byte, rather than the number of permissible bytes (i.e. subtract one
from the value under the previous definition to get the value under
the new definition).

This avoids integer overflow on 64-bit kernels, where
bzhdr.initrd_addr_max may be 0xffffffffffffffff; under the old
behaviour we set mem_limit equal to initrd_addr_max+1, which meant it
ended up as zero.  Kernel loads would fail with ENOBUFS.