From 1 MB the 34 MB kernel ran across 8 MB, where OVMF keeps ACPI NVS
memory that outlives the firmware -- so it was overwritten on every
boot, after ExitBootServices. Firmware leaves its leftovers low; above
16 MB is where a machine is most reliably empty.
KERNPHYS in memlayout.h, and kernel.ld agreeing with it. Nothing else
named the old address. Under OVMF the range is now only boot-services
memory: staged, copied home after the firmware exits, no warning. Boots
as a CD and as a USB disk, 1 and 4 CPUs.
The 15 MB below the kernel is not given to the page allocator yet.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S1giNvrHTrPMPw7V6x1kQ4