From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932627Ab1GNX1N (ORCPT ); Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:27:13 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:58436 "EHLO mail.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932558Ab1GNX1M (ORCPT ); Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:27:12 -0400 Message-ID: <4E1F7B40.6030705@zytor.com> Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:26:56 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110428 Fedora/3.1.10-1.fc15 Thunderbird/3.1.10 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "John Z. Bohach" CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: large initramfs causes h/w reset after decompressing References: <201107140906.46404.jzb2@aexorsyst.com> <4E1F5C20.8000008@zytor.com> <201107141532.59383.jzb2@aexorsyst.com> In-Reply-To: <201107141532.59383.jzb2@aexorsyst.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 07/14/2011 03:32 PM, John Z. Bohach wrote: > On Thursday 14 July 2011 02:14:08 pm H. Peter Anvin wrote: >> On 07/14/2011 09:06 AM, John Z. Bohach wrote: >>> I have a large initramfs cpio file, about 890 MB, which expands to >>> 2.7 GB, and am running on linux-2.6.36.1, in 64-bit mode with 8 GB >>> of physical RAM. >>> >>> Upon loading the initramfs, I see the message "Decompressing..." >>> for a few seconds, and then comes a reset. >>> >>> This question has come up before...is there some sort of max size. >>> that I am exceeding? With 8 GB of physical memory and 64-bit arch. >>> (AMD-II), certainly seems that there should be enough memory, no? >>> >>> Thanks... >> >> What bootloader are you using? There are some bootloaders which >> don't allocate the initramfs in a very good spot. >> >> -hpa > > I've actually gotten the improbable to work, and am PXE booting via > syslinux and dhcp. > > It all works fine with an initramfs of ~20 MB, but that's quite a diff. > from 2.7 GB of expanded /root (890 MB cpio.tar.gz file). > > But excuse my ignorance, I don't see the relevance of your > question...the initramfs is part of the kernel itself...I simply load > the kernel bzImage (all 890 MB) and that's where its all at...this is > _not_ an initrd. > Ah, interesting. You didn't say that. That does change some things... I would not at all be surprised if the kernel decompressor doesn't handle that very well... -hpa