Syslinux - Jun 2012 - Problem with buggy Dell Latitude BIOS

Hello List,

the most recent BIOS (A13) for the Dell Latitude E6520 has problems - 
gpxelinux (4.05) cannot load larger initrd (or memdisk images) with this 
BIOS and fails with "Not enough memory to load specified image". This 
results in a few of our boot images (most importantly the Backup Rescue 
image (and parted magix pxe version)) failing.

A12 BIOS works okay. So at the moment we stay at A12.

1) Can this problem be worked around somehow? I have created sysdumps 
(with sysdump.c32) of both BIOS states but can't read/understand the 
output.
2) Is it worth the trouble of reporting this to Dell? If yes, do they have 
a contact for this kind of bugs? I doubt regular Dell support is able to 
handle these kinds of problem.

Best Regards
        Heiko Helmle

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:07 AM,  <heiko.helmle at horiba.com>
wrote:
> Hello List,
>
> the most recent BIOS (A13) for the Dell Latitude E6520 has problems -
> gpxelinux (4.05) cannot load larger initrd (or memdisk images) with this
> BIOS and fails with "Not enough memory to load specified image".
This
> results in a few of our boot images (most importantly the Backup Rescue
> image (and parted magix pxe version)) failing.
>
> A12 BIOS works okay. So at the moment we stay at A12.
>
> 1) Can this problem be worked around somehow? I have created sysdumps
> (with sysdump.c32) of both BIOS states but can't read/understand the
> output.
It's pretty easy: http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Linux.c32
> 2) Is it worth the trouble of reporting this to Dell? If yes, do they have
> a contact for this kind of bugs? I doubt regular Dell support is able to
> handle these kinds of problem.
Possibly but I'd lean towards no.  It's what's sometimes referred to
as a "memory hole", a range of memory allocated for other uses before
SYSLINUX can use it.

-- 
-Gene