On an x86_64 platform the crash kernel boot (32b kernel) panic's during the boot during device initialization due to failed kmalloc() and the the oom_killer() failing to free mem. The memory that is setup for the crash kernel to use is 32MB. It was working fine up until we added a new kernel module. This seems to have tipped the balance in memory allocations for kernel code, and the ZONE allocater. The addition of the kernel module cause the "init.ramfs" size encoded in the header section of vmlinux to increases. So its observed that the capture kernel boot was OK till the init.ramfs size was below some threshold. Its harder for us to bump up the 32MB to a higher value (although we see that it seems to solve the problem). Instead, we tried reducing the ZONE_DMA memory from 16MB to 10MB and things work fine. What are your thoughts on going w/ this 10MB ZONE_DMA approach? We don't have any ISA devices w/ the 16MB dma addr limitations, etc. that we care about in our system. Pl let us know if you have any suggestions/thoughts, etc. Thanks
