Display system memory

Let me just begin by saying how silly it is that I don't know this...

Running Suse 9.0 on a five year old i386, I simply want to know how
much memory I have installed on this machine. When I run
YAST->Hardware->Hardware information, I see a synopsis ofthe systems
hardware displayed in a tree, memory included. However, it apparently
is not idiot proof enough for me.

I just want to know how much physical memory I have on this machine.
Please be gentle .....

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> I just want to know how much physical memory I have on this machine.
> Please be gentle .....

man -k memory | grep -i free | grep -i display

I.e. type "free". But of course that will only show you available
memory in the system, not physical memory. You can have more physical
memory than is being used by the system.

If you want to ask your memory banks directly what they think they have
to offer you, you can interrogate many of them directly via the acpi
interface in /proc, I seem to recall (and perhaps via lmsensors, but
that's a bit iffier).

But why don't you just reboot and watch what the bios says?

Oh - yes, there are some bios interrogaton tools that may tell you what
the bios thinks it knows. dmidecode, I suppose.


Peter

256 mb. Thanks for helping on such a silly question.

<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
> 256 mb. Thanks for helping on such a silly question.
>

Why do I doubt that you have 256MB of memory on an old x386 system? Most of
them didn't have more than 16MB. Are you sure you're not reading the total
virtual memory including the swap space?

Try
cat /proc/meminfo

Norm

begin Norm Dresner wrote:

> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
>> 256 mb. Thanks for helping on such a silly question.
>>
>
> Why do I doubt that you have 256MB of memory on an old x386 system? Most
> of
> them didn't have more than 16MB. Are you sure you're not reading the
> total virtual memory including the swap space?
>
> Try
> cat /proc/meminfo
>
> Norm

And then a *five* *years* old 386?
--
Windows is just the instable version of Linux for users who are too
dumb to handle the real thing

5 years ago it was 1999
PC's back then came with around 64 MB (not 16) standard but were upgradeble
to 128MB or 256MB
However he did say i386, if it is really a i386 as opposed to a Pentium #
machine then it is not 5 years old ,
15 years old may be a more appropriate age.
Whatever the case. It easy to tell how much memory you have...

1. Enter the Bios setting (usually by pressing the <Delete> key at startup.
2. Some computer bios are set to display the amount of memory at boot,
however it may be in bytes not MB
in that case divide the number of bytes by 1048576 to get your amount of
memory in MB (i.e 1024 Bytes = 1 KB, 1024 KB = 1 MB)


"Norm Dresner" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:FXxtd.1052486$(E-Mail Removed)...
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
>> 256 mb. Thanks for helping on such a silly question.
>>
>
> Why do I doubt that you have 256MB of memory on an old x386 system? Most
> of
> them didn't have more than 16MB. Are you sure you're not reading the
> total
> virtual memory including the swap space?
>
> Try
> cat /proc/meminfo
>
> Norm
>

"Zimran Douglas" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:MXytd.1241$zh7.210@trnddc02

> Whatever the case. It easy to tell how much memory you have...
>
> 1. Enter the Bios setting (usually by pressing the <Delete> key at
> startup.
> 2. Some computer bios are set to display the amount of memory at boot,
> however it may be in bytes not MB
> in that case divide the number of bytes by 1048576 to get your amount
> of memory in MB (i.e 1024 Bytes = 1 KB, 1024 KB = 1 MB)

Here, the denominator of the fraction returned by

dmesg | awk '/^Mem/ {print $2}'

shows the physical memory in kilobytes.

--
use hotmail for email replies

Allow me to clarify...

When I bring up YAST->Hardware->Hardware Information, the "Hardware
Info" tree tells me:
Architecture: i386
..
..
CPU: Pentium III (Coppermine)
..
..
Memory
Main Memory
Resources
phys_mem
range: 268435456

the 'free' command tells me that I have total mem of 255868

cat /proc/meminfo tells me: MemTotal: 255868

I bought this machine in 1999.

Ryan



Zimran Douglas wrote:
> 5 years ago it was 1999
> PC's back then came with around 64 MB (not 16) standard but were
upgradeble
> to 128MB or 256MB
> However he did say i386, if it is really a i386 as opposed to a
Pentium #
> machine then it is not 5 years old ,
> 15 years old may be a more appropriate age.
> Whatever the case. It easy to tell how much memory you have...
>
> 1. Enter the Bios setting (usually by pressing the <Delete> key at
startup.
> 2. Some computer bios are set to display the amount of memory at
boot,
> however it may be in bytes not MB
> in that case divide the number of bytes by 1048576 to get your amount
of
> memory in MB (i.e 1024 Bytes = 1 KB, 1024 KB = 1 MB)
>
>
> "Norm Dresner" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:FXxtd.1052486$(E-Mail Removed)...
> > <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> > news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
> >> 256 mb. Thanks for helping on such a silly question.
> >>
> >
> > Why do I doubt that you have 256MB of memory on an old x386 system?
Most
> > of
> > them didn't have more than 16MB. Are you sure you're not reading
the
> > total
> > virtual memory including the swap space?
> >
> > Try
> > cat /proc/meminfo
> >
> > Norm
> >

(E-Mail Removed) wrote in news:1102643419.562066.103880
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

> Architecture: i386

This is the platform your kernel is compiled for. All x86 chips (486,
Pentium 1/2/3/4, Athlon/Duron) should be compatible with i386 code.

> CPU: Pentium III (Coppermine)

/THIS/ is the processor in your machine. You do not have a 5 year old
i386, you have a 5 year old Pentium 3.