----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Yap" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Sydney Linux Users Group" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2001 5:51 PM
Subject: Re: [SLUG] The origins of vmlinuz and mgetty
> > "vm stems from the vmunix that sun used to use the z is from the
> > compressed images that we now have since the expanded kernels have
trouble
> > being loaded at boot time into a 640K restriction (before you get the
> > extended memory manager running)"
>
> Extended memory manager? You still have DOS on the brain, Jeff. 32-bit
> code has no problem accessing memory beyond 1 MB.
Yes, but the part of LILO that is running when the kernel is initially
loaded into memory is only 16-bit, and it runs in Real-Mode (so it can use
BIOS io routines), hence you live within a 20-bit address space, and you can
only access the first 1MB of RAM. This has since been addressed with
changes to LILO and the addition of bzImage (big zimage) support.
> gzip compressed images don't make more memory available, so they don't
> overcome the 640kB memory limitation per se. To load above the 1 MB mark
> you need bzImages. Note: many people think the b stands for bzip. It
> doesn't. It stands for big.
well, somebody *would* have to release a program called bzip, wouldn't they?
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