[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Lenny/armel with Debian kernel on Buffalo Linkstation Pro v2



Martin Michlmayr wrote:
.. Remove the initrd=0x00800040,15M parameter (check that your env look like those below), and verify

The reason is probably that it tells the kernel that the ramdisk is
15M long, but the Debian ramdisk will be much smaller.  You could try
padding the Debian ramdisk to 15 MB with zeros to see if that works.

The problem turns out to be with the initramfs code - whereas in the case of an initrd, only a single gzip archive is looked for, the initramfs code overlays the contents of multiple concatenated gziped cpio archives, and so expects the whole 15M to be filled with valid gzip data.... Whilst it would be theoretically possible to make up a file which is padded with valid empty gzipped cpio archives up to a size of exactly 15M, this sounds quite hard, and in fact, it doesn't seem that the uboot firmware is able to load a file of this size either from disk, or by tftp - 12M or so seems to be the limit.

The only reasonable thing I can think of (assuming you don't want to delete this env setting, which is pointless anyway) is to modify the command line, or ignore it...

I've come up with the attached patch to ignore it, which WorksForMe (tm). It maybe that this bogus parameter also exists on other Buffalo hardware (and as such the patch should be expanded to include other hardware numbers), but I don't have any to test on.

Cheers,

Tim.

Signed-off-by: tim@seoss.co.uk


--- fresh/linux-2.6-2.6.26~rc6/arch/arm/kernel/setup.c	2008-04-17 02:49:44.000000000 +0000
+++ linux-2.6-2.6.26~rc6/arch/arm/kernel/setup.c	2008-06-21 16:49:39.000000000 +0000
@@ -447,9 +447,12 @@
 	start = memparse(*p, p);
 	if (**p == ',') {
 		size = memparse((*p) + 1, p);
-
-		phys_initrd_start = start;
-		phys_initrd_size = size;
+		if (start == 0x800040 && size == 0xf00000 && machine_arch_type == 0x0631) {
+			printk(KERN_WARNING "Ignoring bogus Buffalo Linkstation Pro/Live initrd=0x00800040,15M parameter\n");
+		} else {
+			phys_initrd_start = start;
+			phys_initrd_size = size;
+		}
 	}
 }
 __early_param("initrd=", early_initrd);

Reply to: