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From: Tim S. <ti...@di...> - 2001-06-12 17:53:46
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ke...@us... <mailto:ke...@us...> wrote: >>We have some machines here which we are using Etherboot/ mknbi to boot >>remotely. The machines have 1G of RAM, and are failing to boot from an >>initrd image because mknbi appears to be shoving it too high up in >>memory. I'm going to have a go at fixing it, but my x86 assembly skills >>are pretty much non-existant ;-). Here's what the bootup log says: >> >>Linux version 2.4.5 (ro...@vi... <mailto:ro...@vi...>) (gcc version 2.95.4 20010319 >>(Debian prerelease)) #1941 SMP Tue Jun 12 13:07:35 BST 2001 >>BIOS-provided physical RAM map: >>BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable) >>BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved) >>BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved) >>BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000003fff0000 (usable) >>BIOS-e820: 000000003fff0000 - 000000003fff8000 (ACPI data) >>BIOS-e820: 000000003fff8000 - 0000000040000000 (ACPI NVS) >>BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec01000 (reserved) >>BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved) >>BIOS-e820: 00000000ffff0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved) >>127MB HIGHMEM available. >> >>.... >> >>initrd extends beyond end of memory (0x3fff0000 > 0x38000000) >>disabling initrd >> >>... >> >>Memory: 1028240k/1048512k available (1368k kernel code, 19884k reserved, >>479k data, 240k init, 131008k highmem) >> > >What's probably happening is that first32.linux's algorithm for working >out the memory size is not sufficiently comprehensive. The Linux kernel >tries a few BIOS calls, first32.linux only uses two (of which e820 is >not one) and probably doesn't take into account the holes. >start32.S:memsize is probably what needs to be enhanced, using the code >in the kernel's setup.S as a guide. > I'm pretty sure the later is beyond me. I'm also not sure it would fix the problem, as the kernel then makes a decision about where it considers highmem to start, and won't like the initrd being above this. I could probably manage a dirty hack to make sure it doesn't get moved to beyond 512M (or 768M - or some other semi-arbitary number - with 512M of RAM, this box boots fine) - but I would imagine this is not of much interest to anyone but myself ;-). Cheers, Tim. |
