Re: [Etherboot-users] 1G memory limit and Etherboot

[Eric W. Biederman]

Guolin Cheng <[e-mail]> writes:

> hi, Eric,
> 
>  I tried a few days ago, using etherboot 5.0.2, mknbi 1.2.6 with different
> --rdbase options, but all failed. The kernel is 2.4.13, the initrd is around
> 64M. 

Unless something regressed 2.4.13 should be fairly robust in this
regard.
 
>  The netbooted client is a 1.5G memory HP Vectra 420. It can successfully
> netbooted with 512M memory. But can not boot when memory is added to 1024M
> and 1.5G.
> 
>  The error prompt is something like:
> 
> 	Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 01:00

Which just means it couldn't find your ramdisk.  If you could please
report all of your kernel messages.  A serial console is ideal for that
purpose.  Without more information I cannot even guess why you are having
problems.

>  I'm using Official kernel 2.4.13, the base system is RedHat 7.1 on HP
> vectra 420.
> 
>  The commands I used to create the tagged images is:
> 
>  /usr/bin/mknbi-linux --output=./kernel.test.0540 --ip=dhcp
> --rdbase=0x5b000000 --rootdir=/dev/ram0 --append="idebus=66 ide0=ata66
> ide1=ata66 ro" bzImage initrd
> 
>  I also tried options, --rdbase=top/asis/0x00300000, all can failed with the
> same above problem.
> 
>  At last I use local hard disk boot, with the same kernel (4G high memory
> option enabled), it can boot successfully, then I tried to see the memory
> mapping, and get the following information:
> 
[snip]
> 
>  Please suggest which method, I can try to netboot the machine. Thanks a
> lot.

Eric