[Bug 1900773] Re: ARM servers timeout downloading initrd

[dann frazier]

Turns out this is a GRUB issue. It was fixed upstream in the following
commit, which cleanly cherry-picks to groovy. I prepared a test build in
ppa:dannf/test and confirmed it resolves the issue.

commit a6838bbc6726ad624bd2b94991f690b8e9d23c69
Author: Javier Martinez Canillas <javierm at redhat.com>
Date:   Thu Sep 10 17:17:57 2020 +0200

    tftp: Roll-over block counter to prevent data packets timeouts
    
    Commit 781b3e5efc3 (tftp: Do not use priority queue) caused a regression
    when fetching files over TFTP whose size is bigger than 65535 * block size.
    
      grub> linux /images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
      grub> echo $?
      0
      grub> initrd /images/pxeboot/initrd.img
      error: timeout reading '/images/pxeboot/initrd.img'.
      grub> echo $?
      28


** Changed in: livecd-rootfs (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Invalid

** Changed in: grub2 (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Confirmed

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1900773

Title:
  ARM servers timeout downloading initrd

Status in Release Notes for Ubuntu:
  New
Status in grub2 package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in livecd-rootfs package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  groovy-live-server-arm64.iso 20201020.1

  When attempting to netboot subiquity on a Cavium ThunderX CRB2S, the
  system always times out downloading the initrd - see below. It seems
  the initrd, which is LZ4 compressed to 87M, is just too large. If I
  recompress the initrd using lzma - shrinking it to 44M, I am able to
  boot it. While that successfully works around the issue, I wouldn't
  expect the average user to know to do it.

                           GNU GRUB  version 2.04

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        Use the  and  keys to select which entry is highlighted.          
        Press enter to boot the selected OS, `e' to edit the commands       
        before booting or `c' for a command-line.                           

  error: timeout reading `initrd'.

  Press any key to continue...

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