Re: mem= option for broken bioses

From: H. Peter Anvin (hpa@zytor.com)
Date: Thu Feb 27 2003 - 18:48:16 EST


Followup to: <F760B14C9561B941B89469F59BA3A8471380D7@orsmsx401.jf.intel.com>
By author: "Grover, Andrew" <andrew.grover@intel.com>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> > From: Pavel Machek [mailto:pavel@ucw.cz]
> > I've seen broken bios that did not mark acpi tables in e820
> > tables. This allows user to override it. Please apply,
>
> OK, looks reasonable. Can you also gen up a patch documenting this in
> kernel-parameters.txt?
>

This is very much *NOT* reasonable. In fact, screwing around with the
syntax of the mem= parameter is poison. I know it has already
happened, and those changes need to be reverted and the new stuff
moved to a different option.

The mem= option is unique in that it is an option that affects both
the boot loader and the kernel. Therefore, ITS SYNTAX MUST NOT
CHANGE.

        -hpa

-- 
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."
Architectures needed: cris ia64 m68k mips64 ppc ppc64 s390 s390x sh v850 x86-64
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 28 2003 - 22:00:46 EST