The virtual adress space is divided into 2 parts (0-3GB for the processes/3-4GB for the kernel). This means that the kernel can only adress 1 GB.
On systems with big amounts of Ram, there's the problem of insufficent virtual adress (1GB), the problem of HighMem.
But I don't understand this problem in fact. Because the virtual adresses used in kernel mode are only for the kernel. And all the kernel structures are always loaded into the RAM (never on the swap), right ? So, with the problem posed, this means that sometimes, the kernel is bigger than 1 GB of memory ??
-- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
