[Fwd: [PATCH] PPC64: large INITRD causes kernel not to boot]

[Olaf Hering]

 On Mon, Aug 08, Mark Bellon wrote:

> I see your point. but I've got practical issues that I want to avoid:  
> I've got platforms that claim only part of the space south of 4MB and 
> _start is usually 4MB (a hole); starting at zero would not do nice 
> things in some cases. I felt my coding prevents any possibility of 
> problems by simply removing the chance of a collision.

Yes, try_claim could return an address below _start if size is small
enough.

> That initrd image is not claimed in your approach and it sits 
> immediately about _end. It would need to be claimed as well.

No, initrd is moved to initrd.addr.

> How about this? Claim everything in the loaded ELF file from _start 
> explicitly with claim_start initialized at _start?

This is really only required for brokenfirmware implementations. I have
seen it on IBM B50. Maybe older 64bit systems like 170 or 260 are broken
as well. So you claim once from _start to _end, and set claim_base to
_end.

> However I still like my approach saving time especially with a huge INITRD.

Does a claim take so much time? Maybe I misunderstood this part.