[bug #61058] out of memory error on HP 250 G7 and HP 450 G8 laptop loading large initrd (500Mb)

[Patrick Das]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?61058>

                 Summary: out of memory error on HP 250 G7 and HP 450 G8
laptop loading large initrd (500Mb)
                 Project: GNU GRUB
            Submitted by: intoto
            Submitted on: Wed 18 Aug 2021 10:11:29 PM UTC
                Category: Booting
                Severity: Major
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: Hardware-specific
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: 
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
                 Release: 
                 Release: other
         Discussion Lock: Any
         Reproducibility: Every Time
         Planned Release: None

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Details:

Grub fails with out of memory error (../../grub-core/kern/mm.c:374:out of
memory.) when loading a large initrd image on a HP 250 G7 notebook. The initrd
image is around 500Mb (506.139.888 bytes).

The error happens on HP 250 G7 and HP Probook 450 G8 based laptops, both
having a UEFI bios.

Grub version 2.04 and 2.06 have been tested.

The kernel and initrd are a custom build based on Fedora Core 34. (Kernel
5.12.8-300.fc34.x86_64)


This configuration is booted from a USB stick with a FAT partition. 

On a lot of other computers this USB stick configuration is working fine, we
tested it in a virtual machine (Hyper-V) but also on for example a older model
HP 250 G6 and all kinds of other brands of computers and laptops. 

On my testmachine a HP 250 G7 with intel core i3-1005g1 cpu and 8Gb of memory,
lates bios F.36. I've made a recording of the boot process of grub2 with set
debug=all. See image under the attachment for details. 

It seems that the allocation of the memory goes wrong based on the output on
the screen trying to allocate 123570 pages from address 0xffffffffffffffff.

This error is reproducable on this computer and other models like the HP
Probook 450 G8.

A little bit of background:

We use this image as a secure examination environment on a lot of different
computers in the Netherlands and so far this setup has been working for the
last 4 years on all kinds of hardware.

please let me know if more details our debug info is needed.





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