[svlug] Maximum memory (debian 3.1)

[David Ljung Madison]

I just upgraded my system to 4G and I've rebuilt the kernel
with CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y, but this only managed to get me
up to ~3G RAM.

% cat /proc/meminfo | grep Total
MemTotal:      3335512 kB
HighTotal:     2456512 kB
LowTotal:       879000 kB
SwapTotal:     2097136 kB
VmallocTotal:   114680 kB


In addition to that, I've noticed that my 8G of swap space is
only showing up as 2G.  Searching the net indicates that this
may be a swapon limitation, but new versions of swapon do
the same, and I don't know of a workaround or swapon replacement.

And last of all, the CPU is an AMD64.  For some reason I can't
seem to find the option in the kernel config to build as x86_64
or whatever it's called:

% grep 64 /usr/src/linux/.config
# CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G is not set
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_CMD640=y
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_CMD640_ENHANCED is not set
# CONFIG_R3964 is not set
# CONFIG_SENSORS_RTC8564 is not set
# CONFIG_NLS_CODEPAGE_864 is not set


How do I build a 64b kernel, and is it even worth it?  I have
some serious bit-crunching tools that could possibly benefit
from it (I need to see if the vendor has 64b versions), but
I can't get a good picture from google whether Debian 64b is
a good idea.

Thoughts?

Dave++

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dave Ljung Madison           http://GetDave.com/                 415.341.5555
------- Walking on water and developing software from a specification -------
        are easy if both are frozen.               - Edward V. Berard