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Using only 64Mb out of 128Mb Available

From Terry Singleton on Fri, 18 Dec 1998

Thanks Jim.I added the line as you suggested, however it did not seem to take am I supposed to be it under the boot image section itself? Memory is still 64000av.

Sorry, I should have been more detailed. You need to add this append= directive to each of the stanzas to which it applies. (You could have a couple of stanzas that referred to reduced memory configuration if you were a software developer, tester or reviewer so that you could test a package's behaviour under varying memory constraints).

This is what I have:

 boot=/dev/sda
 map=/boot/map
 install=/boot/boot.b
 prompt
 timeout=50
 append="mem=128M"
 image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.0.34-0.6
         label=linux
         root=/dev/sda1
         initrd=/boot/initrd-2.0.34-0.6.img
         read-only

should it be:

 boot=/dev/sda
 map=/boot/map
 install=/boot/boot.b
 prompt
 timeout=50
 image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.0.34-0.6
         label=linux
         root=/dev/sda1
         initrd=/boot/initrd-2.0.34-0.6.img
         read-only
          append="mem=128M"

Yes.

(Also remember to re-run /sbin/lilo to read this config file and build the new boot blocks and maps therefrom).

Incidentally it would have been quicker and reasonably safe (in this case) to just try the experiement. It should have worked and you'd have gotten your answer much quicker.

I can understand a degree of hesitation about experimenting with the boot blocks and partition tables (a data structure that's stored in the the same block as the MBR first stage boot block). Obviously a mistake means that you can't boot at all.

However, it's wise to have a backup and a working rescue floppy and to practice using them before you make any changes to your /etc/lilo.conf.

Copyright © 1999, James T. Dennis
Published in The Linux Gazette Issue 36 January 1999

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