How do you determine the amount of system memory?

[Kenny Lussier]

On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 3:20 PM, Paul Lussier <p.lussier at comcast.net> wrote:

>
> Hi all,
>
> Recent Linux kernels have had a minor bug in that the amount of memory
> reported in /proc/meminfo is incorrect.  I'm trying to find a way to
> determine whether the amount reported is correct or not.
>
> I need some means of reliably knowing whether this value is accurate
> or not.  Does anyone have any ideas?  "Physically looking" is
> insufficient, given that I a) need to test 400+ systems, and b) I may
> need to run this test on boxes to which I have no physical access.
>

What kind of systems are these? Most systems today have some sort of
IPMI-based interface that is independent of the OS and can give you a
physical hardware inventory (and usually a whole lot more). Dell has DRAC
and OpenManage, Intel has Intel ServerManager, IBM has ServerMon (and Sun
has LOM). They usually run on a daughter card that vampires off of the power
supply and sits between the power and the motherboard so that it is
accessable when the system is powered off. Some have an independent ethernet
interface, and others use in-band signaling on the on-board ethernet. You
could probably look into the command interface for the IPMI interface and
write a script that checks all of your systems.

There is also an IPMI interface for Linux to access the hardware interface,
but I don't know much about it.

C-Ya,
Kenny
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