Arch Linux

Haiyadragon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-21

Posts: 56

Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory

I just installed Arch64. I've done it before but now I get an error (from Grub I think) that says: "Error 28 Selected item cannot fit into memory". Both with fallback and old initrd. Every seems to be fine, correct root and kernel/initrd files.

Can someone help me with this?

Haiyadragon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-21

Posts: 56

Re: Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory

Worked in Lilo. Maybe the new kernel doesn't have the problem with Grub.

Haiyadragon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-21

Posts: 56

Re: Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory

Ok, so I found the cause of this problem. It's a bug in Grub that was reported, with a fix, two years ago. Apparently Grub can't deal with systems that have more than 2 gigs of memory very well and will not detect the available memory correctly. It will not detect enough to load a 64-bit kernel (in my case anyway).

Bug report with patch:
http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=deta … em_id=9954

Maybe it's a good idea to include this patch in the Grub build.

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory

Please file a bug report.

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory

Why hasn't this fix been added to GRUB upstream if it's been two years and people are still having this issue. I suppose it's not an issue for me because I only have 2GB of memory in this box with my 64-bit kernel.

Haiyadragon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-21

Posts: 56

Re: Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory

Why hasn't this fix been added to GRUB upstream if it's been two years and people are still having this issue. I suppose it's not an issue for me because I only have 2GB of memory in this box with my 64-bit kernel.

I don't know. They don't care I guess. Anyway, Gentoo's grub is patched and works great. All other Grubs I tried (Ubuntu, Arch, Frugalware (can't even install it)) can't boot a 64-bit kernel.

I'll look into the bug report thingy later.

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory

I'll look into the bug report thingy later.

Yep, a bug report seems the best way to handle this problem. I figure this will be fixed upstream when x86_64 systems with >2GB system RAM start becoming common place, but for now this will do nicely.

Haiyadragon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-21

Posts: 56

Re: Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory

Ok, reported .

According to the PKGBUILD for Grub I can't even compile it.

"this package has to be build on i686, won't compile on x86_64"

Nice.