[haiku-bugs] Re: [Haiku] #6178: RAM 1GB of 4GB reported used after boot
- From: "mmlr" <trac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2010 22:59:51 -0000
#6178: RAM 1GB of 4GB reported used after boot
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Reporter: michael.weirauch | Owner: axeld
Type: bug | Status: closed
Priority: normal | Milestone: R1
Component: System/Kernel | Version: R1/Development
Resolution: invalid | Keywords:
Blockedby: | Patch: 0
Platform: x86 | Blocking:
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Comment(by mmlr):
Replying to [comment:1 bonefish]:
> That's actually a feature, not a bug. Without PAE (Physical Address
Extension) enabled (which it isn't by default), the processor can only
access physical addresses up to 4 GB. Since graphics memory and registers
of devices are also mapped in the 4 GB range, some of your RAM is beyond
that limit and cannot be used. Until recently (r37117) that memory would
be ignored completely (i.e. AboutSystem and others would display 3.2 GB or
something like that as total available memory). Now the total available
memory is displayed correctly and the non-accessible memory is considered
used. It could be considered as free, but that's even less correct, since
it can't be used.
I somehow find that this gives a rather inaccurate picture though and
makes the used memory figure pretty much useless. Considering that the RAM
that is not addressable isn't actually available to the OS the previous
way of displaying makes far more sense to me (actually showing "available"
memory). With these changes you simply put up the impression that the OS
uses a lot of memory even though it really doesn't, hence you can't really
tell how much memory is actually "used" by the system. You can tell how
much memory is still available with either way of displaying (3.1GB out of
4GB vs. 3.1GB out of 3.2GB when 0.1GB is actually used) so there's no real
disadvantage in the previous way to handle it IMO.
--
Ticket URL: <http://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/6178#comment:3>
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