[syslinux] Booting with extlinux ?!?

[Luciano Miguel Ferreira Rocha]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 03:25:08PM +0100, Rory Vieira wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm unable to utilize extlinux properly. I must be doing something wrong:
> 
> Clear entire hdd:
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/devv/hda bs=1M

You've cleared the MBR. You then need to recreate the partitions and
install an OS loader.

> Creating single active partition...:
> fdisk /dev/hda

Did you make it active?

> 
> Formatting the partition...:
> mkfs.ext2 /dev/hda1
> 
> Mount it:
> mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hd
> 
> Install extlinux:
> extlinux -i /mnt/hd
> 
> reboot machine and force it to boot from the hdd...
> "Booting from harddisk..." and then nothing... it just hangs there...
> 
> What I also tried so far:
> 
> dd if=extlinux.bss of=/dev/hda bs=1
> Didn't do much either...

You need to write the mbr.bin, not extlinux.bss.

> 
> dd if=dos.bss of=/dev/hda bs=1
> original dos boot sector created using dos "FDISK /MBR", going to
> linux and dd'ing the first 512 bytes to dos.bss :)
> But this didn't help either...

Is it the same harddisk in both cases? If not, you've just wiped the
partition table. Anyway, don't forget to put the partition you want to
boot (and only that one) active.

-- 
lfr
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