Hi all, [Please reply to myself, the bug and the list]
As part of the bug sprint for cookies, I've been assigned to fix an RC bug in lilo (#479607 and clones). Since I don't know assembly, my proposed fix will be to add a debconf prompt asking if the person doing the upgrade wants to add the large-memory option to their configuration file. I will also add a NEWS.Debian file so that other sysadmins may receive information about the issue and a README.Debian entry with full info about the issue and extra tips for solving it. It would be great if debian-l10n-english could review the text for these three parts: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NEWS.Debian entry lilo (1:22.8-6) unstable; urgency=low lilo may fail to boot with a large kernel+initrd. Please read README.Debian for ways to work around this problem. -- Paul Wise <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:24:04 +0800 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ debconf question: Template: lilo/add_large_memory Type: boolean Default: true _Description: Do you want to add the large-memory option? By default lilo loads the initrd file into the first 15Mb of memory to avoid a BIOS limitation with older systems (earlier than 2001). . Unfortunately with newer kernels the combination of kernel and initrd may not fit into the first 15Mb of memory and so the system will not boot properly. It seems that the boot issues appear when the kernel+initrd combination is larger than 8MB. . If you have a newer BIOS without the 15Mb limitation, you can add the large-memory option to /etc/lilo.conf to tell lilo to use more memory for passing the initrd to the kernel. You will need to re-run lilo to make this option take effect. . If you have an older BIOS you may need to reduce the size of the initrd *before* rebooting, please see README.Debian for tips on how to do that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ README.Debian entry: --[ Large initrd files and lilo By default lilo loads the initrd file into the first 15MB of memory to avoid a BIOS limitation with older systems (earlier than 2001). Unfortunately with newer kernels the combination of kernel and initrd may not fit into the first 15MB of memory and so the system will not boot properly. If you have a newer BIOS without the 15MB limitation, you can add the large-memory option to /etc/lilo.conf to tell lilo to use more memory for passing the initrd to the kernel. You will need to re-run lilo to make this option take effect. If you have an older BIOS you will need to reduce the size of the initrd *before* rebooting. If you are using initramfs-tools, you should replace MODULES=most with MODULES=dep in your configuration and regenerate your initrd file: sed -i -e s/MODULES=most/MODULES=dep/ /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf update-initramfs -u If you are using yaird or any other initrd generator, please consult the documentation for your initrd generator. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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