On 10/11/24 15:05, Claudio Jeker wrote: > On Fri, Oct 11, 2024 at 03:00:23PM +0200, Christian Schulte wrote: >> On 10/11/24 13:57, Stuart Henderson wrote: >>> On 2024-10-09, obs...@loopw.com <obs...@loopw.com> wrote: >>>>> In a second server I have upgraded from 7.5 i386 to 7.6 i386 but server >>>>> sees only 4GB of RAM >>>> >>>>> Is anybody with similar experiences? Any ideas how to fix RAM? >>>> >>>> run 64bit OpenBSD >>>> >>>> 32bit address space is limited to a max of 4GB**, and some of that is >>>> eaten up by PCI devices, etc. >>>> ** PAE can work around this, but I’m not sure if OpenBSD supports PAE at >>>> all (and theres other issues/caveats with using PAE of course, including >>>> speed and security) >>> >>> OpenBSD does support PAE on i386, but not for increasing address space, >>> just for W^X. See /sys/arch/i386/i386/pmapae.c r1.28. >>> >>> >> >> Hmm. Why not give up on i386 and make that i686 instead (Pentium Pro)? >> What I mean by this. Rename the current i386 to i686 by compiling it for >> i686 and update the pmap to support more than 4GB physical RAM (PAE). >> Supporting i386 is like supporting 68030. > > That's such a trivial task you should be able to finish it over the > weekend. We all wait for your diff on Monday. >
Is this irony, or would someone really wait for a diff from me and use it? Take i386. Compile it with something -march=i686 or pentiumpro by default. That's it. Add support for the various PAE MMU options. You get a 32 bit OS supporting more than 4GB of physical RAM. I have so many older laptops/servers/whatever lying around I could (re)start using with this. My current daily is a Lenovo x240 with 8GB of RAM running amd64 and this thing is swapping like mad. Throw a 32 bit OS at it supporting those 8GB of RAM and go for it. Why would anyone throw away such a machine, just because a 64 bit OS hits its boundaries, when a 32 bit OS would not? -- Christian
