Syslinux - Jan 2011 - Memdisk Question

Hi Guys,

 I'm currently using pxelinux 4.03 and memdisk to boot a DOS based
 floppy we use this software for training purposes to run a basic
 hardware check.

 It does not seem to like systems which have more than 1GB of RAM,
 which is some of the machines our company are now starting to
 see.

 Is there a way I can ask memdisk or PXE linux to use only xxx MB
 of RAM, e.g. 256MB...?

 Company compliance dictates we run this app, even though it has
 been surpassed by the syslinux HDT.c32 module.

 Thanks,
 Robert

Hello Robert,

While it's indeed possible that MEMDISK could be giving you issues, I
can't say that I've ever seen a problem with it in machines >1GB...
or
with any amount of RAM, really.  As far as I know, MEMDISK only uses
the RAM it needs to hold the image itself.

If possible, could you try writing that floppy image to an actual disk
and booting it on one of the affected machines?

I might be wrong about this, but I think that PXELINUX has direct
support for floppy images.  You may be able to bypass MEMDISK as your
kernel and work directly with the image.  Not exactly sure what the
syntax is for that, though.

Additionally, GRUB4DOS can boot RAMdisk images via its "mem --map"
command.  You could try that too :)

Cheers,
Andrew Bobulsky

On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 10:26 AM, Robert McLay <the80sphreak at
yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> ?Hi Guys,
>
> ?I'm currently using pxelinux 4.03 and memdisk to boot a DOS based
> ?floppy we use this software for training purposes to run a basic
> ?hardware check.
>
> ?It does not seem to like systems which have more than 1GB of RAM,
> ?which is some of the machines our company are now starting to
> ?see.
>
> ?Is there a way I can ask memdisk or PXE linux to use only xxx MB
> ?of RAM, e.g. 256MB...?
>
> ?Company compliance dictates we run this app, even though it has
> ?been surpassed by the syslinux HDT.c32 module.
>
> ?Thanks,
> ?Robert
>
>
>
>
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On 01/25/2011 07:26 AM, Robert McLay wrote:
> 
>  Hi Guys,
> 
>  I'm currently using pxelinux 4.03 and memdisk to boot a DOS based
>  floppy we use this software for training purposes to run a basic
>  hardware check.
> 
>  It does not seem to like systems which have more than 1GB of RAM,
>  which is some of the machines our company are now starting to
>  see.
> 
>  Is there a way I can ask memdisk or PXE linux to use only xxx MB
>  of RAM, e.g. 256MB...?
> 
>  Company compliance dictates we run this app, even though it has
>  been surpassed by the syslinux HDT.c32 module.
> 
>  Thanks,
>  Robert
> 
Is it the app that's having problems, or memdisk?  Either way, stock
memdisk can't do this, but it would be a fairly trivial modification to
add an option to reserve all memory areas above a certain point.

	-hpa