[lug] System.map issue

[D. Stimits]

John Karns wrote:
> 
> This has been languishing in my postponed msgs for a few days, as I got a
> bit distracted.
> 
> On Fri, 22 Feb 2002, D. Stimits said:
> 
> > Chris Riddoch wrote:
> > > This is the significant part of what's in my lilo.conf:
> > > map=/boot/System.map
> >
> > BINGO. "map" is NOT System.map, it is part of the chain loader. In fact
> > System.map should not be listed in lilo.conf at all. System.map is
> > accessed by programs directly or via kernel programming, it is never
> > hard coded into the boot sector. In your /boot/ should be a file
> > literally called "map". Try this instead:
> > map=/boot/map
> 
> This relates to a long standing issue I've had as well.  From the very top
> of my boot.msg system log:
> 
> Cannot find map file.
> Loaded 63 symbols from 3 modules.
> 
> I checked and there was no "map=" line in my lilo.conf, which is from a
> SuSE 7.1 install.  But the man page for lilo.conf says:
> 
>        map=<map-file>
>               Specifies the location of the map file. If `map' is
>               omitted, the file /boot/map is used.
> 
> Furthermore, although /boot/map exists, lilo was ignoring it.
> 
> But I just added the map line to lilo.conf, and .... the problem remains.
> I'm not really sure that it is much of a problem, since the system has
> running fine* AFAIK, and I noticed the warning in the boot.msg file quite
> some time ago, so it's been that way for a long time.  But it would be
> nice to know what's going on with it.

I'm no expert on the map file, but I think it has to be written to at
boot time (maybe not), depending on which kernel is booted. Is your
/boot/ a separate partition? And if so, is it mounted read-only? For the
file that is there, how many bytes in size is it (mine has several
kernel images pointed at, it is about 50k)? Run this command, what does
it show:
  strings /boot/map

You should recognize part of the strings output as command line. How
does it compare to /proc/cmdline?

D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com

> 
> * with one exception: the module file
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> John Karns                                        jkarns at csd.net
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Web Page:  http://lug.boulder.co.us
> Mailing List: http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/mailman/listinfo/lug