Re: [Mactel-linux-users] booting 2.6.2[6-7] on a MacBook [was: Patches in 2.6.27]

[Ludovic R. <lud...@gm...>]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Ludovic Rousseau
<lud...@gm...> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 2:06 PM, Ludovic Rousseau
> <lud...@gm...> wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 12:16 PM, mike dentifrice <fl...@po...> wrote:
>>> Osamu Aoki a dit:
>>>> I am too lazy to compile kernel but Debian distributed compiled kernel
>>>> works now.
>>>>
>>>>   2.6.26-1-amd64 kernel packaged in
>>>>   linux-image-2.6.26-1-amd64 package
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, it still doesn't work for me.
>>>
>>> I get a MMCONFIG message followed by an explicit Kernel Panic: unable to
>>> mount root VFS blah.
>>
>> I also got such an error. It was because the BIOS could not load the
>> initrd.img image. My linux partition is sda2 but it must be too big
>> (50 GB) and the new files are now created outside range for the BIOS.
>>
>> Using lilo I got such an error message. Using grub the message was
>> more explicit (but I do not remember the message error code).
>
> My problem was a bug in LILO. The kernel + initrd image for Linux >=
> 2.6.26 was too large. Adding the option "large-memory" in
> /etc/lilo.conf solved the problem.
> See Debian bug #479607 for example. The option "large-memory" is now
> set by default in new Debian lenny installations.

This change works when booting my Linux system from VMWare. Yes, you
can boot a system from a real partition using VMWare.

But the same problem is present if I boot from rEFIt. In this case I
have to edit the file /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf to set
MODULES=dep and regenerate the initrd.img file using:
sudo update-initramfs -k 2.6.27-1-amd64 -u -v

It looks like the BIOS provided by the iMac firmware is less
"complete" than the BIOS provided by VMWare.

Bye

-- 
 Dr. Ludovic Rousseau