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Thread: Can't get 7.6.1 Live USB to use less than half of RAM

  1. #1
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2016
    Posts
    2

    Can't get 7.6.1 Live USB to use less than half of RAM

    Hello, everyone. I am new to Knoppix and the forum but not UNIX/Linux. I am trying to respect everyone's time and have read the FAQ and searched the forums and the Internet using a wide variety of keywords to try to find the answer myself with no luck. I am posting as a last resort. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    I have a Dell R900 with 128GB of RAM but no disks (I can't afford to buy any at this time). I created a Knoppix 7.6.1 Live USB drive using these instructions but when I booted up the system was consuming 64GB RAM in rootfs, which is not only overkill but makes it impossible to do the graph visualization that prompted this setup in the first place because I need every last MB of RAM for the Java VM. I searched around and discovered the ramdisk_size parameter and modified syslinux.cfg, syslnx32.cfg, and syslnx64.cfg to add "ramdisk_size=2097152" (which I understand to mean 2GB) to the APPEND statements using these instructions. Knoppix is still consuming 64GB in the rootfs no matter what permutations I try, and I'm up into the dozens of attempts at this point. There was a recent post that might be related to my problem but there is no definitive answer in that thread. I do not see any other cheat codes that might be applicable. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance.

  2. #2
    Member registered user
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Posts
    44
    When I boot Knoppix 7.6.1 of an ISO file on a harddisk with knoppix64, I get this:

    Code:
    # cat /proc/cmdline 
    lang=de video=vga16fb:off apm=power-off nomce libata.force=noncq hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1 loglevel=1 BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/isolinux/linux64 bootfrom=//KNOPPIX_V7.6.1DVD-2016-01-16-EN.iso lang=en tz=Europe/Copenhagen keyboard=dk xkeyboard=dk no3d
    
    # free -m 
                  total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
    Mem:          15975         112       15357          31         505       15744
    Swap:          4095           0        4095
    
    # df -m
    Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
    rootfs              7986     1      7986   1% /
    /dev/sdb3          15999 10182      4982  68% /mnt-iso
    /dev/loop1          4249  4249         0 100% /mnt-system
    tmpfs              12780     3     12778   1% /ramdisk
    /dev/cloop          9691  9691         0 100% /KNOPPIX
    /dev/cloop1          451   451         0 100% /KNOPPIX1
    unionfs            12780     3     12778   1% /usr
    tmpfs                 20     4        17  16% /run
    tmpfs                 10     1        10   1% /UNIONFS/var/lock
    tmpfs                100     1       100   1% /UNIONFS/var/log
    tmpfs               2048     1      2048   1% /tmp
    udev                  20     0        20   0% /dev
    tmpfs               2048     0      2048   0% /dev/shm
    tmpfs               1598     1      1598   1% /run/user/1000
    tmpfs               1598     0      1598   0% /run/user/0
    If I add the boot parameter ramdisk=1G I get thhis:
    Code:
    # cat /proc/cmdline 
    lang=de video=vga16fb:off apm=power-off nomce libata.force=noncq hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1 loglevel=1 BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/isolinux/linux64 bootfrom=//KNOPPIX_V7.6.1DVD-2016-01-16-EN.iso lang=en tz=Europe/Copenhagen keyboard=dk xkeyboard=dk no3d ramdisk=1G
     
    # free -m
                  total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
    Mem:          15975         114       15351          32         509       15742
    Swap:          4095           0        4095
    
