[syslinux] Laptop+SDMMC+Extlinux+Memdisk+Floppy images=headaches

[Quinn Plattel]

I think this another bios/memdisk issue.  I have had this problem
since last year on only specific machines (mainly IBM Thinkpads).  If
I were you, I would try the latest grub4dos and use grub4dos's memdisk
way instead of syslinux's memdisk.  It works for me :-)

Quinn

On 10/31/06, Cristian Savu <jesse_blue7 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello syslinuxers
>
> I'm stuck with a scientific problem which gives me headaches:
>
> I have a laptop (Gateway MX3410) which has a SD memory card reader.
> Recently an interesting thought crossed my mind: why don't I setup
> a 2GB SD card as a harddrive and put some rescue tools on it.
> So I dug on the net and I came across the idea of using memdisk
> to boot floppy images without the need of a floppy drive.
> All references I found were about using ISOLINUX with MEMDISK.
> But personally I prefer EXTLINUX since it has more flexibility,
> given that it can use ext2 fs.
>
> So I installed an MBR on the SD card, then I installed an MBR loader
> with lilo (lilo -M /dev/sda). Then I used fdisk to create a partition
> and to make it active (primary partition). I then formatted the
> partition with mke2fs and ran extlinux to make it bootable.
> I copied on it a few floppy images (i.e. a sample dos boot disk,
> the bootitng floppy install disk, a win98 boot disk) and added the
> extlinux.conf file with the required sections like:
>
> label bootit
> kernel memdisk
> append initrd=bootit.img
>
> label boot98
> kernel memdisk
> append initrd=boot98.img
>
> label freedos
> kernel memdisk
> append initrd=freedos.img
>
> and I thought I would go on and try to see what happens...
>
> Well, pretty much nothing, and I really don't know what
> the problem is because all the floppy images seem to
> start booting a little, but then the system hangs.
> For instance, if I try to boot the MSDOS floppy,
> I get the message "Starting MS-DOS" and then the system
> just hangs.
>
> Actually, the full message is like this:
>
> some 12-13 lines like:
>
> e820: 00000000fff800000 0000000000000080000 2
>
> then:
>
> Ramdisk at 0x1bda8000, length 0x00168000
> command line: initrd=images/boot_flp.img floppy=0 BOOT_IMAGE=memdisk
> Disk is floppy 0, 1440 K, C/H/S = 80/2/18
> Total size needed = 2008 bytes, allocating 2K
> Old dos memory at 0x9dc00 (map says 0x9dc00), loading at 0x9d400
> 1588: 0xffff  15E801: 0x3c00 0x1ada
> INT 13 08: Success, count = 0, BPT = 0000:0000
> old: int13 = e8a87ab8  int15 = f000f859
> new: int13 = 9d400008  int15 = 92400290
> Loading boot sector... booting...
> Starting MS-DOS...
>
>
> and that's all folks, it never goes any further than this...
>
> Another example, the bootit floppy image also starts booting
> but it stops on a black screen with the mouse cursor on it.
> Interesting, the cursor can be moved with the touchpad, so
> something IS working, but not all the way to the end.
>
> For conformance I will mention that all images were made with
>  dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/path/to/image.img
> and they are valid because I copied them back to floppies and they
> booted fine from a FDD.
> I will also mention that the SD card is used in BIOS as a USB HDD
> and its boot order is before the IDE HDD.
> Also, I successfully managed to actually install bootit on the
> SD card just as on any HDD, I also made bootable partitions with
> DOS and Knoppix and they worked very fine, only this combination
> of extlinux and memdisk and bootable floppy images does not work.
> I also tried a FAT16 partition and isolinux and memdisk and the same
> floppy images, the result is the same, system hangs at boot.
>
> If someone could give me an advice or an indication, point out
> some mistake I might have made or simply make some comments,
> I would very much appreciate it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chris
>
>
>
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