[syslinux] extlinux and block loopbacks

[H. Peter Anvin]

branen salmon wrote:
> Hello--
> 
> I'm trying to use extlinux to make a bootable disk image, but I've hit
> a wall.  I've got a partitioned hard disk image with one ext2
> partition in it.  I've mounted the partition through a block loopback
> device (/dev/loop1 on the host) and chrooted into it in order to run
> extlinux.  Within the chroot environment, /etc/mtab says:
> 
>   /dev/hda1 / ext2 rw 0 0
> 
> ...and within the chroot, /dev/hda1 is a device node for the loopback.
> 
> But when I run extlinux, it complains:
> 
>   extlinux: cannot find device for path /boot
> 
> I'm confused.  I know that extlinux is reading /etc/mtab, and I know
> that the loopback node (/dev/hda1) works.  Furthermore, if I copy the
> entire disk image onto a USB keydrive, change the /dev/hda1 device
> node to point to the appropriate device, chroot, and run extlinux,
> everything goes happily.
> 
> Is there some intrinsic incompatibility between extlinux and the block
> loopback device?  I'm at a loss.
> 

Don't chroot, and it should work a lot better.

	-hpa