Re: ack! grub bug...

[Pavel Roskin]

Hello, Jeff!

> > It's up to the kernel to decide what to do with this information.
>
> mem=XXX overrides the memory map provided by BIOS with a two-region
> memory map, one region below 640k, and one region above 1MB.
>
> For newer machines this is -fatally- wrong.  Linux must use the memory
> map provided by BIOS, otherwise it will address regions which should not
> be addressed.  Newer laptops and server machines require utilization of
> the BIOS e820 map.

GRUB uses this call but it doesn't know how to pass this information to
the Linux kernel.

I believe that "--no-mem-option" should become default. "--mem-option"
should be introduced instead for the kernels that still need it.

A kernel that can boot from a floppy without relying on anything but a
16-bit BIOS can and should be trusted with the hardware detection.

Regards,
Pavel Roskin