linux-kernel - Possible bug in initramfs RAM handling

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Date:	Mon, 12 Jan 2015 17:20:31 +0100
From:	Tobias Powalowski <tobias.powalowski@...glemail.com>
To:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Possible bug in initramfs RAM handling

Hi,
I have a weird bug here with initramfs,
I have big initramfs files around 150MB zipped, 400MB extracted.
I suppose the needed RAM to boot this setup should be around:
150MB zipped initramfs+ 400MB extracted initramfs + 5MB kernel image.
Our distro kernel has tmpfs support, booting this setup without kernel
parameter needs around 1000MB RAM to boot.
Using rootfstype=ramfs makes it work with around 600MB RAM.

Is this a bug in kernel code?
Shouldn't both types not use the same amount of RAM?
I used kernel 3.18.2 at the moment but issue is reproducable with 3.15 too.

Thanks for your help.
greetings
tpowa

-- 
Tobias Powalowski
Archlinux Developer & Package Maintainer (tpowa)
http://www.archlinux.org
tpowa@...hlinux.org

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