2009/6/5 Stuart Maybee <Stuart.Maybee at sun.com>: >> > I tried upgrading the memory in my Asus VX2s from >> 2 >> > to 4 GB. ?I dual boot both Solaris and Vista, >> Vista >> > as fine with the new memory and cpu-z verified >> that >> > it was running at the proper speed, etc. >> > However, something about having the additional >> memory >> > sends Solaris in the tank, booting goes to a 5 or >> 6 >> > minute process and various things seem to not work >> > properly i.e. various complaints on shutdown about >> > i/o that didn't complete, etc. ?Anybody seen >> > something similar or have an Idea what might be >> going >> > on? >> >> Yes. ?It was a BIOS bug, BIOS didn't setup the last >> few MBs >> of physical memory as cachable in MTRR registers. >> Apparently Solaris did put something important into >> the >> uncachable area and this resulted in a massive slow >> down. >> >> It was fixed with a BIOS upgrade. ? Before the fixed >> BIOS >> was available, we worked around the problem with a >> grub "uppermem 2500000" command > > Hmm, I'm running the latest BIOS (301 dated 2008/01/04) available for the > VX2S as far as the asus support site shows. ?Is that the fixed version?. > However, I have reverted the laptop to 2Gig of memory and It's possible I > upgraded the BIOS after I did that. ?I will try again
In our case it was an Intel mainboard. The Solaris / 8GB issue on this board was similar to this: http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0706.0/0237.html Unfortunately you can't dump the cpu mtrr registers from Solaris to verify what physical memory is marked as cacheable.
