ServerBuddies Support Blog

32 bit Architecture and the hugemem Kernel

In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4 or 5 the smp kernel can be used on systems with up to 16 GB of RAM. The hugemem kernel is required in order to use all the memory on systems that have more than 16GB of RAM up to 64GB. However, it is recommend to use the hugemem kernel even on systems that have 8GB of RAM or more due to the potential issue of “low memory” starvation (see next section) that can happen on database systems with 8 GB of RAM. The stability you get with the hugemem kernel on larger systems outperforms the performance overhead of address space switching.

Find If Processor CPU is 64 bit or 32 bit

Try this to find out if your CPU/Processor is 32 bit or 64 bit

NAME
getconf - Query system configuration variables

SYNOPSIS
getconf [-v specification] system_var

getconf [-v specification] path_var pathname

DESCRIPTION
-v

Indicate the specification and version for which to obtain
configuration variables.

system_var

A system configuration variable, as defined by sysconf(3) or
confstr(3).

path_var

A system configuration variable as defined by pathconf(3). This
must be used with a pathname.