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What do the flags in /proc/cpuinfo mean?

I tried installing CentOS 6.3 on my computer only to see a complaint that my computer doesn't have PAE. I am not sure if my computer has it and it's just disabled or if it doesn't have PAE at all.

I am using Mageia 2 right now and I want to check if I can turn it on (in case it's off) or if my computer doesn't have it.

My current computer is an IBM ThinkPad X32. I know it's kind of old but this (CentOS 6.3) is the first ever Linux distro to give me that error of not having PAE.

marked as duplicate by Gilles, Renan, jasonwryan, daisy, Mat Sep 30 '12 at 16:34



When you examine the contents of /proc/cpuinfo, the flags for the CPU will include "pae".

  • quite obvious but for the beginner: cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep pae – Thiago Macedo Nov 23 '13 at 0:58

pae will be in the "flags" section of the output of 'cat /proc/cpuinfo'

PAE is Physical Address Extension. It's a way of addressing large amounts of memory.

Here are a couple of links about it:

