Kernel Upgrade and strange RAM problem.

[Venkatesh Raghavan <raghavan@example.com>]

Hi all,

Managed to update form Mandrake7.2 (Kernel 2.2.17) to Mandrake 8.0
(Kernel 2.4.3) My old ML7.2 is in /dev/hdb1 and new ML8.0 is in
/dev/hdc1.

My system has 1GB RAM and the ML7.2 boot shows
1024 MB RAM at the login screen (as below)

---One 933MHz Intel Pentium III Processor, 1024 RAM

However the ML8.0 boot shows only 1005MB RAM at the
login screen (as below)

---One 933MHz Intel Pentium III Processor, 1005 RAM

Can anyone tell me why this dicrepency. What is happening to 19MB of
RAM?

The dmesg on 8.0 shows the following result. I am not sure
What "BIOS-provided physical RAM map" mean?

-------dmesg 8.0---------------------------------

BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f400 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000000009f400 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000003fffc000 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000003fffc000 - 000000003ffff000 (ACPI data)
 BIOS-e820: 000000003ffff000 - 0000000040000000 (ACPI NVS)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000ffff0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
127MB HIGHMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 262140
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 225280 pages.
zone(2): 32764 pages.
initrd extends beyond end of memory (0x3bfff000 > 0x38000000)
disabling initrd
Kernel command line: root=/dev/hdc1  hdd=ide-scsi  vga=788
ide_setup: hdd=ide-scsi
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 933.370 MHz processor.
Console: colour dummy device 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 1861.22 BogoMIPS
Memory: 1028416k/1048560k available (980k kernel code, 19756k reserved,
287k data, 696k init, 131056k highmem)

------------------------------------------------------

The ML7.2 dmesg shows

----------------dmesg 7.2----------------------------
127MB BIGMEM available.
Detected 933391 KHz processor.
ide_setup: hdd=ide-scsi
Initializing CPU#0
Console: colour dummy device 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 1861.22 BogoMIPS
Memory: 1035588k/1048512k available (1136k kernel code, 416k reserved,
10848k data, 128k init, 131008k highmem)
-----------------------------------------------------

Incidently, the precompiled 2.4.3-20 kernel could
detect only 896MB out of 1024MB present since the
it was compiled without HIGHMEM option .
I had to recompile the kernel with HIGHMEM option.


Look forward for some suggestions/tips.
Thanks in advance.

Venkatesh