linux-kernel - Possible bug in initramfs RAM handling

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <54B3F44F.2010408@googlemail.com>
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

Download attachment "signature.asc" of type "application/pgp-signature" (474 bytes)