[syslinux] memdisk + grub2 consumes lot of memory

[KESHAV P.R.]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 18:40, Miller, Shao <shao.miller at yrdsb.edu.on.ca> wrote:
> Good day again Keshav,
>
> Does GRUB2 allow you to dump the memory map from its CLI _before_
> booting tianocore (or whatever it's called)?  For example, if you can
> look at the memory map _before_ booting MEMDISK and it doesn't look any
> good, then MEMDISK shouldn't be responsible.  What might be nice to try
> is loading MEMDISK and the initrd, but dumping the memory map before
> booting it.
>

I don't know whether any such command exists on grub2 wherein you can
view the memory map before boot starts. Although it is possible to
manually load memdisk and the floppy image, and boot it with "boot"
command

> It's a boot-loader's responsibility (such as GRUB2 or Syslinux) where a
> kernel (such as MEMDISK) and an initial RAM disk (such as your
> Tianoxxx.img) are put in memory.
>
> If MEMDISK then goes on to shuffle things around (such as gunzipping a
> gzipped initrd), then it's possible that it might make different choices
> about where to put the decompressed image based on whatever memory was
> left by the boot-loader.
>

Seems like somehow syslinux does this correctly but grub2 does not or
may be grub2 loads the initrd in a different way.

> It's also possible that the MEMDISK "payload" containing its BIOS
> INTerrupt hooks might be put somewhere different under GRUB2 than under
> Syslinux, again, due to whatever memory map it was given by the
> boot-loader.
>
> Another possibly interesting experiment would be to boot GRUB2 ->
> MEMDISK + Syslinux floppy image.  On that floppy image, you could
> include Syslinux' MEMDUMP.COM and find out what it reports.  Or
> MEMINFO.C32.
>

How do I generate such a syslinux floppy image and how do I use
memdump.com or c32 meminfo.c32 module?

Regards.

Keshav

> - Shao Miller
>
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