32 bit Linux VMware Server with more than 1 GB of RAM
October 28th, 2007 | 
Author: I run the free VMware Server on 32 bit Linux at home. I have it installed on PCLinuxOS 2007 – only because it was the distribution that I had loaded at the time. Before I installed VM Server I increased the server’s memory from 1 GB to 2 GB. Up until now I was only running a couple of VMs at a time and never really had any resource contention.
Just recently I decided to build some additional VMs, and to my surprise I noticed that the server was only showing 1 GB ram, and therefore VM Server only had 1 GB ram available for hosting guests. After some research I found the following article:
Linux.com :: Got more than a gig of RAM and 32-bit Linux? Heres how to use it
“Nowadays, many machines are running with 2-4 gigabytes of RAM, and their owners are discovering a problem: When they run 32-bit GNU/Linux distributions, their extra RAM is not being used. Fortunately, correcting the problem is only a matter of installing or building a kernel with a few specific parameters enabled or disabled.
As it turns out I was able to find a generic kernel for PCLInuxOS 2007 to solve my problem. Simple solution for me to use Synaptic and mark the kernel for install, click apply and let it download and install. After reboot I was able to select the new kernel and boot up. All of my memory was now usuable by my OS and therefore usuable by VM Server.
The problem exists because 32-bit Linux kernels are designed to access only 1GB of RAM by default.”
Hey, I am a Windows Guy! I only started using Linux over the last few years because ESX was forcing me to learn it and I started playing with a lot of the LiveCD distributions.
“Increasingly, many distributions are enabling high memory for 4GB. Ubuntu default kernels have been enabling this process at least since version 6.10, and so have Fedora 7′s.”
Lesson learned – be sure to check that all the memory is available to the OS if you are using 32 bit Linux or an older distribution release.
Posted in 
Tags: 
