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

[Dag Wieers]

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote:

> Dag Wieers <dag at wieers.com> writes:
> 
> > I have the same behaviour. It freezes after booting DOS.
> 
> What do you have in your config.sys?

It's the latest image taken from the FreeDOS project page.


> The FreeDOS and MS-DOS cases might be completely different.  As I know
> from hard experience :-), the current FreeDOS himem.exe has some
> issues with memdisk (which will be fixed soon).

Ok, but I fear it may not work since every single OS has problems booting 
except Linux 2.2 and Linux 2.4.

These images are on my usbstick and I have tried them all using my 
usbstick. If I find the time later today I'll test them from my own system 
to see if that works.

	[root at emyn ~]# grep title /mnt/usbstick2/etc/grub.conf
	title Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 U1 dev-srv6
	title BG-Rescue v0.2.2
	title Bochs: DLX Linux
	title Bochs: FreeDOS
	title Bochs: Linux
	title Bochs: NetBSD
	title Bochs: OpenBSD
	title Bochs: PicoBSD
	title Bochs: PragmaLinux
	title Boot Everywhere v0.20r2
	title FreeDOS beta9rc3
	title FreeSCO v0.3.2
	title HAL91 v0.4.5
	title Injector v1.4
	title ivrescue v1.1.6
	title LanAid v2.30
	title Memtest86 v3.0
	title Memtest86+ v1.0
	title MSDOS v5.00
	title MSDOS v6.00
	title MSDOS v6.22
	title Netrix v0.8.23.2
	title Parted And Utilities Disk (PAUD) v1.0.3
	title PCDOS v7.1
	title PocketLinux v2.51f4
	title Red Hat 6.2 Gandalf
	title Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
	title Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 U1
	title Red Hat Fedora Core 1
	title Rescue Is Possible (RIP) v2.3
	title Sisela v0.3
	title SlimLinux v0.4.0
	title Tom's Root Boot v2.0.103
	title Trinux v0.890
	title Windows 95
	title Windows 95 B
	title Windows 98
	title Windows 98b
	title Windows 98 SE
	title Windows ME
	title syslinux
	title lilo

If you look inprevious postings I made a report booting every sinlge one 
of these on my thinkpad and only Linux kernel 2.2 and kernel 2.4 boot 
properly IIRC. The 2.0 had errors, recovered but couldn't use /dev/hda.

Which I think is the same problem for all the other OS's.


> But I also have reports that DOS 6.22 hangs on startup if it detects
> any "unusual" partitions on any of your drives.  I am not sure what
> qualifies as "unusual", exactly, but Linux partitions (for instance)
> will do it.

I'm convinced this is not a particular MSDOS 6.22 or FreeDOS bug. As I 
said I have no luck booting any of the non-Linux OS's.


> Do you have a copy of DOS 7 (Win9x) or DOS 8 (WinME) you might try?
> They are more forgiving of foreign OS partitions...

Well, I tried them before on the thinkpads. Here is the output on the 
eServer e325:

* MSDOS 6.22

        MEMDISK 2.08 2003_12_12  Copyright 2001-2003 H. Peter Anvin
        e820: 0000000000000000 0000000000099000 1
        e820: 0000000000090000 0000000000007000 2
        e820: 00000000000d4000 000000000002c000 2
        e820: 0000000000100000 00000000fbe70000 1
        e820: 00000000fbf70000 000000000000b000 3
        e820: 00000000fbf7b000 0000000000005000 4
        e820: 00000000fbf80000 0000000000080000 2
        e820: 00000000fec00000 0000000000000400 2
        e820: 00000000fee80000 0000000000001000 2
        e820: 00000000fff80000 0000000000080000 2
        e820: 0000000100000000 0000000000000000 1
        Ramdisk at 0x37f07000, length 0x000e800e
        gzip image: decompressed addr 0xfbe08000, len 0x00168000: ok
        command line:
        Disk is floppy, 1440 K, C/H/S = 80/2/18
        Total size needed = 1477 bytes, allocating 2K
        Old dos memory at 0x99000 (map says 0x99000), loading at 0x98800
        1588: 0xffff  15E801: 0x3c00 0xfae0
        INT 13 08: Success, count = 0, BPT = 0000=0000
        old: int13 = cf000825  int15 = f000f859
        new: int13 = 98800008  int15 = 98800272
        Loading boot sector... booting...
        Starting MS-DOS...


* Windows ME

        MEMDISK 2.08 2003_12_12  Copyright 2001-2003 H. Peter Anvin
        e820: 0000000000000000 0000000000099000 1
        e820: 0000000000090000 0000000000007000 2
        e820: 00000000000d4000 000000000002c000 2
        e820: 0000000000100000 00000000fbe70000 1
        e820: 00000000fbf70000 000000000000b000 3
        e820: 00000000fbf7b000 0000000000005000 4
        e820: 00000000fbf80000 0000000000080000 2
        e820: 00000000fec00000 0000000000000400 2
        e820: 00000000fee80000 0000000000001000 2
        e820: 00000000fff80000 0000000000080000 2
        e820: 0000000100000000 0000000000000000 1
        Ramdisk at 0x37f3c000, length 0x000b31c1
        gzip image: decompressed addr 0xfbe08000, len 0x00168000: ok
        command line:
        Disk is floppy, 1440 K, C/H/S = 80/2/18
        Total size needed = 1477 bytes, allocating 2K
        Old dos memory at 0x99000 (map says 0x99000), loading at 0x98800
        1588: 0xffff  15E801: 0x3c00 0xfae0
        INT 13 08: Success, count = 0, BPT = 0000=0000
        old: int13 = cf000825  int15 = f000f859
        new: int13 = 98800008  int15 = 98800272
        Loading boot sector... booting...


I wonder if I still have to copy this output because only the ramdisk 
location differs for every image (?) and the e820 output is different per 
architecture.

PS Has there ever been a success report booting DOS images via memdisk+USB ?

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