[syslinux] problems with 2880 linux floppy image

[Patty O'Reilly]

I referenced the syslinux.zytor web page to help create my
syslinux.cfg file. It looks something like the following:

label myimage
	kernel memdisk
	append initrd=myimage.img

My dhcp/tftp server are configured similar to the recommendations
found under pxelinux at syslinux.zytor.com.

The file myimage.img is a fat filesystem which contains vmlinuz,
initrd.img, and syslinux.cfg. I used syslinux to creat the boot
boot loader on the image file. The client simply hangs when it trys to
boot the image file. There are no error messages.

Does it matter whether you run syslinux on the filesystem before or
after it is populated? Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this?

Thanks,

--patty

 On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

> Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 15:31:57 -0800
> From: H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com>
> To: H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com>
> Cc: Patty O'Reilly <oreilly at qualcomm.com>, syslinux at zytor.com
> Subject: Re: [syslinux] problems with 2880 linux floppy image
>
> H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> > Patty O'Reilly wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> The client boots memdisk but fails to boot the 2880 floppy image. In
> >> fact, it also fails to boot the stock RH bootdisk.img which is 1440 K.
> >> The last message on the client is "Loading boot sector... booting..."
> >> and it hangs. I can tell from the output on the client's screen and
> >> network sniffing that the client receives the image and is aware of
> >> its size.
> >>
> >
> > You can't boot Linux using MEMDISK, since it wants to talk to the
> > hardware directly.
> >
>
> Actually, come to think of it, you should be able to boot a syslinux
> disk image with memdisk.  It's probably not a good idea, however... if
> nothing else you will lose those megabytes of memory.
>
> 	-hpa
>