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16329
November 16th, 2008 15:00
Dell Mini9 Default Kernel does not recognize the full 1gb of RAM
Hiya Dell,
So far I love my Mini9 that shipped with Ubuntu factory installed; however, a fairly major oversight seems to have been made, when the kernel was compiled high mem was not enabled. I could compile a kernel myself, I've done so countless times before, but I would prefer in this situation to have that done and then made available as an update through the update manager; this is mostly because I don't really want to hack around on my mini9, it works so excellently from the factory that there are only a few things I'd change(mostly cosmetic type situations), but not shipping with a correctly compiled kernel is not a great idea.
So, please, recompile the kernel and get that out as an update asap please.
Thanks for an otherwise excellent Ubuntu Laptop experience.
Rob
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DELL-Jesse L
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November 17th, 2008 11:00
starcannon,
Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.
What amount of memory does the system show?
starcannon
3 Posts
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November 17th, 2008 19:00
Currently showing 883.2 mb of system ram; I have 1gb installed; on the ubuntu dell forums this is also being reported on systems with 2gb of ram installed, and the work around that is solving the issue is to custom compile a kernel with highmem enabled. I do understand that 64mb of ram is being used for the video card; however this would not explain the custom kernel solution working on systems with > 1gb of ram. I have ordered a 2gb stick from newegg, and will be upgrading to that next week when I have time to mess with it. I love my mini9 and as umpc's go, this one is absolutely amazing (keyboard layout is my only complaint about its physical construction).
ffreitas
5 Posts
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December 20th, 2008 10:00
Hi,
I am also a mini 9 user, and hit the same issue - when you have 1 GB or 2 GB, the ubuntu that comes with the mini 9 only recognizes 883 MB RAM. IF you boot from Live cds (either Ubuntu or SuSE) the live cd recognizes the full memory installed.
Digging a bit further, that is because the kernel that came with mini 9's ubuntu does not have the flag to recognize more than that set. To check yours just open in a text editor/viewer the file /boot/config-2.6.24-19lpia , and search for the text "CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM" (without the double quotes). You will see something like this:
CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM=y
# CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G is not set
# CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G is not set
That shows that the kernel was compiled without an option that is needed to see more than the 883 MB our mini 9's can currently see. To fix that manually requires a kernel recompile (not trivial stuff). I'd like to know how should we go about requesting that Dell provide a kernel compiled with the 4GB option enabled in the updates, solving this issue for all users that either bought their mini 9 with 1 GB of RAM or upgraded to 1GB or more after buying the computer.
Just for the record, I upgraded mine to 2 GB, recompiled the kernel from Dell's own source packages, fought several issues with wireless and embbeded camera, and now my mini 9 does see the full 2 GB using ubuntu and have all peripherals working.
Thanks in advance for any help/pointers in how to get an update/patch that fixes the issue.
Fernando
hackel
6 Posts
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December 23rd, 2008 19:00
You don't need to compile your own kernel just to get HIGHMEM support. Just add the dell netbook remix repository to your sources.list:
deb http://dell-mini.archive.canonical.com/ubuntu hardy-netbook-remix main universe multiverse restricted
After an update and dist-upgrade, and you should get the latest kernel that does support HIGHMEM. Here's a direct link:
http://dell-mini.archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/dists/hardy-netbook-remix/main/binary-lpia/linux-image-2.6.24-19-lpia_2.6.24-19.41netbook11_lpia.deb
ffreitas
5 Posts
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December 29th, 2008 18:00
Thanks! Restored the factory defaults from the Ubuntu DVD and updated from the repository you provided, and it fixed the issue. I'd recommend posting that in the docs as well to make this information easier to find.
theonlycure
2 Posts
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January 10th, 2009 12:00
This solved the high memory problem for me (2Gig ram,) but now I no longer have wireless. Any suggestions?
theonlycure
2 Posts
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January 12th, 2009 18:00
Forget my last post. I installed startupmanager and found the new kernel wasn't loading by default. Changed the new kernel for default now everything works great.