[syslinux] Syslinux Mem= greater than 4096M

[Gene Cumm]

On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 22:48, Kevin Sullivan <ksullaustin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Shao,
>
> I have several boot options, but here is one example:
>
> LABEL less
>    MENU LABEL Up to 64 GB System RAM
>    KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz-3.1.10-b1
>    APPEND pci=nommconf vga=773 mem=256M initrd=/boot/initrd-3.1.10-b1.img
>
> This boots a Linux kernel that can only "see" 256 MB.  If I set mem=4097 or
> greater, I get the error message.

Same error with 'mem=4352M' ?  mem should be interpreted by the core
for load alignments by the Syslinux core.

-- 
-Gene

> On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 7:13 PM, Shao Miller <Shao.Miller at yrdsb.edu.on.ca>wrote:
>
>> On 2/3/2012 19:34, Kevin Sullivan wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Everyone. I have a question that I have researched, but cannot find an
>>> answer. I was wondering if any of the syslinux guru's might have some
>>> suggestions for me. We use syslinux (4.04) to boot a specialized USB
>>> distribution of Linux that requires the mem= flag to be added to the
>>> syslinux.cfg file. The mem= flag is a requirement as this is a custom
>>> kernel distribution that uses kernel modules in a highly specialized
>>> manner. I can set mem= all the way up to 4096M, but at 4097 and greater, I
>>> get the error message of:
>>>
>>> Not enough memory to load specified image.
>>>
>>> We have a boot CD port of this same distribution using the legacy (grub 1)
>>> boot, and it accepts mem= to levels tested as high as 8192M.
>>>
>>> Now, obviously, I'm likely hitting a 32 bit syslinux limitation, but we
>>> love using syslinux on our USB distribution as it boots on every system
>>> that we test on, whereas grub has proven to be problematic.
>>>
>>> So, can anyone suggest a method for us to pass a mem= 4097M or greater?
>>>
>>> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Or, on another note, would
>>> grub2 be a viable bootloader for USB storage?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> -Kevin
>>
>> I could be mistaken, but I don't recall 'mem=' being a Syslinux anything.
>>  What does the Syslinux LABEL paragraph have in it, if you please?  - Shao