[Skiboot] skiboot LID > 1MB, "larger than partition"

[Stewart Smith]

Hey all,

so, with (most) toolchains and recent skiboot development, we're beyond
the one *megabyte* (1MB) size for skiboot.lid. If you're flashing
skiboot.lid on an FSP system, you won't care as we have to get to 16MB
for there to be a problem.

However, if you're flashing on an OpenPOWER system, you may have an
issue. Why? The PAYLOAD partition is only 1MB.

When you flash, you may get this warning from pflash:
WARNING: Size (1066432 bytes) larger than partition (1048576 bytes), cropping to fit

It'll probably still boot, so one may want to question the value of
those last few thousand bytes :)

Luckily, back in May, code hit Hostboot to load an XZ compressed PAYLOAD
(which it detects by looking for the magic number). So, this is why for
5+ months we also produce skiboot.lid.xz.

For a system with remotely recent hostboot, just flash skiboot.lid.xz
rather than skiboot.lid and it'll all "just work" (and it'll boot a tiny
bit faster).

Might be time to revisit CONFIG_ options? I've kind of enjoyed having no
knobs to fiddle though...

-- 
Stewart Smith
OPAL Architect, IBM.