Will there be some memory available below 640Kb for the loaded OS

[Nicolas Weidmann]

Hi,

 

I would like to know if the Grub2 will leave some predefined memory area below the 640Kb?

 

I asked this question long ago for the first version of Grub and got no positive answer to it.

 

The reason I ask is that I have an OS, in ELF format, that relies on the physical pages to be loaded and not on the virtual pages.

 

It allows me to have a full ELF executable that has the most part of the code above 1Mb and that is located above 3Gb in virtual memory.

I also have the SMP boot code below the 640Kb. This SMP boot code has its virtual pages matching the physical pages.

 

I am interested in using a grub (grub2) but I don’t want to mess around.

 

(I know that grub currently does not load executables based on the physical pages).

 

Will there be an area of those first 640Kb of memory that grub will not use?

 

Thank you,

 

 

Nicolas