From Bugzilla Helper: Description of problem: running RH6.2 2.2.19-6.2.12enterprise kernel (should have BIGMEM support) on a Dell PowerEdge 2450 dual CPU, 2GB RAM. the kernel detects 2GB of memory, but the page cache (file system cache) does not utilize any memory above the 1GB mark, even under intense disk utilization. # cat /proc/meminfo total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached: Mem: 2147037184 989044736 1157992448 0 166928384 667865088 Swap: 1079689216 17092608 1062596608 MemTotal: 2096716 kB MemFree: 1130852 kB MemShared: 0 kB Buffers: 163016 kB Cached: 652212 kB BigTotal: 1179636 kB BigFree: 1090384 kB SwapTotal: 1054384 kB SwapFree: 1037692 kB Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 2.2.19-6.2.12enterprise How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.boot linux on 2GB machine 2.lots of disk access (nfs, imap, etc) 3.sum of memory used never goes above 1GB even though system sees 2GB Additional info:
BigTotal: 1179636 kB BigFree: 1090384 kB it is using it, just not a lot. 2.2 kernels do not use highmem for the pagecache (diskcache etc), only 2.4 kernels do. So only applications doing malloc() use highmem on 2.2
wow, that's pretty weak. guess i'll look into migrating to RH7.2 so i can run the 2.4.x kernel. thanks!
Thanks for the bug report. However, Red Hat no longer maintains this version of the product. Please upgrade to the latest version and open a new bug if the problem persists. The Fedora Legacy project (http://fedoralegacy.org/) maintains some older releases, and if you believe this bug is interesting to them, please report the problem in the bug tracker at: http://bugzilla.fedora.us/