I just noticed the line [ 0.267305] Unpacking initramfs... [ 0.270704] Initramfs unpacking failed: junk in compressed archive [ 0.304492] Freeing initrd memory: 9216K
in the output above, so I tried using the same initrd.img from flash with kernel 4.9 and kernel 4.11: Marvell>> tftpboot 0x800000 C0A80802.img-4.9 [...] Marvell>> cp.l 0xf8400000 0xa00000 0x240000 Marvell>> setenv bootargs earlycon console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/ram initrd=0xa00000,0x900000 ramdisk=34816 coherent_pool=1M Marvell>> bootm 0x800000 ## Booting image at 00800000 ... Image Name: kernel 4.9.0-3-marvell Created: 2017-07-30 22:50:09 UTC Image Type: ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed) Data Size: 2056688 Bytes = 2 MB Load Address: 00008000 Entry Point: 00008000 Verifying Checksum ... OK OK Starting kernel ... Uncompressing Linux... done, booting the kernel. [ 0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0 [ 0.000000] Linux version 4.9.0-3-marvell (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 6.3.0 20170516 (Debian 6.3.0-18) ) #1 Debian 4.9.30-2+deb9u2 (2017-06-26) [...] [ 0.264506] Unpacking initramfs... [ 0.596114] Freeing initrd memory: 9216K (c0a00000 - c1300000) [...] (initramfs) ls -al /lib/modules/ total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 0 0 0 Jul 30 18:55 . drwxr-xr-x 7 0 0 0 Jul 30 18:55 .. drwxr-xr-x 3 0 0 0 Jul 30 18:55 4.11.0-0.bpo.1-marvell (initramfs) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Marvell>> tftpboot 0x800000 C0A80802.img-4.11-bpo [...] Marvell>> cp.l 0xf8400000 0xa00000 0x240000 Marvell>> setenv bootargs earlycon console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/ram initrd=0xa00000,0x900000 ramdisk=34816 coherent_pool=1M Marvell>> bootm 0x800000 ## Booting image at 00800000 ... Image Name: kernel 4.11.0-0.bpo.1-marvell Created: 2017-07-30 23:17:11 UTC Image Type: ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed) Data Size: 2076472 Bytes = 2 MB Load Address: 00008000 Entry Point: 00008000 Verifying Checksum ... OK OK Starting kernel ... Uncompressing Linux... done, booting the kernel. [ 0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0 [ 0.000000] Linux version 4.11.0-0.bpo.1-marvell (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 6.3.0 20170516 (Debian 6.3.0-18) ) #1 Debian 4.11.6-1~bpo9+1 (2017-07-09) [...] [ 0.267305] Unpacking initramfs... [ 0.270704] Initramfs unpacking failed: junk in compressed archive [ 0.304492] Freeing initrd memory: 9216K ------------------------------------------------------------------------ So it turns out that kernel 4.9 is able to unpack the initrd.img for kernel 4.11, while kernel 4.11 can NOT unpack the same initrd.img. Has the compression/format of initrd.img changed between kernels 4.9 and 4.11? Do the initramfs-tools need to be updated to create valid initrd.imgs for kernel 4.11? Maybe there was "only" a dependency missing when upgrading to kernel 4.11? How would I convert the "bad" initrd.img to the proper format that kernel 4.11 can decompress...?
