[Letux-kernel] LetuxOS: Kernel: m-stable 6.19 success [iMac.local]

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Hi,

> Am 13.02.2026 um 19:02 schrieb H. Nikolaus Schaller <hns at goldelico.com>:
> 
>>> ARM: http://download.goldelico.com/letux-kernel/letux-6.19
>> 
>> hmm, how is this supposed to fit into a 0x5c0000 sized nand area?
> 
> Well, it is likely not at all supposed but simply happened and remained untested.
> 
> You know we are lacking people testing this every now and then on *all* devices in all modes.
> I don't even remember when I had last time tried to flash a kernel into NAND.
> 
>> 0x5c00000...0x600000 is reserved for the devicetree (256K)
> 
> As you mention this, I start to vaguely remember that there was some 6MB limit
> for the Image in the past and it has grown and grown...

Hm. An idea could be to a add an automatic post-compile check to the build-bot scripts
and either reject the build or at least emit a warning. Until it is fixed.

Have to think about and research how NAND flashing did/does work and how to determine
the exact limits...

>> 
>> CONFIG_KERNEL_LZMA=y
>> 
>> can be set to reduce that at the cost of decompression time.

Can we assume that U-Boot can decompress that?

> Another approach is to compile less into the kernel and have more modules.

I have tried and with CONFIG_KERNEL_GZIP (default so far) I get

-rwxr-xr-x  1 hns  staff  16851484 14 Feb 10:12 arch/arm/boot/Image
-rw-r--r--  1 hns  staff   6926360 14 Feb 10:12 arch/arm/boot/uImage
-rwxr-xr-x  1 hns  staff   6926296 14 Feb 10:12 arch/arm/boot/zImage

with CONFIG_KERNEL_LZMA=y

iMac:master hns$ ls -l arch/arm/boot/*mage* 
-rwxr-xr-x  1 hns  staff  16851484 14 Feb 11:07 arch/arm/boot/Image
-rw-r--r--  1 hns  staff   5087880 14 Feb 11:08 arch/arm/boot/uImage
-rwxr-xr-x  1 hns  staff   5087816 14 Feb 11:08 arch/arm/boot/zImage

Well, that is significant but will only be a woraround for some time
if the Image grows and grows...

BR,
Nikolaus


BTW:

the file size display on the server seems to be broken for completely unknown reasons...

	zImage  2026-02-10 00:21 6.6M

vs.

	-rwxr-xr-x  1 hns  staff  6926296 10 Feb 00:21 letux-6.19/zImage

Hm. 6.9 / 6.6 = 1.048 - maybe a typo somewhere in the Apache directory browser and 1024 was meant?