[syslinux] Bug-report: Booting DOS images from USB

Tue Jan 20 07:49:32 PST 2004

Hi,

I'm doing a small hobby project writing some tools to put DOS boot images 
and Linux rescue images on a USB stick.

For this I have partitioned my USB stick in 2 partitions, one 192MB 
partition with a VFAT filesystem (for the normal use) and a second 
partition with an ext3 filesystem.

My aim was to provide a graphical menu (grub) to access the different 
images using memdisk. Since none of the DOS images would load using 
grub+memdisk (and I tried MSDOS, PCDOS and FreeDOS), I tried with lilo too 
and finally with syslinux (the intended usage).

With both grub and lilo DOS just freezes without any output, 
FreeDOS and PCDOS with some output, but no output to why it crashes.

Now that I added syslinux to my first VFAT partition, I get some more 
output, and that's why I'm doing this bugreport ;)

I fear this is a bug in memdisk when booting from USB devices. It would be 
nice if this could work.

The setup (for testing-purposes) is like this:

	/dev/sda 	->	lilo
	/dev/sda1	->	syslinux (vfat)
	/dev/sda2	->	grub (ext3)

The software used is:

	syslinux 1.08
	memdisk 1.08
	grub 0.93
	lilo 21.4.4

The DOS images:

	FreeDOS 1.1.32a boot disk
	IBM LanAID (PCDOS) boot disk
	IBM PCDOS 7.1 boot disk
	Windows 95 boot disk
	Windows 98 boot disk

The output I get for the different DOS images is as follows:

*	FreeDOS: (what I have on the screen!):

	e820: 000000001ff80000 0000000000080000 2
	e820: 00000000ff800000 0000000000400000 2
	e820: 00000000ffc00000 0000000000400000 2
	Ramdisk at 0x1fdf0000, length 0x00168000
	command line: initrd=freedos.img BOOT_IMAGE=memdisk.zi
	Disk is floppy, 1440 K, C/H/S = 80/2/18
	Total size needed = 1494 bytes, allocating 2K
	Old dos memory at 0x9f000 (map says 0x9f000), loading at 0x9e800
	1588: 0xffff  15E801: 0x3c00 0x1edf
	INT 13 08: Success, count = 1, BPT = f000:8ccd
	old: int13 = f00066ea  int15 = f00066ef
	new: int13 = 9e800008  int15 = 9e800272
	Loading boot sector... booting...
	FreeDOS kernel version 1.1.32a (Building 2032a) [Sep 24 2003 21:58:48]
	Kernel compatibility 7.10 - WATCOMC - FAT32 support

	(C) Copyright 1995-2003 Pasquale J. Villani and The FreeDOS Project.
	All Rights Reserved. This is free software and ....ladadi ladada
	....
	either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
	 - InitDisk
	Interrupt devide by zero, stack:
	E159 0652 0212 0022 3636 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

*	IBM LanAID (PCDOS) boot disk:

	MEMDISK 2.08 2003-12-12  Copyright 2001-2003 H. Peter Anvin
	e820: 0000000000000000 000000000009f000 1
	e820: 000000000009f000 0000000000010000 2
	e820: 00000000000d2000 0000000000020000 2
	e820: 00000000000dc000 0000000000240000 2
	e820: 0000000000100000 00000001fe600000 1
	e820: 000000001ff60000 00000000001a0000 3
	e820: 000000001ff7a000 0000000000020000 4
	e820: 000000001ff7c000 0000000000040000 2
	e820: 000000001ff80000 0000000000800000 2
	e820: 00000000ff800000 0000000000400000 2
	e820: 00000000ffc00000 0000000000400000 2
	Ramdisk at 0x1fdf0000, length 0x00168000
	command line: initrd=lanaid.img BOOT_IMAGE=memdisk.zi
	Disk is floppy, 1440 K, C/H/S = 80/2/18
	Total size needed = 1493 bytes, allocating 2K
	Old dos memory at 0x9f000 (map says 0x9f000), loading at 0x9e800
	1588: 0xffff  15E801: 0x3c00 0x1edf
	INT 13 08: Success, count = 1, BPT = f000:8ccd
	old: int13 = f00066ea  int15 = f00066ef
	new: int13 = 9e800008  int15 = 9e800272
	Loading boot sector... booting...
	Starting PC DOS...

