Out of memory while booting?

[Bayard Coolidge]

Another thing to look at might be the BIOS version - there may be some
sort of memory and/or I/O address mapping issue therein. I don't know
what the exact mechanics are on that stuff, but OTOH checking the BIOS
version against what the board manufacturer currently has available (and
WHY) might be a simple fix. Only other thing might be a subtle memory
timing issue - maybe one of the memory cards isn't quite up to (its
claimed) speed (capabilities).

GL,

Bayard

--- On Wed, 4/1/09, Charles G Montgomery <cgm at physics.utoledo.edu> wrote:

> From: Charles G Montgomery <cgm at physics.utoledo.edu>
> Subject: Out of memory while booting?
> To: gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> Date: Wednesday, April 1, 2009, 12:59 PM
> I have a machine with what I suspect
> is a hardware problem, but I'm 
> not a hardware person.  Perhaps someone might have a
> suggestion if 
> I describe the problem.
> 
> The machine has an AMD 64 cpu, 2 GB memory, an ASUS A8V-XE
> 
> motherboard. I run Debian testing (currently squeeze).
> 
> Booting starts normally and proceeds quite a way.  It
> gets as far as 
> loading kernel modules and then starts issuing console
> error 
> messages about being out of memory.  It starts killing
> processes 
> until it has killed everything but init, and then just
> scrolls 
> frantic out of memory messages forever -- only powering
> down can 
> stop it.
> 
> I had two different kernels installed.  The behavior
> is exactly the 
> same with either of them.  I tried booting from an
> OpenCD, which 
> has Ubuntu on it.  All the hardware detection and
> initialization 
> went fine.  There were no error messages.  But
> when it tried to 
> start up X, all I got was a brown screen with a cursor
> (movable 
> with the mouse) and no menus or keyboard response or any
> way to do 
> anything.
> 
> I've taken the box down to Compucare in Peterborough. 
> The fellow 
> there is a Windows guy and knows very little about Linux,
> but he 
> knows hardware.  He has done memory tests and disk
> tests and found 
> nothing.  He is going to copy a disk image to another
> machine and 
> see if things work there.  But he's as baffled as I
> am.
> 
> If anyone has an idea what the problem might be, or just
> suggestions 
> of things to test, that would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> regards cgm
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