Re: Bug#865314: debian-installer-9-netboot-mips: 32bit MIPS (big-endian) Malta netboot installer doesn't boot

James Cowgill <[email protected]> Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:10:14 +0100

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.ports.mips
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Hi,

On 20/06/17 15:11, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 04:01:26PM +0200, Bruno Bierbaumer wrote:
>> Yes, it works perfectly well for Debian Jessie.
> 
> Ok, thanks for confirming.
> 
> mips folks - any clues please? AFAICS we've had ~zero input about mips
> in d-i and image work, and no visible testing. Some help would be
> appreciated...
> 
>> On Tue, 20 Jun 2017 14:47:52 +0100 Steve McIntyre <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 03:43:36PM +0200, Bruno Bierbaumer wrote:
>>>> It also seems to be broken on MIPSEL
>>>>
>>>> wget
>>>> http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/main/installer-mipsel/current/images/malta/netboot/initrd.gz
>>>> wget
>>>> http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/main/installer-mipsel/current/images/malta/netboot/vmlinux-4.9.0-3-4kc-malta
>>>> qemu-system-mipsel -M malta -m 256 -kernel vmlinux-4.9.0-3-4kc-malta
>>>> -initrd initrd.gz -nographic
>>>
>>> Hi Bruno,
>>>
>>> Did the same setup work with jessie images? I've got ~no background
>>> with mips stuff here...

I think I know which error you mean (and I confess I have seen it
before). The issue is that QEMU loads the initrd into the memory
immediately after the kernel, but that bit of memory might get
overwritten by KASLR when the kernel starts and relocates itself.

You can workaround it by passing "-append nokaslr" to QEMU, but I guess
that QEMU should be fixed to place the initrd in a higher bit of memory.

James

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