linux-kernel - Re: Boot error since 6.9: Initramfs unpacking failed: invalid magic at start of compressed archive

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Message-ID: <99EBCF2A-4528-4F8C-BCEE-0B1178F28088.1@smtp-inbound1.duck.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2024 00:28:46 -0400
From: wm2vdghq@...k.com
To: Thorsten Leemhuis <regressions@...mhuis.info>,
 Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>
Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
 Linux ARM <linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org>,
 LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
 Linux kernel regressions list <regressions@...ts.linux.dev>,
 Jack D <wm2vdghq@...k.com>
Subject: Re: Boot error since 6.9: Initramfs unpacking failed: invalid magic
 at start of compressed archive

On Monday, July 15, 2024 at 03:04:34 AM PDT, Will Deacon wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 15, 2024 at 08:24:04AM +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> quote from https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219014 :
> > 
> > I'm marking as arm64 since git bisect identifies the first problematic commit as:
> >  6d75c6f40a03c97e1ecd683ae54e249abb9d922b
> > 
> > git bisect log is attached.
> > 
> > Any kernel tagged v6.9x and later fails to boot with the following error:
> > 
> > [    0.420154] Initramfs unpacking failed: invalid magic at start of compressed archive

> My guess (based on times I've seen this sort of thing in the past) is
> that the kernel binary grew in size and the broken bootloader is loading
> the kernel over the initramfs instead of parsing the 'image_size' field
> in the boot header.

(I hope I got the email formatting for this list correct. Apologies if I messed it up.)

Yes, that was it. Thank you for your quick (and accurate) assessment. The commit
increased my uncompressed kernel by ~1MB. Not much, but enough to cause an
address conflict.