Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Mon, 5 Feb 2001 20:43:17 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Mon, 5 Feb 2001 20:43:07 -0500 Received: from winds.org ([207.48.83.9]:42244 "EHLO winds.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Mon, 5 Feb 2001 20:42:48 -0500 Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 20:41:17 -0500 (EST) From: Byron Stanoszek To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: [OT] Why so much memory 'reserved'? Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org This is an offtopic question. What determines the amount of 'reserved' memory, and how much to reserve? With 2.4.1-ac3, I came up with the following different memory readings for both a Pentium 166 and an Athlon 750. Pentium 166: (96MB RAM) ------------ BIOS-provided physical RAM map: BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 @ 0000000000000000 (usable) BIOS-e820: 0000000000000400 @ 000000000009fc00 (usable) BIOS-e820: 0000000000010000 @ 00000000000f0000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 0000000005f00000 @ 0000000000100000 (usable) BIOS-e820: 0000000000010000 @ 00000000ffff0000 (reserved) On node 0 totalpages: 24576 zone(0): 4096 pages. zone(1): 20480 pages. zone(2): 0 pages. Memory: 94732k/98304k available (890k kernel code, 3184k reserved, 261k data, 176k init, 0k highmem) Athlon 750: (128MB RAM) ----------- BIOS-provided physical RAM map: BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 @ 0000000000000000 (usable) BIOS-e820: 0000000000000400 @ 000000000009fc00 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 0000000000010000 @ 00000000000f0000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 0000000000010000 @ 00000000ffff0000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 0000000007f00000 @ 0000000000100000 (usable) On node 0 totalpages: 32768 zone(0): 4096 pages. zone(1): 28672 pages. zone(2): 0 pages. Memory: 126500k/131072k available (1127k kernel code, 4184k reserved, 322k data, 200k init, 0k highmem) Last year, when I had 32MB of memory in the Pentium 166 machine, the amount of 'reserved' memory seemed lower. It almost looked as if the amount of reserved memory is a fraction of total available memory. Is there a way I can 'regain' this memory from the system, especially in cases when there's only 32MB to work with? Thanks, Byron -- Byron Stanoszek Ph: (330) 644-3059 Systems Programmer Fax: (330) 644-8110 Commercial Timesharing Inc. Email: byron@comtime.com - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/