[syslinux] memdisk from 3.36 crashing on Dell PowerEdge 1955

[H. Peter Anvin]

[Moving this thread back on-list, let's please keep it there.]

Andreas Kotes wrote:
> Hello hpa,
> 
> * Andreas Kotes <count-linux at flatline.de> [20070312 18:33]:
>> * H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com> [20070312 17:32]:
>>>> same results with 3.40-pre12 - any advice at all?
>>> What's your full config space entry?  The below doesn't specify any disk 
>>> image at all.
>> # Diagnostic software
>> LABEL diag
>>   KERNEL memdisk.bin
>>   APPEND initrd=firmwares/diag-Dell-PowerEdge-1955.img
>>
>>> I just tried it myself (with the equivalent to 3.40-pre12), and memdisk 
>>> works fine here...
>> yes, it works fine on other systems, and I don't see what the problem
>> might be on these ones :(
> 
> could you provide a diff 3.36 which allows to see where memdisks fails?
> 

You can see the entire change history at:

http://git.kernel.org/?p=boot/syslinux/syslinux.git;a=summary

> if it was C code, I'd liberally toss in some printfs to see what's
> happening, but I've refrained to go for another round with assembler -
> so far ... you should be able to do this much faster than I :)
> 
> Thanks a lot in advance! :)
> 
>    Andreas
> 
> P.S: I'm really amazed (in a negative way) in how many ways people come
> up to accidentally (?) messing with software like yours ..

Indeed.  Unfortunately, firmware gets very poor testing.

	-hpa