System Only Recognizing 256 MB Ram

[Ronald Mccarty <mccarty yournetguard com>]

Hey,

Hope someone can give me some help here...

I have a Dell 1850 with 4 X 1 GB memory sticks that the linux kernel is only recognizing 256 MB...well actually 249 it's reporting:

[root asvhyp1 proc]# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           249         98        150          0          8         64
-/+ buffers/cache:         24        224
Swap:         2047          0       2047


I originally thought it was a Xen / Kernel issue; however, booting the system to a non zen kernel reports the same issue.  (dmesg is reporting 256 MB low mem, and no high)

It seems like I saw something years ago when getting 32-bit systems to see 4 GB was more magic than science, but I'm stumped.

The Dell BIOS is showing the 4 GB.

If you don't have any insight, maybe some tips on helpful commands would be useful.

Thanks,

--ron