Re: Bug#479607: please review new lilo debconf question
This looks fine. I intended to do this myself, but have not been upload
enabled recently, nor have had enough time to test large-memory on older
machines. My estimate though is that anything P3-era or newer has a new
enough BIOS to handle large-memory.
That said, this looks like the best solution for this bug.
William
On Sun, 2008-10-26 at 15:05 +0900, Paul Wise wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> [Please reply to myself, the bug and the list]
>
> As part of the bug sprint for cookies, I've been assigned to fix an RC
> bug in lilo (#479607 and clones). Since I don't know assembly, my
> proposed fix will be to add a debconf prompt asking if the person doing
> the upgrade wants to add the large-memory option to their configuration
> file. I will also add a NEWS.Debian file so that other sysadmins may
> receive information about the issue and a README.Debian entry with full
> info about the issue and extra tips for solving it. It would be great if
> debian-l10n-english could review the text for these three parts:
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> NEWS.Debian entry
>
> lilo (1:22.8-6) unstable; urgency=low
>
> lilo may fail to boot with a large kernel+initrd. Please read
> README.Debian for ways to work around this problem.
>
> -- Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:24:04 +0800
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> debconf question:
>
> Template: lilo/add_large_memory
> Type: boolean
> Default: true
> _Description: Do you want to add the large-memory option?
> By default lilo loads the initrd file into the first 15Mb of memory
> to avoid a BIOS limitation with older systems (earlier than 2001).
> .
> Unfortunately with newer kernels the combination of kernel and initrd
> may not fit into the first 15Mb of memory and so the system will not
> boot properly. It seems that the boot issues appear when the
> kernel+initrd combination is larger than 8MB.
> .
> If you have a newer BIOS without the 15Mb limitation, you can add the
> large-memory option to /etc/lilo.conf to tell lilo to use more memory
> for passing the initrd to the kernel. You will need to re-run lilo
> to make this option take effect.
> .
> If you have an older BIOS you may need to reduce the size of the initrd
> *before* rebooting, please see README.Debian for tips on how to do that.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> README.Debian entry:
>
> --[ Large initrd files and lilo
>
> By default lilo loads the initrd file into the first 15MB of memory
> to avoid a BIOS limitation with older systems (earlier than 2001).
>
> Unfortunately with newer kernels the combination of kernel and initrd
> may not fit into the first 15MB of memory and so the system will not
> boot properly.
>
> If you have a newer BIOS without the 15MB limitation, you can add the
> large-memory option to /etc/lilo.conf to tell lilo to use more memory
> for passing the initrd to the kernel. You will need to re-run lilo
> to make this option take effect.
>
> If you have an older BIOS you will need to reduce the size of the initrd
> *before* rebooting.
>
> If you are using initramfs-tools, you should replace MODULES=most with
> MODULES=dep in your configuration and regenerate your initrd file:
>
> sed -i -e s/MODULES=most/MODULES=dep/ /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf
> update-initramfs -u
>
> If you are using yaird or any other initrd generator, please consult
> the documentation for your initrd generator.
>
Reply to: