Re: Old version of lilo fails to boot 2.6.23

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Fri Oct 26 2007 - 14:38:18 EST


Joseph Parmelee wrote:

This patch will work in my particular case, though it appears to violate the rules about getting too close to the EBDA (SP=0xB000 on entry).

The boot loader is responsible for loading the kernel loader at a suitable
location in low memory, but I don't understand why the boot loader should be
involved in setting the stack at all. If we explicitly allocate the stack
as part of the .data segment, why not just play it safe and in all cases
fully set up the stack in header.S? This insures that the stack pointer is
not zero, is as low as possible to stay out of the EBDA, and that ss=ds;
quite irrespective of what the boot loader does.

What am I missing?


What you're missing is that "just loading into a suitable location in low memory" isn't a sufficient condition. This is something that one finds out very quickly trying to do boot loader work.

Heap and stack control the amount of functionality that is available, and therefore the protocol allows them to be dynamic.

Anyway, the final version of the patch that I sent you privately uses this logic:

- If heap size is properly reported, use it.
- Otherwise, if %ss == %ds, then use the stack pointer as entered.
- Otherwise, use the minimum stack.

This seems like a fairly reasonable compromise, especially since anything even remotely modern will be handled by the first clause.

-hpa



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