Re: Warning from free_init_pages with large initrd

[Randy Dunlap]

On 09/26/16 10:26, Sitsofe Wheeler wrote:
> On 26 September 2016 at 07:47, H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On September 25, 2016 11:22:04 PM PDT, Sitsofe Wheeler <sitsofe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> On 26 September 2016 at 03:14, H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>> On 09/24/16 08:32, Sitsofe Wheeler wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> While trying to PXE boot a Fedora LiveISO on VMware ESXi the kernel
>>>>> throws the following warning:
>>>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>>
>>>>> The initrd is big because it holds all the files in the ISO (see
>>>>> https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/wiki/HowToPxeAnyLiveCd for how it
>>> was
>>>>> made).
>>>>
>>>> How big is big?
>>>
>>> The one that matches that backtrace is 1385 Mbytes and was made from a
>>> Fedora rawhide ISO. Here are some sizes in megabytes from different
>>> versions of Fedora:
>>> 960   20/initrd0.img
>>> 1416 21/initrd0.img
>>> 1379 22/initrd0.img
>>> 1430 23/initrd0.img
>>> 1492 24/initrd.img
> 
>> And they all fail?
> From at least 23 onwards they all continue to boot but give the
> previously mentioned warning in dmesg output.
> 
>> Also, is this BIOS or EFI?
> Booting from BIOS, not EFI.
> 
>> Also: compressed or uncompressed (if it makes a difference?)
> 
> file reports the following
> 20 initrd starts with a gzip header
> 21-23 initrds start with a cpio header
> 24 and rawhide initrd starts with an xz header
> 
> Looking at livecd-iso-to-pxeboot it seems that the CD's contents is
> turned into a gzip'd cpio and then concatenated on the end of the
> usual initrd...
> 

but the warning in free_init_pages() is about alignment, not size...
Maybe the concatenation is bad?

-- 
~Randy