Thanks to all of you who responded to my first query. To restate the initial
question:
I run RH 7.0 on a workstation with 256 MB of RAM. Performance declines after
awhile due to heavy swapping. I check memory utilization with the 'free'
command and learn that the system recognizes only 64 MB of RAM (the Linux
installation default), and it's all used up. The problem is this; how do I
get beyond the installation default settings and make the OS recognize the
actual amount of physical RAM available?
I boot Linux from diskette at each session and have only one lilo.conf on the
entire system -- the one on the diskette. I have added the following line to
the lilo.conf file, per recommendation of a HOWTO at one of the popular Linux
sites:
append = "mem=256M"
Eric Clover suggests that I move the 'append' statement from the end of the
lilo.conf file to the line immediately following the 'prompt' statement. I
have done so, and the lilo.conf now reads:
boot=/dev/fd0
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
prompt
append = "mem=256M"
image=/vmlinuz-2.2.16-22
label=linux
root=/dev/hda7
initrd=/initrd.img
However, after rebooting, 'free' still shows only 63 MB of RAM.
Mikkel Ellertson wonders whether I have rebooted from diskette since the
change. Yes, indeed I have; I must boot from diskette at each session, and
there is only one lilo.conf on my system -- it is on the boot diskette.
There's still only 62 - 63 MB of RAM.
Adam Sleight points out an interesting article on memory management at
http://www.linuxbrit.co.uk/tips/#mem_usage. However, the article confirms
that I am reading the output of the 'free' command correctly, and that the OS
recognizes only 62 or 63 MB of *total* available RAM memory, despite the fact
that 256 MB of RAM are installed, and the POST accounts for every K of it at
each boot-up.
Those are the responses so far. This appears to be a sticky question. Any
further help would be appreciated.
John Reese
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