On Fri, 27 May 2005, Perret Yannick wrote:

> I'm using PXE installation for our machines
> without any problems, but this time I
> get one...
> 
> I'm trying to install a SL303 / 32 bits on
> a dual-opteron box.
> The DHCP works fine, then the 'pxelinux.0'
> is loaded. It downloads the kernel and the
> initrd and just after I get a message
> "Failed to free base memory. Sorry...".
> And the machine does nothing else...
> 
> Does anyone fall on this message
> previously ?
> 
> By the way, the corresponding kernel/initrd
> is also used for other dual-opteron boxes
> (sun v20z) without any problem.
> 
> Any clues would be appreciated.

A long time ago we used to get exactly those symptoms with 386 kernels iff
the machine had more than ~2G ram (I think), and it went away with an
upgrade to the pxelinux.bin to v2.06 (I think).

The bug was that it was loading the kernel/initrd at some address beyond
what the boot-kernels could address (or my memory might have failed
again).

There *might* be something similar at some higher memory threshold.  Do 
all the boxes have the same amount of memory?

Before the pxelinux update we used to tediously strip memory out of 
machines during installs...

 -- Jon