probable cause found - 3.14 on Xenserver (non-HVM): "cannot allocate memory")

[Marc Haber]

Hi,

On Sun, Apr 20, 2014 at 10:56:39PM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> Linux 3.14, however, does not yet beyond the initramfs state ("cannot
> allocate memory". This also happens when i set cgroup_disable=memory.

After doing a bisect between "good 3.13" and "bad 3.14", I ended up
with this commit:

6145cfe394a7f138f6b64491c5663f97dba12450 is the first bad commit
commit 6145cfe394a7f138f6b64491c5663f97dba12450
Author: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date:   Thu Oct 10 17:18:18 2013 -0700

    x86, kaslr: Raise the maximum virtual address to -1 GiB on x86_64

    On 64-bit, this raises the maximum location to -1 GiB (from -1.5 GiB),
    the upper limit currently, since the kernel fixmap page mappings need
    to be moved to use the other 1 GiB (which would be the theoretical
    limit when building with -mcmodel=kernel).

    Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
    Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1381450698-28710-7-git-send-email-keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx
    Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

:040000 040000 a48a6355e3ccd676027319ff520bf953cb07a0bb 7beb1fdd7478b6bec2555a364fbfac29d7a5a3c4 M       arch

and, indeed, reverting this commit on plain 3.14.1 makes my Xenserver
boot just fine. When reverting the patch, I took the liberty of
ignoring the REJECT in arch/x86/Kconfig.

I am, however, a bit confused that this patch dates back to october
while the breakage only occurred when 3.14 was released.

Greetings
Marc

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