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I've installed 4GB RAM on my Thinkpad X60 running Ubuntu 12.04. Then I've installed PAE-enabled kernel. Now uname -r outputs

3.2.0-50-generic-pae

My CPU is capable of PAE:

$ grep pae /proc/cpuinfo
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon bts aperfmperf pni monitor vmx est tm2 xtpr pdcm dtherm
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon bts aperfmperf pni monitor vmx est tm2 xtpr pdcm dtherm

BIOS reports 4096MB RAM.

Yet free outputs

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       3088452    2264192     824260          0     168056     852880
-/+ buffers/cache:    1243256    1845196
Swap:      2085884          0    2085884

What's wrong?

Edit: Here's the e820 dmesg section:

[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 000000000009f000 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000000d2000 - 00000000000d4000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000000dc000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000bf6d0000 (usable)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000bf6d0000 - 00000000bf6df000 (ACPI data)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000bf6df000 - 00000000bf700000 (ACPI NVS)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000bf700000 - 00000000c0000000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000f0000000 - 00000000f4000000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec10000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000fed00000 - 00000000fed00400 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000fed14000 - 00000000fed1a000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000fed1c000 - 00000000fed90000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  BIOS-e820: 00000000ff800000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
janek37
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  • Do you have a built in display adapter? If yes check in the BIOS and see how much RAM its using. – Mitch Jul 30 '13 at 08:29
  • I don't know what's a built in display adapter. I have a notebook, so I have a built-in display. But I had 2GB before and most of it was available, so why would some adapter take 1GB all of a sudden? – janek37 Jul 30 '13 at 08:51
  • Your machine has the Intel GMA 950, which uses shred RAm, so it might have used more after the upgrade. See your BIOS for display adapter setting, or something similar. – Mitch Jul 30 '13 at 09:03
  • In my BIOS config section I have a menu of Network, Serial portm Infrared, Modem, Parallel port, PCI, USB, Keyboard/Mouse, Display, Power, Alarm, Memory, SATA, CPU. Under Display there's only Bood Display Device, HV expansion, Brightness. Under memory there's only Extended Memory Test. I've found http://askubuntu.com/questions/167042/64-bit-and-32-bit-12-04-report-1gb-less-ram. Maybe my motherboard suffers from similar issue. – janek37 Jul 30 '13 at 09:51
  • It a possibility. See if there is a BIOS update for you machine. See this post on how to update under Ubuntu. – Mitch Jul 30 '13 at 10:01
  • I've already made a BIOS update from Windows (dual boot) and it didn't change anything. – janek37 Jul 30 '13 at 10:08

1 Answers1

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Turns out it's probably a motherboard/BIOS issue and there's no workaround. Similar to 64-bit and 32-bit 12.04 report 1GB less ram.

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janek37
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