Re: syslinux-1.43 bug [and possible PATCH]

H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
Thu, 23 Sep 1999 14:55:01 -0700 (PDT)


This is an old bug; it has been fixed since 1.44 or 1.45. The current
version is 1.47.

-hpa

On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, Kanoj Sarcar wrote:

> I have a possible problem to report with syslinux, and a suggested
> fix. Please send me comments and feedback at kanoj@engr.sgi.com,
> since I am not subscribed to the syslinux or kernel lists.
>
> While installing linux (RedHat6.0, SuSe, Mandrake etc) on a ia32
> Compaq box with 1.5Gb memory, I have observed kernel panics from
> mount_root. On further investigation, syslinux decides to put initrd
> at a high physical address, which the Linux kernel, compiled with
> PAGE_OFFSET=0xc0000000 can not access. The kernel can access at
> the most physical address 0x3c000000, whereas syslinux/ldlinux.asm
> can put initrd as high as HIGHMEM_MAX=0x3f000000. This leads
> setup_arch() to decide it can not use initrd, thus causing the
> kernel panic.
>
> The easy fix to me seems to be to change HIGHMEM_MAX in
> syslinux/ldlinux.asm to 0x3c000000. In fact, I have verified on
> a couple of machines that this will let the installation proceed.
>
> Have other people run into this problem and worked around it some
> other way? (One way would be to specify mem= at the boot: prompt
> from syslinux. Yet another way seems to be to specify mem= in
> the syslinux.cfg file. Changing HIGHMEM_MAX seems to be the cleanest,
> although I am not sure whether this will impact the capability of
> syslinux to install other os'es).
>
> Thanks.
>
> Kanoj
> kanoj@engr.sgi.com
>

<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!

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