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Running Ubuntu Server 11.04. I've got a new Dell Precision T7500 workstation loaded up with 12x8GB DIMMs and the BIOS shows 96GB but checking /proc/meminfo gives:

cat /proc/meminfo | grep MemTotal
MemTotal:       82650584 kB

and free gives:

free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         80713       5254      75459          0         89       3304
-/+ buffers/cache:       1860      78852
Swap:        95365          2      95363

The Win7 install that it came with showed 96GB with 80 GB usable, as well.

Does anybody know what's going on?

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Please post the output of cat /var/log/dmesg | grep Memory – Zoredache Aug 29 '11 at 18:34
1  
Ensure that you are running the latest BIOS update. I'm not saying that's your solution but it's probably a good starting point... – HTTP500 Aug 29 '11 at 19:29
What is the output of dmidecode -t 16 -t 17? – sciurus Aug 29 '11 at 20:09
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cat /var/log/dmesg | grep Memory [ 0.000000] Memory: 82641428k/84672512k available (5510k kernel code, 788924k absent, 1242160k reserved, 3122k data, 812k init) – Ryan N Aug 29 '11 at 22:22
and the dmidecode: pastebin.com/axGdhXvq – Ryan N Aug 29 '11 at 22:24
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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Have you tried the kernel-parameter "mem=96G" ?

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up vote 1 down vote

We're run into a few problems with RAM and/or Video memory addressing across a few iterations of Dell hardare where I work and found the solution to be adding pci=nommconf as a kernel option in grub - worth a try.

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up vote 1 down vote

Are you using two CPUs? If this workstation got 18 slots and you're only getting use of 9 out of 12 memory sticks working. It almost sounds like you're only using 1 CPU. Other than that, there might be failure in your motherboard / firmware.

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