From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1762788AbXKOH1Z (ORCPT ); Thu, 15 Nov 2007 02:27:25 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752586AbXKOH1J (ORCPT ); Thu, 15 Nov 2007 02:27:09 -0500 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:37216 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752507AbXKOH1H (ORCPT ); Thu, 15 Nov 2007 02:27:07 -0500 Message-ID: <473BF4C5.4080909@zytor.com> Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:27:01 -0800 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.5 (X11/20070727) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Greg KH CC: Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: [patch 16/19] x86 setup: handle boot loaders which set up the stack incorrectly References: <20071115054813.977066477@mini.kroah.org> <20071115061513.GQ7980@kroah.com> In-Reply-To: <20071115061513.GQ7980@kroah.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Greg KH wrote: > -stable review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let us know. > > ------------------ > From: H. Peter Anvin > > patch 6b6815c6d5d1dc209701d1661a7a0e09a295db2f in mainline. > > Apparently some specific versions of LILO enter the kernel with a > stack pointer that doesn't match the rest of the segments. Make our > best attempt at untangling the resulting mess. > > Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin > Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman Just FYI: It has been reported that while this patch fixes old LILO, and possibly some other boot loaders (unknown), it has also broken older versions of SYSLINUX: they still boot, but the command line is truncated (exactly how much depends on the BIOS, but typical values are around 130 bytes.) This is definitely traceable to a bug in SYSLINUX that was already fixed in release 3.50 (the current version of SYSLINUX is 3.52). I have chosen to leave the patch in mainline, rather than trying yet another recipe and hope it doesn't break on some other random combination of bootloaders, since: a) SYSLINUX is generally easily updated, compared to other bootloaders; b) The failure mode is less severe (it still boots.) ... however, you may choose to call differently. -hpa