[KenKnight]

Hi all,

I setup a Debian Perfect server a couple of years ago and we just caught recently that it is not utilizing all the available ram. This server (Dell 1750) has 2 gigs of ram which is verified by the lshw results below.

======== LSWH =========
root@mail:/etc/default# lshw -C memory
  *-firmware
       description: BIOS
       vendor: Dell Computer Corporation
       physical id: 0
       version: A12 (09/29/2006)
       size: 64KiB
       capacity: 4032KiB
       capabilities: isa pci pnp upgrade shadowing escd cdboot bootselect edd int13floppytoshiba int13floppy360 int13floppy1200 int13floppy720 int9keyboard int14serial int10video acpi usb ls120boot biosbootspecification netboot
  *-cache:0
       description: L1 cache
       physical id: 700
       size: 8KiB
       capacity: 8KiB
       capabilities: internal write-back data
  *-cache:1
       description: L2 cache
       physical id: 701
       size: 512KiB
       capacity: 1MiB
       capabilities: internal varies unified
  *-cache:0
       description: L1 cache
       physical id: 703
       size: 8KiB
       capacity: 8KiB
       capabilities: internal write-back data
  *-cache:1
       description: L2 cache
       physical id: 704
       size: 512KiB
       capacity: 1MiB
       capabilities: internal varies unified
  *-memory
       description: System Memory
       physical id: 1000
       slot: System board or motherboard
       size: 2GiB
     *-bank:0
          description: DIMM DDR Synchronous 266 MHz (3.8 ns)
          physical id: 0
          slot: DIMM_1A
          size: 1GiB
          width: 64 bits
          clock: 266MHz (3.8ns)
     *-bank:1
          description: DIMM DDR Synchronous 266 MHz (3.8 ns)
          physical id: 1
          slot: DIMM_1B
          size: 1GiB
          width: 64 bits
          clock: 266MHz (3.8ns)
     *-bank:2
          description: DIMM DDR Synchronous 266 MHz (3.8 ns) [empty]
          physical id: 2
          slot: DIMM_2A
          width: 64 bits
          clock: 266MHz (3.8ns)
     *-bank:3
          description: DIMM DDR Synchronous 266 MHz (3.8 ns) [empty]
          physical id: 3
          slot: DIMM_2B
          width: 64 bits
          clock: 266MHz (3.8ns)

free -m

root@mail:/etc/default# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           248        244          4          0          5         33
-/+ buffers/cache:        205         42
Swap:          484        175        309

We've tried putting mem=2048 in the grub file but that isn't working.

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"
#GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="var1 var2 mem=2048m"

The uname info is:

root@mail:/etc/default# uname -a
Linux mail.pboss.com 2.6.32-5-686 #1 SMP Tue Mar 8 21:36:00 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux

Is this a bigmem issue or does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Ken