[vox-tech] HIGHMEM enabled kernel

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Thu 12 Aug 04, 12:06 PM, Karalius, Joseph <Joseph.Karalius at seminis.com> said:
> Output from dmesg:
> ...
> Warning only 896MB will be used.
> Use a HIGHMEM enabled kernel.
> 896MB LOWMEM available.
> ...
> 
> Is HIGHMEM a module that can be loaded at boot time or do I need to
> recompile a new kernel?

Joey, you gotta learn how to use Google at some point.  Waiting for
answers on a mailing list everytime you have trouble is only going to
cause you grief and heartache.  The best way to learn Linux is to use
Google.  And then use the mailing list as a resource to help you
understand or implement whatever it is you find on Google.

Do a Google search on:

   Warning only 896MB will be used.

and look at the 5th item.  That looks good to me.

> What do I need to do to utilize all 2GB of RAM and why doesn't the Debian
> installer automatically configure the new kernel to use more than 896MB of
> RAM?  It's kind of a bummer to have to do that kind of reconfiguration on a
> fresh install.
 
There are many benefits to Debian; it's my distro of choice.  But doing
everything automagically is not one of Debian's strengths.  A distro
like Mandrake or Suse will do much of this stuff for you. 

Debian is designed around the lowest common denominator.  For systems as
small as floppy disk sized up to systems as large as a distributed
cluster and everything in between.  It makes very little assumptions
about who and what is using it.  It concentrates more on policy and
trying to do the Right Thing.

That said, my guess is that high mem support can't be built as a module.
Probably because it affects too much in kernel to be modular.  This
might have adverse consequences on people who don't have that much RAM
(in other words, most of the world).  Maybe you have a performance hit
when the system has that much RAM.  If that were the case, it would be
more reasonable to ship with a kernel with high mem turned off and let
the user decide for him (her) self.

Pete

-- 
Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. -- Albert Einstein
GPG Instructions: http://www.dirac.org/linux/gpg
GPG Fingerprint: B9F1 6CF3 47C4 7CD8 D33E 70A9 A3B9 1945 67EA 951D