[syslinux] Problem booting from CF/SD cards and USB Flashdrives using syslinux

c.lee111 at gmail.com c.lee111 at gmail.com
Wed Aug 1 17:09:16 PDT 2007


On Wed, 1 Aug 2007, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

> c.lee111 at gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > 
> > I don't know about this. As you can see this CF card formatted under 
> > Windows 98se is a 1 gig card......
> > 
> > 
> >  Volume in drive A is 1-GIG      
> >  Volume Serial Number is 1EEA-2658
> >  Directory of A:\
> > 
> > COMMAND  COM        93,890  04-23-99 10:22p
> > 1-GIG    TXT             0  07-31-07 11:21p
> >          2 file(s)         93,890 bytes
> >          0 dir(s)   1,024,770,048 bytes free
> > 
> > And Linux Fdisk seems to see it as a dos-partitioned hardrive rather 
> > than a (super) floppy.
> > 
> > 
> > Disk /dev/sdb: 1025 MB, 1025482752 bytes
> > 62 heads, 15 sectors/track, 2153 cylinders
> > Units = cylinders of 930 * 512 = 476160 bytes
> > 
> >      Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
> >    /dev/sdb1   *         1      2154   1001447+   6  FAT16
> > 
> 
> This is kind of interesting.  The partition crosses the cylinder 1024 
> boundary, and yet has type 6.  This is plain unusable for MS-DOS, and 
> wrong for Win98SE (which would expect partition type e).  That normally 
> means the geometry is wrong, but that usually causes fdisk to complain.
> 
> 	-hpa
> 

Yea, fdisk did complain but I left that part out of the email.

Here's the whole fdisk dialogue........

[clee2 at moonshadow mystuff]$ su
Password:
[root at moonshadow mystuff]# /sbin/fdisk /dev/sdb

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 2153.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 1025 MB, 1025482752 bytes
62 heads, 15 sectors/track, 2153 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 930 * 512 = 476160 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *         1      2154   1001447+   6  FAT16

Command (m for help):q

Hope this helps

Chris





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