red hat Linux 5.0 is detecting 3gb ram but physical ram is 16gb

manoj.solaris · January 1, 2009, 4:16am

Hi,

On server 64bit Hw Arch , Linux 5.0(32bit) is installed it is showing only 3gb of ram though physical is 16gb

can u give me idea why?

reborg · January 1, 2009, 7:18am

A 32 bit OS cannot natively address 16GB of RAM. You are simply seeing the amount of memory your OS can address. You will have to use the 64 it OS to see the full 16 GB.

smallman · January 1, 2009, 11:35am

I am considdering upgrade to my pc.

reborg, as i understand it is impossible to use ram more than 3 gb on my pc (32bit) because linux64 will not work on my 32 machine? What should i do?

reborg · January 1, 2009, 11:59am

A server installation might allow you to use all the RAM but if this is not ideal for a desktop system because the kernel would not be preemptive.

wazzu62 · January 8, 2009, 1:01pm

I believe starting the RHEL3 RedHat offers a hugemem kernel supports a 4GB per process user space and a 4GB direct kernel space. The hugemem kernel allows systems with up to 64GB of main memory and is required in order to use all the memory in system configured with more than 16GB of memory.