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Re: Installation on IBM ThinkPad 380XD



Hi,

you've sent shortly in debian-user the followin tip.
i'd like to include it in LTT, the Linux Tips and Tricks page at
http://www.patoche.org/LTT

so i'm asking your permission to do so.
thanks in advance.

Le 03-Dec-98, Manoj Srivastava a pris ses électrons pour écrire:
> Hi,
> 
> Tecras and other notebooks 
> --------------------------
>         (Many thanks to Philip Hands <phil@hands.com> and
>            Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@worldvisions.ca> for this explanation)
> 
> Tecras and other notebooks, and some PCs have a problem where they
> fail to flush the cache when switching on the a20 gate (IIRC), which
> is provoked by bzImage kernels, but not by zimage kernels. 
> 
> bzImage files are actually "big zImage" not "bzipped Image".  bzImage
> kernels can be as large as you like, but because they need to decompress
> into extended memory, they aggravate this problem.  zImage kernels just
> compress into conventional memory, so they never need to touch the a20 gate,
> but they hit the 640k limit.
> 
> This problem is *not* present in late 2.1.* and later (2.2 when
> available) kernels, bzImage kernel work just fine (the necessary code
> has been added, see the .S files in the kernel sources).
> 
> 
> For older kernels there are two solutions that I know of:
> 
>   1) apply a patch, which flushes the cache.  Unfortunately this
>      causes other machines to crash so is not universally applicable
>      (hence the tecra disks being segragated from the mainstream)
> 
>   2) build a zimage, rather than bzimage kernel.  This seems to get
>      round the problem. use the --zimage option to make-kpkg, or even
>      set this as the default in /etc/kernel-pkg.conf.
> 
> 
>       manoj
> -- 
> Manoj Srivastava  <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
> Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05  CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
> 
> -- 
>  Theory is gray, but the golden tree of life is green. Goethe
> Manoj Srivastava  <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
> Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05  CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E

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Patrick M.   pat@patoche.org    http://www.patoche.org/
Sysadmin of patoche.org, globenet.org, bde.espci.fr


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