[syslinux] Problems booting from cd

[Nazo]

On 5/4/06, Ian Leonard <ian at smallworld.cx> wrote:
> Nazo wrote:
> > On 5/4/06, Ian Leonard <ian at smallworld.cx> wrote:
> >> Arwin Vosselman wrote:
> >> > Hello,
> >> >
> >> > On Tue, 2 May 2006 16:11:33 -0500, Nazo wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> By the way, just so we get this question out of the way, have you
> >> >> tested different media?  This is a problem mainly with DVDs since
> >> >> today's burners still have considerably less burn quality than seems
> >> >> reasonable (especially the cheap ones, but, even some of the expensive
> >> >> ones really aren't as high quality as the price tag implies.
> >> >
> >> > A good rule of thumb hereto seems to be, never to burn at a higher
> >> > speed than half of the max. speed of the drive or of the rawling,
> >> > whichever figure is smaller.
> >> >
> >> > Example:
> >> >  drive: max. 48x
> >> >  rawling: max. 24x
> >> >  burn at 12x
> >>
> >> Okay, thanks for that. I have actually already tried burning at x4. I
> >> have also tried 3 different writers. Nothing helps.
> >>
> >> Currently I have one cd that will boot on 2 out of 7 machines. There is
> >> a mixture of motherboards, but these are machines that we use all the
> >> time and I haven't had any problems before.
> >>
> >> I have also tried yet more makes of cd (I think that's 6 types now).
> >>
> >> This is driving me insane.
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Ian Leonard
> >>
> >> Please ignore spelling and punctuation - I did.
> >>
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> >>
> >>
> >
> > Well, first of all, bear in mind that the name put on the top of the
> > CDR has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on what the CDR actually is.
> > Unfortunately, next to no one actually makes their own media, and the
> > quality control on which dyes are selected seems to be less than
> > satisfactory (in the DVD+-R field, this really shows and it's really
> > making people like me suffer.)
> >
> > That said, if you tried many different medias, then the issue is
> > probably not readability quality.  It sounds to me like something
> > subtle has indeed gotten changed.  Something which certain systems can
> > compensate for, but, others cannot.
> >
> > Again, could you post your mkisofs parameters for us?  Or, if you are
> > using another program, can you give us as many relevant settings as
> > possible?  I know it's a bit much, but, maybe you'll get lucky and
> > someone will spot something.  (Ok, probably not, but, it's worth a
> > shot isn't it?)
>
> I have just sent out a reply. Sorry for the seemingly double post. I
> thought I had saved a draft of the email prior to getting the mkisofs
> parameters - obviously pressed send instead.
>
> --
> Ian Leonard
>
> Please ignore spelling and punctuation - I did.
>

Can you try one on a rewritable witout the translation tables (-T) and
maybe even without the Rock-Ridge (just for testing)?  That's about
the only difference I see.  I do think that --no-emul-boot and
--boot-load-size 4 are probably just redundancies, but, with something
so sensitive relying on standards that BIOS manufacturers will never
100% support I would imagine that you should do all you can to help,
and including those probably wouldn't be a bad idea.  By the way,
which isolinux are you using?  I'm wondering if you should try using
the other one whichever it is (eg, if using debug, try standard, if
using standard, try debug.)  In the documentation Mr. Anvin recommends
using the debug version because it adds very little delay while having
the obvious advantage of adding the occasional debugging information,
so, in particular, if you're using the standard you should really try
the debug version and see if it gives you any info that could possibly
be useful.  Here's a suggestion.  If you have a floppy drive, place a
non-bootable disk in it, then set your BIOS to boot the floppy drive
before the CD-ROM.  This way you will be able to see any error
messages or whatever that may occur before any bootloaders on your
harddrive take over the screen since the bios will stop with some
error message informing you the disk isn't bootable and wait for
interaction.