[syslinux] Syslinux / Hard drive booting

Michael Blandford mlblandf at sedona.ch.intel.com
Fri Aug 8 12:21:24 PDT 2003


Hello,

We have been using syslinux to boot machines successfully for quite a 
while.  However, we now have a model of machine that just doesnt seem to 
work.

We are currently using syslinux/pxelinux 2.05 but have tried 2.03 as well

Here is the procedure we normally use.  This is typically fully unattended.

We boot a small linux distro using pxelinux.

Then we copy in mbr.bin from the syslinux package.
dd if=mbr.bin of=/dev/[hs]da bs=512 count=1

Then we fdisk the drive with a 64 meg partition, mformat it FAT16, set 
it active, bootable.

Then we run syslinux /dev/[hs]da1, copy in some boot files, syslinux.cfg 
and reboot.

The boot files may be a kernel/ramdisk, memdisk/floppy ( windows ), or 
DOS utilities to flash the bios, etc.

Upon reboot, the machine goes through its boot order and when it gets to 
hard drive, it just stops with a _ in the top left corner.  This is 
similar to what you get by just putting in a raw disk.

The machine in question is an IBM 6850.

If I move that disk built on the 6850 into another model, it will boot.

If I make the disk on another computer and bring it back the the 6850, 
it will boot.  Very strange.

I just cant seem to build it and boot it on the 6850.

When we boot linux on the 6850 and a different model, the drive 
sectors/heads/etc look the same.  We thought it might be some LBA issue 
or something like that.  It is a 40 gig IDE disk.

Any ideas on what we can try to debug this?  It has been stumping us for 
a week.

Michael






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