Q. I added two more GB of RAM Memory, yet the system shows the wrong amount, 3.36GB. I even installed Kernel -PAE, but that didn't solve this issue. What is the problem with my server?

A. Allocated memory is made up of physical RAM, and any I/O space needed by devices. Normally this is not a problem, but when a system has 4 GB of physical memory, the addresses needed to address RAM overlap the space needed for I/O. In this case the need for I/O space takes precedence and the amount of RAM visible to the operating system and applications is limited to 4GB, minus I/O Space. That means the OS reports what's available and not the total amount.

Although it is not a problem, as mentioned earlier, you might want to re-compile the Kernel from source to force the system to report the full amount of Memory.

To learn more about Kernels, please browse our Knowledgebase. There is a very good list of articles about the Kernel.

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