[syslinux] Only 2.5G of RAM available then syslinux64.efi boots 32-bit linux 686-pae

[Gene Cumm]

On Sat, Nov 21, 2015 at 1:04 AM, Andrey Plankin via Syslinux
<syslinux at zytor.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm booting linux-3.16-686-pae kernel (32-bit) via syslinux.efi 64-bit version.
> After boot linux sees only 2.5G of RAM while system has 32G installed.

Why not use a 64-bit kernel with such a large machine?

Do you have the config used to build that kernel?  I'm specifically
looking for any config line with "EFI" in it.

> If I boot the same kernel with GRUB64 efi instead of syslinux
> then amount of RAM available to linux is 32G.
>
> Is this a bug or I'm missing something?

It's certainly unexpected behavior but booting a 32-bit kernel from a
64-bit EFI is also a little unexpected.  Syslinux will definitely try
to use the EFI stub in the kernel to boot the kernel.  I can't speak
for GRUB but it has done some forced behaviors in the past.

Could you post the memory map that Linux uses in both cases?  dmesg
should be able to help.

> syslinux.cfg:
>
> label live-686-pae
>         menu label Linux (686-pae)
>         menu default
>         linux /live/vmlinuz
>         initrd /live/initrd.img
>         append boot=live config persistence username=user live-config.utc=no acpi_osi=Linux live-config.noautologin

Is this the entire file or just an excerpt?  If an excerpt, I'd wonder
if there's any other stray APPEND.  What does your kernel show as the
command line?

> Current git: e0be4d87135

So a build of Syslinux from that commit.

-- 
-Gene