[syslinux] problems with 2880 linux floppy image

Patty O'Reilly oreilly at qualcomm.com
Sat Nov 1 12:29:32 PST 2003


Hi,

I'm using syslinux to boot Linux off a network server running tftpd
and dhcpd. The server is running RH 7.3 with syslinux version 2.06 and
pxe-0.1-31.99.7.3 installed from the rpm. I created a 2880 K floppy
image using syslinux and populated it with the Linux kernel images:
vmlinuz, and initrd.img (trimmed of some modules) from RH 9, also,
syslinux.cfg with kickstart information.

The client boots memdisk but fails to boot the 2880 floppy image. In
fact, it also fails to boot the stock RH bootdisk.img which is 1440 K.
The last message on the client is "Loading boot sector... booting..."
and it hangs. I can tell from the output on the client's screen and
network sniffing that the client receives the image and is aware of
its size.

When I break the floppy image file appart and put vmlinuz, initrd.img,
and syslinux.cfg directly into the /tftpboot directory, the client
boots. But I need to get the floppy image thing working for another
application.

Can you provide any pointers on what I might be doing wrong, or how I
can troubleshoot this more affectively?

Below are some listings on how I have things configured.

* contents of /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/syslinux.cfg (used for 3
different types of testing):

default diskimage-2880
prompt 1
timeout 40
label localboot
        localboot 0
label diskimage-1440
        kernel memdisk
        append initrd=images/boot1440.img
label diskimage-2880
        kernel memdisk
        append initrd=images/boot2880.img
label rh9-install
        kernel rh9-vmlinuz
        append ks=nfs:w.x.y.z:/export/ks.cfg initrd=rh9-initrd.img
network

* listing from /tftpboot/images:
-rwxrwxr-x    1 pattyo   pattyo    1474560 Oct 14 13:21 boot1440.img
-rwxrwxr-x    1 pattyo   pattyo    2949120 Oct 31 15:13 boot2880.img

* listing from /tftpboot:
drwxrwxr-x    3 root     sysadmin     4096 Oct 14 13:08 X86PC
drwxrwxr-x    2 root     sysadmin     4096 Oct 31 15:14 images
-rw-rw-r-x    1 root     sysadmin    23468 Oct 14 13:09 memdisk
-rw-rw-r-x    1 root     sysadmin    11304 Oct 14 13:09 pxelinux.0
drwxrwxr-x    2 root     sysadmin     4096 Oct 31 15:14 pxelinux.cfg
-rw-r--r-x    1 oreilly  users     1244593 Oct 24 13:12 rh9-initrd.img
-rwxrwxr-x    1 root     sysadmin   855693 Oct 23 16:46 rh9-vmlinuz
-rwxrwxr-x    1 root     sysadmin      263 Oct 28 13:05 syslinux.cfg

--patty



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