Aperture beyond 4gb. Ignoring.

[Ignazio Palmisano]

Steven Vollom wrote:
> Intrepid not too sure of the KDE version, 64bit .
> 
> Here is what it says:
> 
> Aperture beyond 4GB.  Ignoring.
> Your BIOS doesn't leave a aperture memory hole.
> Please enable the IOMMU option in the BIOS setup.
> This costs you 64MB of ram.
> 
> IOMMU does not exist in my computer.  Lots of talk about it but no solution 
> yet.  I will continue to read, however if anyone has first hand information on 
> this, I would appreciate movement to the front of the line.  Thanks!
> 
> This is a new build.  I am using on-board sound and video and lan.  The 
> Motherboard is an ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe Mempipe, Memory is Axiom 240 pin. DDR2 
> ECC SDRAM 667mhz (tested perfect), Processor 9600 AMD Phenom Quad Core Black 
> Edition  BFG 800W Power Supply  Both HDD and DVDRW are SATA
> 
> If you know about this problem, I also have a PNY 9600 Gforce 512mb DDR3 Video 
> Card that I am having trouble getting installed.
> 
> I currently am in a shell pre-open.  I need help to continue.  I had over 300 
> upgrades installed, and have configured most everything.  I was working on 
> email configuration when the problem occurred. (Kmail) I am going back to 
> Google to continue the search.  Thanks for any experience you can provide.
> 
> Steven
> 

I've found 
http://www.x86-64.org/pipermail/discuss/2005-September/006680.html
and
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/your-bios-doesnt-leave-a-aperture-memory-hole-624088/
referring to the topic; the second one (apart from the small flame war 
in it :) ) seems to say that the problem is due to the kernel trying to 
allocate resources for AGP while the system has no AGP video card. ASUS 
does not seem to have IOMMU options in the BIOS, but there is a possible 
workaround at the very bottom:

"I know it's a little late, but I can successfully boot adding the 
iommu=noagp kernel parameter. I still get the error messages, but I can 
at least boot."

Now you need some expert to tell you how to add a boot option :) I 
believe it's to do with menu.lst in /boot/grub, but I'm not at all sure 
I got the names right (not on a linux machine right now...)

HTH,
I.