Memory/Kernel problems with Gentoo on a Compaq Proliant 5000

[smiteff]

Hi All

I fought with this problem for 4 days and now I finally figured it out so I'm posting my solution to the forums with the hope that it will help others.

The usual method of specifying the amount of memory to the kernel "mem=512M" does not work on compaq proliant servers. You have to use something to the effect of "mem=exactmap mem=640K@0 mem=511M@1M". (Obviously replacing 512M with the amount of ram your server has).

This information is available all over the net, and also in several posts on gentoo forums.

However there are two details that I battled with for a long time:

1) The current unmasked version of lilo in the portage tree is version 22.3.3. This version of lilo does not allow mem=x@x type parameters to the kernel. To fix this problem, upgrade to the latest version of lilo.

2) The gentoo-sources 2.4.20 kernel does not seem to load properly when you specify the memory as described above. Neither does 2.5.70. Use vanilla-sources (I used 2.4.21).

Cheers
Simeon.

[techyoda]

Any chance you could post your lilo.conf and fstab?
I'm curious what should be there.

I am trying to switch to Gentoo on my Proliant 5000R and having some issues. I started a topic for it, if you have time to look at my problem, I'd appreciate any advice.

Thanks!