    # df -m
    Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
    rootfs              7986     1      7986   1% /
    /dev/sdb3          15999 10182      4982  68% /mnt-iso
    /dev/loop1          4249  4249         0 100% /mnt-system
    tmpfs               1024     3      1022   1% /ramdisk
    /dev/cloop          9691  9691         0 100% /KNOPPIX
    /dev/cloop1          451   451         0 100% /KNOPPIX1
    unionfs             1024     3      1022   1% /usr
    tmpfs                 20     4        17  16% /run
    tmpfs                 10     1        10   1% /UNIONFS/var/lock
    tmpfs                100     1       100   1% /UNIONFS/var/log
    tmpfs               2048     1      2048   1% /tmp
    udev                  20     0        20   0% /dev
    tmpfs               2048     0      2048   0% /dev/shm
    tmpfs               1598     1      1598   1% /run/user/1000
    tmpfs               1598     0      1598   0% /run/user/0
    If I add the boot parameter ramdisk=8G I get thhis:
    Code:
    # cat /proc/cmdline 
    lang=de video=vga16fb:off apm=power-off nomce libata.force=noncq hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1 loglevel=1 BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/isolinux/linux64 bootfrom=//KNOPPIX_V7.6.1DVD-2016-01-16-EN.iso lang=en tz=Europe/Copenhagen keyboard=dk xkeyboard=dk no3d ramdisk=8G
     
    # free -m
                  total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
    Mem:          15975         114       15355          32         505       15742
    Swap:          4095           0        4095
    
    # df -m
    Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
    rootfs              7986     1      7986   1% /
    /dev/sdb3          15999 10182      4982  68% /mnt-iso
    /dev/loop1          4249  4249         0 100% /mnt-system
    tmpfs               8192     3      8190   1% /ramdisk
    /dev/cloop          9691  9691         0 100% /KNOPPIX
    /dev/cloop1          451   451         0 100% /KNOPPIX1
    unionfs             8192     3      8190   1% /usr
    tmpfs                 20     4        17  16% /run
    tmpfs                 10     1        10   1% /UNIONFS/var/lock
    tmpfs                100     1       100   1% /UNIONFS/var/log
    tmpfs               2048     1      2048   1% /tmp
    udev                  20     0        20   0% /dev
    tmpfs               2048     0      2048   0% /dev/shm
    tmpfs               1598     1      1598   1% /run/user/1000
    tmpfs               1598     0      1598   0% /run/user/0
    The RAM disk size is different, but free shows nearly the same memory use.

  3. #3
    Moderator Moderator
    Join Date
    Nov 2010
    Location
    Germany/ Dietzenbach
    Posts
    1,124
    I have a Dell R900 with 128GB of RAM but no disks (I can't afford to buy any at this time). I created a Knoppix 7.6.1 Live USB drive using these instructions but when I booted up the system was consuming 64GB RAM in rootfs,
    Why did you use this curious instruction of superuser.com instead of → Flash disk install?
    To see, what's going wrong please tell us like the posting above your output of
    cat /proc/cmdline
    free -m
    df -h

  4. #4
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2016
    Posts
    2
    I reinstalled using the Flash disk install instructions. I don't recall how I came across those instead of the official instructions.
    Code:
    knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ cat /proc/cmdline
    lang=de video=vga16fb:off apm=power-off nomce libata.force=noncq hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1 loglevel=1 BOOT_IMAGE=linux64 lang=en apm=power-off initrd=minirt.gz nomce libata.force=noncq hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1 loglevel=1 ramdisk=1G
    Code:
    knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ free -m
                  total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
    Mem:         128999         221      128411           8         366      128675
    Swap:          4095           0        4095
    Code:
    knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ df -h
    Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
    rootfs           63G   48K   63G   1% /
    /dev/sda1       4.6G  4.2G  389M  92% /mnt-system
    tmpfs           1.0G     0  1.0G   0% /ramdisk
    /dev/cloop      9.5G  9.5G     0 100% /KNOPPIX
    /dev/cloop1     451M  451M     0 100% /KNOPPIX1
    /dev/sda2        26G  4.7M   26G   1% /KNOPPIX-DATA
    unionfs          26G  4.7M   26G   1% /usr
    tmpfs            20M  3.2M   17M  16% /run
    tmpfs            10M     0   10M   0% /UNIONFS/var/lock
    tmpfs           100M   56K  100M   1% /UNIONFS/var/log
    tmpfs           2.0G   32K  2.0G   1% /tmp
    udev             20M     0   20M   0% /dev
    tmpfs           2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /dev/shm
    tmpfs           612M  4.0K  612M   1% /run/user/1000
    Last edited by Werner P. Schulz; 03-08-2016 at 07:14 AM. Reason: Little format by mod

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