> 
> 		Dave

Yes its a 2 week old Appro with a Tyan 2881 or 2891 in it.  Not sure
since I have not seen it.