Missing RAM!

Gob · Mar 17, 2009, 5:24 PM

Hi
I have just built a new pfSense box on a DELL PowerEdge 1650.
Installation and configuration has gone OK but I have just noticed on the System Information page that it is only seeing 256Mb RAM installed but there is actually 1Gb of RAM installed. The BIOS reports the full amount of RAM.

Can pfSense address more than 256Mb RAM?

Thanks
Gordon

Cry Havok · Mar 17, 2009, 7:58 PM

Yes, easily.

What does "dmesg" show in the top few dozen lines?

Gob · Mar 17, 2009, 8:48 PM

dmesg

Copyright 1992-2008 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE-p8 #0: Thu Jan 8 22:29:30 EST 2009
sullrich@freebsd7-releng_1_2_1.pfsense.org:/usr/obj.pfSense/usr/src/sys/pfSe nse_SMP.7
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III CPU family 1133MHz (1130.45-MHz 686-class CPU)
Origin = "GenuineIntel" Id = 0x6b1 Stepping = 1
Features=0x383fbff <fpu,vme,de,pse,tsc,msr,pae,mce,cx8,apic,sep,mtrr,pge,mca,cm ="" ov,pat,pse36,mmx,fxsr,sse="">real memory = 268304384 (255 MB)
avail memory = 248143872 (236 MB)
ACPI APIC Table: <dell pe1650 ="">FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 2 CPUs
cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID: 1
cpu1 (AP): APIC ID: 0</dell ></fpu,vme,de,pse,tsc,msr,pae,mce,cx8,apic,sep,mtrr,pge,mca,cm >

Cry Havok · Mar 17, 2009, 9:57 PM

Interesting, for some reason it's only getting told about the first 256 MB of RAM. Can you try 1.2.2 (current stable) and if that doesn't work 1.2.3 (pre-release) and see if they fix the problem.

Gob · Mar 18, 2009, 12:20 AM

interestingly, this is the 1.2.2 stable version, although the dmesg output reports 1.2.1!

Is it possible to do an in place upgrade from 1.2.2 stable to 1.2.3 pre using the update manager? The box is now in production and I don't really have time to build from scratch.

Thanks for your help!

wallabybob · Mar 18, 2009, 1:12 PM

I don't know about automatic updates for 1.2.2 to 1.2.3.

I have made the 1.2.2 to 1.2.3 transition by downloading the 1.2.3 firmware and then done a manual update from web GUI by system -> firmware, manual update tab.

FreeBSD normally finds out the amount of memory in the system, by asking the BIOS. Does the BIOS have an option to report less than than full amount of memory in the system? FreeBSD also has a mechanism to use less than the available memory. What is in /boot/loader.conf?

Gob · Mar 18, 2009, 1:53 PM

OK - thanks.
I'll try a manual firmware upload on Friday and also check out the BIOS.

loader.conf contains:

utoboot_delay="1"
vm.kmem_size="435544320"
vm.kmem_size_max="535544320"
kern.ipc.nmbclusters="0"