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Pfsense does not recognize 4GB ram

General pfSense Questions
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  • F
    fosiul
    last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 12:50 PM

    Hi
    Today I bought dell server with 4GB of ram
    but its looks like to me its only seeing 3 GB of ram, but not 4gb

    here is the top outout

    Mem: 32M Active, 14M Inact, 34M Wired, 84K Cache, 16M Buf, 2917M Free
    Swap: 8192M Total, 8192M Free

    why its not seeing 4GB of ram ??
    From Bios its seeing 4GB of ram.

    Thanks for advise .

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    • W
      wallabybob
      last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 1:05 PM

      This is normal and to be expected. Web page specifications of some commodity motherboards say users cannot expect to see more than about 3GB of RAM when running a 32-bit operating system, particularly certain versions of Windows.

      There is a technical discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

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      • F
        fosiul
        last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 1:10 PM

        HI thanks

        so does it mean, i cant use 4gb of ram with pfsense ??

        my 1GB would be just waste ?

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        • W
          wallabybob
          last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 1:47 PM

          The 64 bit version of pfSense (still under development) will support use of more than 3GB of RAM.

          Depending on your memory configuration and chipset, the 1GB may not be wasted. Common chipsets have two or more channels to memory o they can access multiple memory sticks concurrently. If you take out some memory because its is "wasted" you will likely end up with reduced memory bandwidth because some of the time you will be able to access memory over one one channel rather than two.

          How much memory do you really think you will need? 512MB is much more than is needed for many applications.

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          • F
            fosiul
            last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 1:55 PM

            Hi thanks again

            From last 3 weeks i am using pfsense in production environment with 1Gb of memory .
            Since I am using snort for both External and Internal Interfaces, its consuming 85-90% of memory.

            And Some times , browsing gets slow . as Squid+SquidGuard running ( and i set 200 mb for squid )

            so my minimum guess is i will need 2GB of ram.

            but i thought if I will  buy 4GB , as i am thinking i will create 2  VLANs and will put my Inhouse hosing project  under this pfsense router and it might need more memory.

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            • K
              kpa
              last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 1:57 PM

              Number of channels (dual or single) has nothing to do with the OS's ability to use the memory in 3-4GB region in case of 32-bit operating systems. The memory mapped I/O memory regions that the PCI devices use have to be addressable all the time and just can not be "swapped" away to access the memory hidden beneath them.

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              • J
                jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 1:59 PM

                You could try a 2.0 BETA4 snapshot for the amd64 platform. It can use 4GB and more, so long as your BIOS/MB/CPU support running a 64-bit OS.

                Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

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                • F
                  fosiul
                  last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 2:06 PM

                  HI thanks

                  I am using

                  SmartValue! DELL™ PowerEdge™ R210 (SV3R210)

                  ref :http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&kc=305&l=en&oc=SV3R210&s=bsd&sbc=poweredge-r210

                  With 4GB of ram and the cpu is :

                  Intel® Pentium® G6950, 2C, 2.80GHz, 4M Cache, Memory runs at 1066MHz Max

                  I have few more server of same configuration. and I have installed Centos 64Bit on those

                  so which means i would be able to install pfsense 64 bit , is not it ??

                  Thanks again for your supports

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                  • J
                    jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                    last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 2:10 PM

                    It should work then. Just keep in mind that pfSense 2.0 is still BETA, not a release, so there are still some things that may not work.

                    Here is a link to an .iso you can use to install it. If you have issues with 2.0, post in the 2.0 board:

                    http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_8_1/amd64/pfSense_HEAD/livecd_installer/pfSense-2.0-BETA4-20100811-0244.iso.gz

                    Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

                    Need help fast? Netgate Global Support!

                    Do not Chat/PM for help!

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                    • F
                      fosiul
                      last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 2:13 PM

                      Hi thanks

                      I just need bellow 4 packages to work

                      Snort,Squid,Squid Guard,LightSquid,Bandwidthd

                      is there any known issue with those 4 packages with 64 bit system  ??

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                      • J
                        jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                        last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 2:16 PM

                        Snort may not work - I think the others are OK. Squid and SquidGuard worked the last time I tested them.

                        2.0 isn't the issue for packages working, almost all of them are fine there, it's the 64-bit platform that may not have all the packages in order.

                        Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

                        Need help fast? Netgate Global Support!

                        Do not Chat/PM for help!

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                        • F
                          fosiul
                          last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 2:19 PM

                          I am loving pfsense mostly for the snort . it has nice way to block offender by using snort .

                          but you saying, snort might not work with 64bit, in that case i will have to stick with 32 bit, as i really want to use snort .

                          but if you say : snort might work, might not then i will 64 bit a try ..

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                          • J
                            jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                            last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 2:23 PM

                            I haven't tried snort on x64, so I can't say for sure. It might be worth trying. It may not work right now, but it will be fixed eventually.

                            Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

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                            Do not Chat/PM for help!

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                            • F
                              fosiul
                              last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 2:26 PM

                              Ok thanks
                              I will give it a try

                              and will come back to you on 2.0 Board

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                              • F
                                fosiul
                                last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 2:33 PM

                                One more thing , i need advise ..

                                is this 64 bit recommended to put in production environment ??

                                if i put this 64bit in production, will there would be any security problem  as this is not tested properly

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                                • W
                                  wallabybob
                                  last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 2:48 PM

                                  @fosiul:

                                  I have few more server of same configuration. and I have installed Centos 64Bit on those

                                  so which means i would be able to install pfsense 64 bit , is not it ??

                                  Yes, those system should support the 64 bit version of pfSense.

                                  @kpa:

                                  Number of channels (dual or single) has nothing to do with the OS's ability to use the memory in 3-4GB region in case of 32-bit operating systems.

                                  Agreed, my remark about number of memory channels wasn't meant to have anything to do with memory in any particular region it was rather about the consequences of think of some of the memory as "wasted".

                                  Consider a system with dual memory channels, four memory slots each with 1GB of RAM. You boot and see there is 1GB "wasted" memory and remove a stick. Now you have a configuration that at best has a lower available memory bandwidth than it did with 4 memory sticks. Even though that memory is not able to be accessed it is not "wasted" because its presence gives higher memory bandwidth than could be seen in its absence. The higher memory bandwidth might be important if the CPU has multiple threads all working pretty hard.

                                  The guide for the relatively recent motherboard (ASUS M3A78-EMH HDMI) effectively says a user may have one, two or four memory sticks in the system. The guide for a newer motherboard (ASUS M4A785D-M PRO) doesn't suggest that three memory sticks is a bad choice but mentions that some memory may operate in single channel mode if the memory configuration is not chosen wisely.

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                                  • J
                                    jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                                    last edited by Aug 11, 2010, 2:48 PM

                                    It's a BETA snapshot - so that is up to you. We don't generally recommend them for production yet, but some people use them without problems.

                                    There should not be any security issues. There might be a couple missing features or things that don't work quite as expected yet, but those are getting better every day.

                                    It's up to what is required for your system. If you must have more than 4GB of RAM, then you will need to use x64. If you can get by with less for now, stick with 1.2.3 and update after 2.0 is released for real.

                                    Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

                                    Need help fast? Netgate Global Support!

                                    Do not Chat/PM for help!

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