[syslinux] Fw: syslinux with flash discs?

[David E. Weekly]

Johan accidentally wrote me personally with the following email, which I
thought would be better intended for the syslinux list. Replies to *Johan*
please. :)

-d

----- Original Message -----
From: "Johan Winäs" <johan.winas at isg.se>
To: <david at weekly.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 2:33 AM
Subject: syslinux with flash discs?


> Hi..
>
> Just tried out syslinux and isolinux. Isolinux works great, just perfect.
> But with syslinux I have some problems, it wont boot.
>
> The media I'm using is a IDE flash disc,
> Company called Feiya makes them, it,s 128Mb large and fits directly into
the
> IDE slot on the mainboard.
>
> >From my tests, the only filmsystem that will run on these are msdos, wich
is
> wy I have used ms-dos and loadlin before.
> What happens is that syslinux displays it,s boot prompt, and then loads
the
> kernel.
> Says : Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.
> And the system hangs, not even "num-lock" works on the keyboard.
> I have tried it with and without initrd, same result.
> -s option dosent make any difference.
>
> I got one of the machines to boot once.
> I copied the kernel to the disc once again, with a new name so I have two
> kernels on the dos disc. I added that kernel to the syslinux.cfg, and
tried
> that one, and it worked.
> I tried this again on the second flash disc I need this one, dident work.
> So it seams to be some kind of read error to me, but it manage to
uncompress
> the kernel, so thats strange.
>
> I have two computers that I test on.
> first: A industrial PC. Lanner IAC-688 cpu card with I815 chipset and a
> passive backplane.
> a celeron 800 cpu with 256Mb ram.
> second: a Aopen AX6BCpro mainboard with a celeron 366 cpu and 196Mb ram
>
> I use Isolinux on both machines, with the same kernel and initrd image,
and
> that works just fine.
>
> My use for this is in a projekt.
> First project where I use Isoliunx now, is a harddisc recorder for mpeg2
> video. It boots from the CD and loads into ram, and then keeps the config
> mirrored over the harddisc that keep the video storage.
> Second project: a system that does video analyzing in industrial
> environment, where I need a flash disc to boot from, wich load the kernel
> and initrd to ram. And then keep the /etc catalog in an image file on the
> flash disc itself.
> I dont know if this qualify for a "distribution" but it,s more an
> installation. Havent installed any of the systemt, but when I do, I realy
> plan to send you some kind of donation, this has realy helped me along
with
> the Isolinux, and maybe even the syslinux.
>
> /Johan
>