[syslinux] memdisk : booting OpenBSD and NetBSD

[Benjamin Pineau]

Hi

On Mon, Apr 05, 2004 at 05:31:05PM -0500, ganapathy murali krishnan wrote:
> I had a similar problem (with OpenBSD). In my case, I couldn't even get 
> to the boot prompt.

Yes, it did the same for me until I used the -current (3.5) floppy image,
(that uses a new bootloader, the openbsd team is working on pxe etc.).

> My current work around (as suggested by somebody), is to tell ISOLinux 
> to boot the image use BIOS emulation.
> 
> i.e. "kernel floppy34.img" in your isolinux.cfg file or "floppy34.img" 
> on the boot prompt. This solves the problem.
> However if your machine has an older BIOS (and hence probably buggy) 
> then this may not help.

Hu... seems like that i may be a buggy-bios-man :(
Did I miss something ? what are the symptoms of a silly bios ?

I used (with syslinux 2.09-pre13):
--------isolinux/isolinux.cfg-----------
LABEL linux #this one works ok, but doesn't use bios emul
KERNEL /boot/linux 

LABEL fbsd
KERNEL /boot/boot.img

LABEL obsd
KERNEL /boot/obsd.img

LABEL nbsd
KERNEL /boot/rt.img

------- wc -c boot/*.img ---------------
2949120 boot/boot.img
1474560 boot/obsd.img
2949120 boot/rt.img

------- file boot/*.img ----------------
boot/boot.img: x86 boot sector, code offset 0x3c, reserved sectors 0, Media
	descriptor 0x0, reserved 0x16, dos < 4.0 BootSector (0x1f), 
	BSD disklabel
boot/obsd.img: x86 boot sector, code offset 0x3c, OEM-ID " OpenBSD",
	sectors/cluster 2, reserved sectors 0, Media descriptor 0xf8, hidden 
	sectors 16, serial number 0x0, label: "UNIX LABELU", BSD disklabel
boot/rt.img:   x86 boot sector

----------------------------------------
Phoenix 4 release 6.0 bios (from vmware 4.5.1)
(not listed in http://syslinux.zytor.com/hardware.php)
----------------------------------------
And got:

boot: obsd
Cannot load disk image (invalid file ?)
boot: nbsd
Cannot load disk image (invalid file ?)
boot: fbsd
Cannot load disk image (invalid file ?)



Anyway thanks for your help.

ben


ps: a more funny note: i tried to use a mini bootable openbsd cdrom 
(the std cdrom34.iso from ftp.openbsd.org, renamed to obsd.bin), this
was well loaded by isolinux, but gave me this nice and funky screen:
http://ben.zouh.org/bordel/isolinuxvmwbsd.png ;)