	_

*	PC DOS 7.1 boot disk (What I have on the screen):

	e820: 000000000009f000 0000000000010000 2
	e820: 00000000000d2000 0000000000020000 2
	e820: 00000000000dc000 0000000000240000 2
	e820: 0000000000100000 00000001fe600000 1
	e820: 000000001ff60000 00000000001a0000 3
	e820: 000000001ff7a000 0000000000020000 4
	e820: 000000001ff7c000 0000000000040000 2
	e820: 000000001ff80000 0000000000800000 2
	e820: 00000000ff800000 0000000000400000 2
	e820: 00000000ffc00000 0000000000400000 2
	Ramdisk at 0x1fec6000, length 0x0008905c
	Moving compressed data from 0x1fec6000 to 0x1fc06e00
	gzip image: decompressed addr 0x1fc90000, len 0x002d0000: ok
	command line:
	Disk is floppy, 2880 K, C/H/S = 80/2/36
	Total size needed = 1441 bytes, allocating 2K
	Old dos memory at 0x9f000 (map says 0x9f000), loading at 0x9e800
	1588: 0xffff  15E801: 0x3c00 0x1ec9
	INT 13 08: Success, count = 1, BPT = f000:8ccd
	old: int13 = f00066ea  int15 = f00066ef
	new: int13 = 9e800008  int15 = 9e800272
	Loading boot sector... booting...
	Starting PC DOS...

	_

*	Windows 95 boot disk

	Loading win95.img.........................
	Ready.
	MEMDISK 2.08 2003-12-12  Copyright 2001-2003 H. Peter Anvin
	e820: 0000000000000000 000000000009f000 1
	e820: 000000000009f000 0000000000010000 2
	e820: 00000000000d2000 0000000000020000 2
	e820: 00000000000dc000 0000000000240000 2
	e820: 0000000000100000 00000001fe600000 1
	e820: 000000001ff60000 00000000001a0000 3
	e820: 000000001ff7a000 0000000000020000 4
	e820: 000000001ff7c000 0000000000040000 2
	e820: 000000001ff80000 0000000000800000 2
	e820: 00000000ff800000 0000000000400000 2
	e820: 00000000ffc00000 0000000000400000 2
	Ramdisk at 0x1fdf0000, length 0x00168000
	command line: BOOT_IMAGE=memdisk.zi initrd=win95.img
	Disk is floppy, 1440 K, C/H/S = 80/2/18
	Total size needed = 1491 bytes, allocating 2K
	Old dos memory at 0x9f000 (map says 0x9f000), loading at 0x9e800
	1588: 0xffff  15E801: 0x3c00 0x1edf
	INT 13 08: Success, count = 1, BPT = f000:8ccd
	old: int13 = f00066ea  int15 = f00066ef
	new: int13 = 9e800008  int15 = 9e800272
	Loading boot sector... booting...
	_

*	Windows 98 boot disk:

	Loading win98.img.........................
	Ready.
	MEMDISK 2.08 2003-12-12  Copyright 2001-2003 H. Peter Anvin
	e820: 0000000000000000 000000000009f000 1
	e820: 000000000009f000 0000000000010000 2
	e820: 00000000000d2000 0000000000020000 2
	e820: 00000000000dc000 0000000000240000 2
	e820: 0000000000100000 00000001fe600000 1
	e820: 000000001ff60000 00000000001a0000 3
	e820: 000000001ff7a000 0000000000020000 4
	e820: 000000001ff7c000 0000000000040000 2
	e820: 000000001ff80000 0000000000800000 2
	e820: 00000000ff800000 0000000000400000 2
	e820: 00000000ffc00000 0000000000400000 2
	Ramdisk at 0x1fdf0000, length 0x00168000
	command line: BOOT_IMAGE=memdisk.zi initrd=win98.img
	Disk is floppy, 1440 K, C/H/S = 80/2/18
	Total size needed = 1491 bytes, allocating 2K
	Old dos memory at 0x9f000 (map says 0x9f000), loading at 0x9e800
	1588: 0xffff  15E801: 0x3c00 0x1edf
	INT 13 08: Success, count = 1, BPT = f000:8ccd
	old: int13 = f00066ea  int15 = f00066ef
	new: int13 = 9e800008  int15 = 9e800272
	Loading boot sector... booting...
	_

I have the same problems when booting memdisk via grub or lilo.
The only noticeable difference between syslinux and grub/lilo is that when 
booting FreeDOS with syslinux I get a division-by-zero error 
and a stack-trace.

Any help would be appreciated, if needed I can send the different 
configuration files and/or the commands I ran to install the bootloaders.

Thanks in advance,
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]