[syslinux] Plop Boot Manager quit working with 5.10

Gene Cumm gene.cumm at gmail.com
Sun Jun 30 09:45:58 PDT 2013


On Sat, Jun 29, 2013 at 3:04 PM, Ady <ady-sf at hotmail.com> wrote:

> If with "ancient kernel" you are referring to the memtest(86|86+)
> issue, I don't see the same *exact* problem / behavior.

My cuent understanding is as follows: HPA is using the label "ancient
kernel" for any kernel that has a hard-coded load address and that
linux.c32 and all 5.xx+ (they're actually the same code) are less
likely to be able to succeed in loading these kernels due to how the
core/linux.c32 responds to the memory map passed to it by the BIOS(INT
15h E820h).

Let's say the kernel must be loaded to 0x100000 but the core sees that
the memory at that address is reserved (and not by itself).  At this
point, the core/linux.c32 refuses to execute it for safety reasons.

My guess at the PXE-smasher is that the BIOS doesn't properly report
the memory that the PXE stack uses and the core/linux.c32 loads on top
of this used memory, corrupting the environment.

Ady, hope this helps.

--
-Gene


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