From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265165AbUE0UE0 (ORCPT ); Thu, 27 May 2004 16:04:26 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265168AbUE0UE0 (ORCPT ); Thu, 27 May 2004 16:04:26 -0400 Received: from delerium.kernelslacker.org ([81.187.208.145]:56781 "EHLO delerium.codemonkey.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265165AbUE0UEX (ORCPT ); Thu, 27 May 2004 16:04:23 -0400 Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 21:03:20 +0100 From: Dave Jones To: hpa@zytor.com Cc: Linux Kernel Subject: mem= handling mess. Message-ID: <20040527200320.GR22630@redhat.com> Mail-Followup-To: Dave Jones , hpa@zytor.com, Linux Kernel Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org At some point in time during 2.4, parse_cmdline_early() changed so that it handled such boot command lines as.. mem=exactmap mem=640k@0 mem=511m@1m And all was good. This change propagated forward into 2.5, where it sat for a while, until hpa freaked out and Randy Dunlap sent in cset 1.889.364.25 ChangeSet 1.889.364.25 2003/03/16 23:22:16 akpm@digeo.com [PATCH] Fix mem= options Patch from "Randy.Dunlap" Reverts the recent alteration of the format of the `mem=' option. This is because `mem=' is interpreted by bootloaders and may not be freely changed. Instead, the new functionality to set specific memory region usages is provided via the new "memmap=" option. The documentation for memmap= is added, and the documentation for mem= is updated. This is all well and good, but 2.4 never got the same treatment. Result ? Now users are upgrading their 2.4 systems to 2.6, and finding that they don't boot any more. (See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=124312 for example). The "`mem=' is interpreted by bootloaders and may not be freely changed." obviously hasn't broken the however many users of this we have in 2.4 so I don't buy that it'll break in 2.6 either. As its now in 2.4 (and has been there for some time), this is something that bootloaders will just have to live with. Dave