Comment 231 for bug 930447

>as Debian also includes a pae flags check in the 686 kernel package

the pae flags check is in the x86 bootcode of the kernel and apparently it depends on the bootloader if it`s being executed or not.

only grub2 seems to skips that code which does vga initialization, cpu-checking and other steps like edd ( https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/arch/x86/boot/edd.c?id=e479c8306f898fcdb9b36179071eae6338a17364 ) , which makes all the work pretty pointless.

i wonder, why skipping that code is possible at all and nobody complains (besides that silent complain of hpa)

for details, see
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/arch/x86/boot/main.c (end of the file)
and
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/arch/x86/boot/cpu.c
and
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/arch/x86/boot/cpucheck.c

btw - thanks Dimitrijs for the positive response.