Wednesday, July 25, 2007

How I got my 4GB groove back

Intel Core 2 Duo
ASUS P5B-E motherboard (Intel 965p chipset)
4x1GB DIMMs
Some random nVIDIA graphics card
Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" i386 (32-bit)


  1. Install the Ubuntu "server" kernel, which supports PAE for up to 36-bit physical memory addressing:
    sudo apt-get install linux-image-server linux-headers-server
  2. The Linux kernel mistakes the 965p chipset for a 965g chipset with built-in graphics; when the BIOS has memory remapping enabled, the kernel dies while probing for Intel AGP support. Blacklist the Intel AGP module:
    sudo sh -c "echo blacklist intel_agp >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist"
  3. Download the (non-free) NVidia driver installer
  4. Reboot
  5. Bring up the BIOS setup screen: press Delete when the splash screen appears upon booting
  6. Enable "Advanced > Chipset > North Bridge Configuration > Memory Remap Feature", press F10 to save changes and reboot
  7. In the GRUB boot menu, choose "Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-16-server"
  8. Don't bother looking at the logs when the X server fails
  9. Log into the console, install/update the graphics driver and compile a new nVIDIA kernel module:
    sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.11-pkg1.run -a
  10. Restart the GNOME display manager to log in to X:
    sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart
  11. Profit?

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