Bug 598064

Summary: memtest86+ Error 28: selected item cannot fit into memory
Product: [openSUSE] openSUSE 11.4 Reporter: Dirk Mueller <endlichstudent>
Component: BasesystemAssignee: Torsten Duwe <duwe>
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX QA Contact: E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity: Major    
Priority: P3 - Medium CC: aspiers, bwiedemann, cobexer, dheidler, endlichstudent, jochen.schaefer, ptesarik
Version: Factory   
Target Milestone: Factory   
Hardware: x86-64   
OS: openSUSE 11.3   
Whiteboard:
Found By: --- Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---

Description Dirk Mueller 2010-04-20 10:13:17 UTC
User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100204 SUSE/3.5.8-0.1.1 Firefox/3.5.8

Package: memtest86+
Version: 4.00-2.1.x86_64

After installing memtest86+, restarting the system and selecting memtest in the grub boot menu I get the following message:

Error 28: selected item cannot fit into memory



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. install memtest
2. reboot system
3. select memtest boot entry
Actual Results:  
Error 28: selected item cannot fit into memory

Expected Results:  
memtest should start

cat /proc/cpuinfo                                                                                                       
processor       : 0                                                                                                                                                    
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel                                                                                                                                         
cpu family      : 6                                                                                                                                                    
model           : 26                                                                                                                                                   
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           E5540  @ 2.53GHz                                                                                                      
stepping        : 5                                                                                                                                                    
cpu MHz         : 1596.000                                                                                                                                             
cache size      : 8192 KB                                                                                                                                              
physical id     : 0                                                                                                                                                    
siblings        : 4                                                                                                                                                    
core id         : 0                                                                                                                                                    
cpu cores       : 4                                                                                                                                                    
apicid          : 0                                                                                                                                                    
initial apicid  : 0                                                                                                                                                    
fpu             : yes                                                                                                                                                  
fpu_exception   : yes                                                                                                                                                  
cpuid level     : 11                                                                                                                                                   
wp              : yes                                                                                                                                                  
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology tsc_reliable nonstop_tsc pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm ida tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid                                                                                                                                  
bogomips        : 5053.69                                                                                                                                              
clflush size    : 64                                                                                                                                                   
cache_alignment : 64                                                                                                                                                   
address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual                                                                                                                    
power management:





cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:       16449384 kB
Comment 1 Dirk Mueller 2010-04-20 10:16:59 UTC
looks like debian has the same problem:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=319837
Comment 2 Torsten Duwe 2010-05-12 07:25:20 UTC
Interesting. I'd like to find some time to look into this.
Comment 3 Torsten Duwe 2010-08-04 16:04:13 UTC
Do memtest + grub from 11.3 work on that machine?
Comment 4 Christoph Obexer 2010-08-29 16:46:20 UTC
I have the same problem here on openSuSE Factory!
(ot: and the YaST bootloader module is stupid)
Comment 5 Jochen Schäfer 2010-09-12 17:08:50 UTC
Hi, 

not sure if my observations are related to this problem.
I've meet the erreor message from grub (selected item cannot fit into memory)
after installation of OpenSuSE 11.3. But in my case it occured when loading initrd by grub. Initrd was about 12M in size.
After disabling memory hole setting in Bios grub reported no errors anymore and everything went fine.

Thanks,
Jochen
Comment 6 Wei Wang 2010-11-30 03:15:32 UTC
Hi all , 
I close it because no response , fell free to reopen if you can provide the need information .Thank you .
Comment 7 Petr Tesařík 2011-06-02 09:59:38 UTC
I can reproduce the same thing on my Thinkpad x61s. I have tried the following combinations:

GRUB	memtest86+	result
  11.3	  11.3		FAIL
  11.3	  11.4		FAIL
  11.4	  11.3		FAIL
  11.4	  11.4		FAIL

I'm going to attach the BIOS-provided memory map, too. Stay tuned.
Comment 8 Petr Tesařík 2011-06-02 10:20:44 UTC
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 0000000000099800 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000099800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000000d6000 - 00000000000d8000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000000e0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000007d6b0000 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000007d6b0000 - 000000007d6cc000 (ACPI data)
 BIOS-e820: 000000007d6cc000 - 000000007d700000 (ACPI NVS)
 BIOS-e820: 000000007d700000 - 000000007e000000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000f0000000 - 00000000f4000000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec10000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fed00000 - 00000000fed00400 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fed14000 - 00000000fed1a000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fed1c000 - 00000000fed90000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000ff000000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)

Size of memtest.bin is 165080 bytes (0x284d8). AFAICS it should fit into the available memory, but maybe I'm missing something.
Comment 9 Petr Tesařík 2011-06-02 10:43:20 UTC
Argh, the real problem is that memtest86.bin doesn't contain the magic signature ("HdrS"), so it still uses the legacy boot protocol, which always places the command line at 0x99800-0x99fff. Since 0x99800 is already used for the Extended BIOS Data Area (EBDA) on this machine, memtest86+ cannot be booted.

IMO you must rewrite memtest86+ boot code to use a 2.02+ boot protocol.
Comment 13 Adam Spiers 2012-07-25 10:43:17 UTC
I also just hit this on a Dell Optiplex 990MT with 16GB of RAM.  I downloaded the patched version from http://bitcube.co.uk/content/memtest-failures-0 and it ran fine with kernel --type=netbsd.  As machines with larger amounts of memory become more common, that article suggest that this problem will become more common.
Comment 14 Torsten Duwe 2016-01-05 14:50:13 UTC
While this bug is certainly worth being investigated, It's very unlikely
I'll ever get at it. Let's face it. :(