[syslinux] Problems booting with SCSI CD (fwd)

[Theodore Kilgore]

Peter,

Okay, here are the exact error messages and what leads up to them:

-------------------------begin-------------------------

Adaptec AHA-2940 Ultra/Ultra w BIOS v.1.23
(c) 1996 adaptec, Inc. all rights Reserved.

Press <Ctrl> <A> for SCSI Select (TM) Utility!

* SCSI ID: LUN NUMBER #:# 0:0 - IBM-PCCO DGHS - Drive C: (80h)
  SCSI ID: LUN NUMBER #:# 5:0 - MATSHITA CD_ROM CR-506

(next line in box)
A BOOTABLE CD-ROM IS DETECTED IN YOUR CD-ROM DRIVE...

The boot sections on your bootable CD-ROM are:
0. DEFAULT ENTRY

* => "Plug and Play" peripheral -- SCSI ID auto-assigned

BIOS installed successfully!


ISOLINUX 1.67 2002-02-03 isolinux: Loading spec packet failed, trying to
wing it
...
isolinux: Failed to locate CD-ROM device; boot failed.

-----------------------end boot sequence; nothing further happens--------

Further remarks:

1. This was on a Gateway G6-200 Pentium Pro. Same thing happens on an IBM
300GL (model id number 1691) into which we put a SCSI card and CD from one
of the (older) Gateways because we wanted to stick that nice 18gig SCSI
hard drive in it.

2. both the Gateway and IBM have nice, functioning Linux on them which we
put on the hard way.

3. The CD which would not work on these machines is used routinely to do
installations on other machines, with IDE CD-ROM devices and functions
there without glitches.

4. Yes, I can try the "debugging" version if it comes to the need to do
that. Why not?

5. I have looked into the SCSI Select utility. It gives you lots of
options to change ID numbers and such, or at least acts like it does. But
I don't really know enough about SCSI (or ISOLINUX internals, either) to
figure out what might be relevant here.


6. I mentioned it already, but how difficult would it be to do a
one-floppy-then-go-directly-to-CD boot sequence? By passing exactly the
right magical parameter at the "Boot:" prompt, for example?

iThis option might be even better for some people like me who still have
to
deal with old crap hardware occasionally, which will not support booting
from CD. (Using just one floppy would beat hell out of having to use 6
floppies to get to the same point). Though, of course, it would not
directly solve the problem about the SCSI CD-ROM which IS supposed to
boot. So if you have any clever ideas about this, I would like to explore
it as an option, too.


On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

(cut)

>
> This means that the BIOS read the initial bootstrap off the CD, but that
> then it cannot get the BIOS to read anything else.

Could it be that, after the BIOS reads the initial bootstrap, then
ISOLINUX starts and thinks the CD is supposed to be somewhere else? I read
something about this in some post I was looking at last night, while
web-searching for information about the problem. But what I read about
this point was a little bit over my head.

(cut)
>
> The one thing you can do is burn a CD with isolinux/isolinux.bin
> replaced with isolinux/isolinux-debug.bin; see
> http://syslinux.zytor.com/iso.php for details on how you would have to
> use mkisofs.

Like I said, if it is not something obvious to you, then we can perhaps
get around to doing that.

Theodore Kilgore