Re: syslinux-1.43 bug [and possible PATCH]

Neil Conway (nconway.list@UKAEA.ORG.UK)
Fri, 24 Sep 1999 09:48:36 +0100

Kanoj Sarcar wrote:
> 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.

Yup...

> 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).

I don't think "mem=" would help at all but I could be wrong.

My "easy" fix was to pull out a DIMM from each of our machines, leaving
3x256 :-) Not elegant, but fast!

Neil

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