using more than 2 GB as a ram disk

Manfred Spraul (masp0008@stud.uni-sb.de)
Sat, 30 Jan 1999 14:28:27 +0100

Linus wrote:
> You need more that 32 bits of address space to handle that kind of memory.
> This is not something I'm going to discuss further. If people want to use
> more than 2GB of memory, they have exactly two options with Linux:
> - get a machine with reasonable address spaces. Right now that's either
> alpha or sparc64, in the not too distant future it will be merced.
> - use the extra memory as a ram-disk (possibly memory-mappable, but even
> that I consider unlikely)

Does that mean that:
- the kernel (i.e. the buffer cache, paging unit, swapper, etc.) will not
support more than 2 GB physical memory on 32 bit machines.
- you would accept patches that make it possible to use the remaining memory
as as raw physical memory.
The physical memory could be used for ram disks (->swap file), or for other
devices that need lots of memory without kernel support.

Is someone currently writing such a patch?

Regards,
Manfred

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/