Comment 9 for bug 260059

Hi John!

I hope you can answer a question I have about the LILO bootloader
(version 22.8), raised by a bug-report in Ubuntu
( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lilo/+bug/260059 ). I have
CC'ed the bug report for reference.

In boot.c there is the following two lines, for calculating the number
of high sectors needed for loading the initrd (IIUC):
hi_sectors = sectors - setup; /* number of sectors loaded high */
hi_sectors *= 3; /* account for decompression */

My question is about the "account for decompression" part. How precise
is the number 3? Is it heuristic, or is it completely precise?

The reporter in the bug has an initrd image of size 24574976 (gunzipped)
and 8257993 (gzipped). The ratio of compression, 2.976, is therefore
very close to 3.

My second question, if my speculations are correct, is: Would it hurt to
raise the number to e.g. 4? My understanding is that this would just
make lilo behave as if "large-memory" was specified, in many more cases,
potentially avoiding this gray area.

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond :-)

--
Mads Chr. Olesen <email address hidden>
shiyee.dk