[syslinux] USB boot problems on Gigabyte GA-M55Plus-S3G

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <BLU0-SMTP286922092D88A4C62E4A95F8BB90 at phx.gbl>, 
Ady <ady-sf at hotmail.com> wrote:

>You posted in a recent email in this same email thread, about 
>successfully booting an ArchLinux USB. Among several differences in 
>comparison to your prior tests, you used a different USB drive.

Well, yes.  I probably should not have confused the issue with that
change, but for the record, I have no reason whatsoecer to even vaguely
suspect that any of the various USB stick I have here are in any way
defective.

>I have uploaded a gzipped image, to be expanded and dd'ed to the USB 
>drive that you were using for your former tests. This way you keep 
>your USB drive with ArchLinux available, and we can keep comparing 
>against your previous results.

I have no critical need for ArchLinux on a USB stick, so that is neither
here not there.  And in any case, I can always just dd it again to any
one of my many USB sticks as and when the need arises.

>Please avoid using Gparted or any other partitioning tool...

Oh you can bet that I *will* avoid using any such tools!

(That's part of why I was so insistant on getting images that I could
just dd to the USB stick(s)... far less chance for me to mess up the
process somehow, you know, on my end.)

>NAME: test.img.gz
>SIZE: 1'435'616 bytes
>MD5 : 07A4FFC69CA51CA24D43F793E9FE8529
>SHA1: 4845AB7D15994DA3EAD05DF39BDA8C4E96304328

Hope you don't mind too much.  I actually didn't bother to check the
checksums.

Anyway, I did fetch the file, unzipped it, and then dd'd "test.img" to
_both_ my 4GB Transcend _and_ also to my 8GB Patriot.    (I used bs=1m.
I assume that's OK.)

You will be happy to know that your test image _does_ appear to boot OK
on my GA-M55Plus-S3G, from either/both of my test sticks (4GB & 8GB).

Whatever magic you did, it seems to have worked.  (Please _don't_ go
into too much technical detail, but... in layman's terms... what did
you do?)

Here is what I got after booting from the 8GB Patriot:

    SYSLINUX 6.03 EDD 6.03-pre1 ...
    Hello, world, from 0x0037C210! malloc return 0x0037d850
    boot:

and then the cursor just sat blinking, in the second column following
the "boot:"

I assume this indicates success, yes?


Regards,
rfg


P.S.  Of course, during all of this experimentation, I have been messing
around a lot with the BIOS settings, but really only the ones relating to
specifying the general classes of boot devices (e.g. floppy, CD/DVD,
Hard Disk, USB-HDD, for 1st, 2nd, 3rd) and also the separate Boot Priority
list.

Because of my fiddling with those things, I was just slightly worried that
perhaps I had ... somewhere along the line... adjusted one of those BIOS
setting in a way that suddenly made _everything_ work, and that possibly
this could be the reason that various stuff... including ArchLinux,
Debian, and your test image... were booting OK now.  So just in case,
an without changing *any* settings, I went back to my original three
USB sticks that contain (1) Clonezilla and (2) Ultimate Boot CD, and
(3) OpenELEC to see if any of those would in fact boot now.

The answer is a resounding NO!  Those three still do not even want to
show up in this board's Boot Priority list.  And as tech support from
Gigabyte informed me awhile ago, if the thing doesn't show up in that
list then there is no way that the board is even going to try to boot
from the thing in question.

I am just relating these additional facts so that you'll be sure (as I
now am) that the non-booting problems on this board seem most definitely
*not* to be attributable to me just simply having goofed the BIOS settings
earlier on.  Translation:  There apparently *are* booting issues with
this board, some of which at least, cannot simply be attributed to an
RFG brain fart.  (For the record, I _have_ been known to have brain farts
from time to time, but this isn't one of them, I am relieved to say.)