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So after few weeks of learning, finally managed to fix broken Mac Pro 2006 and get Ubuntu 20.04 working. However I'm now running into a problem as only 2GB is showing in my system monitor out of 32GB installed. However on lshw -c memory I'm getting 32gb with all 8 banks of memory being correctly recognized. I also had all 32gb on Lion X. As far as I'm aware this Mac has 64x architecture with 32x EFI. There was some workaround of getting 64 ubuntu installed. Also one of 8 cores is most of the time on 100% when doing nothing. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it. I have tried taking some of RAM out and rearranging but always ended up with 2gb. I tried to upload pics of stuff but couldn't as I'm new here. Thanks

              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          1.9Gi       1.1Gi       268Mi        27Mi       608Mi       685Mi
Swap:         2.0Gi        11Mi       2.0Gi

memory

   description: System Memory
   physical id: 20
   slot: System board or motherboard
   size: 32GiB
   capabilities: ecc
   configuration: errordetection=ecc

dmidecode 3.2

Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 2.4 present.
Handle 0x0020, DMI type 16, 15 bytes
Physical Memory Array
Location: System Board Or Motherboard
Use: System Memory
Error Correction Type: Single-bit ECC
Maximum Capacity: 64 GB
Error Information Handle: Not Provided
Number Of Devices: 8
YungKaymak
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    By default, Ubuntu starts with 2 GB of swap memory. Are you sure you're not confusing swap with RAM? Please edit the post to show the output of the command free. – tfstwbbnb Dec 28 '20 at 20:00
  • Thanks for quick reply. I think it is RAM as swap is showed separately. Both are 2gb. However on lshw it shows 32gb. free also shows 2gb with 1gb being used – YungKaymak Dec 28 '20 at 20:56
  • sudo dmidecode -t 16 please. Any config option for ram in your uefi? – nobody Dec 29 '20 at 13:52
  • updated with dmidecode, however I didn't manage to access EFI. I have tried cmd alt F 0 If anyone knows how to access EFI on Mac Pro 2006 that would be helpful as well. – YungKaymak Dec 29 '20 at 21:34
  • Still didn't manage to solve this. Anyone has any other idea? – YungKaymak Jan 03 '21 at 07:52
  • Does your 64 bit Ubuntu BIOS or EFI boot? – David Anderson Jan 03 '21 at 19:56
  • I think it's EFI as machine is Mac Pro. But hasn't been able to access EFI screen when boot. I read something about installing Ubuntu on Mac this way reduces PCIe lanes. Could that play a role maybe? – YungKaymak Jan 04 '21 at 11:39
  • So after all kind of unsuccessful attempts I've installed Lion X on another hard drive and it is still showing 32gb. Tried to install new version of Ubuntu but got 2gb again. Also tried to run memtest from ubuntu install cd and test would get stuck at certain point. Memtest was showing 2gb active from 32gb. I have no idea what is the reason. I will probably try to install Mint or Windows but I would really like to have ubuntu as I am used to and would like to learn it more. Also I'm trying at the moment updating EFI Firmware. If anyone has any other suggestion that would be amazing. Cheers! – YungKaymak Jan 25 '21 at 17:48

1 Answers1

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After a month of trial and error I have finally solved the problem. I went and install Lion OS X again and then I have done 2 Firmware updates. One was SMC Mac Pro 1,1 and another one was EFI Mac Pro 1,1. Not sure how that affects RAM but it worked. Anyone interested can find downloads here https://support.apple.com/downloads/macdesktops

After I have done that I've run my ubuntu again and it was now showing all 32GB. I have run few mem tests and it seems RAM works properly. Cheers!

YungKaymak
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