[syslinux] ISOLINUX boot problem: request for help

[Peter Bartke]

H. Peter Anvin schrieb am Thu, Jul 26, 2007 at 12:30:21PM -0700:
> Peter Bartke wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I am trying to track down a ISOLINUX boot problem on my workhorse computer.
> > Booting  slax-6.0.0-rc5.iso from www.slax.org (a live distro) from CD gives the
> > following messages:
> > 
> > Loading /boot/vmlinuz ...........
> > Loading /boot/initrd.gz ............
> > Ready.
> > _
> > 
> > Silence. The next message should be, but does not appear:
> > Uncompressing Linux ...........
> > This message appears with the same CD on an old Pentium III, so the CD is not
> > broken, it boots perfectly on the old PC.  I discussed the problem on the Slax
> > forum but I seem to be the only one with this problem. 
> 
> You are aware that burnable CDs don't necessarily "work" or "not work";
> it's fairly common for them to be marginal so that they work in some
> machines, but not others, right?

Ok, but I burnt at least 5 different CDs with different isolinux.bin, so
probability theory would help me :-)

> 
> Since you can boot the offending machine, I would try to dd the CD to an
> image *on the failing machine* and compare it to the raw image.  That
> doesn't necessarily imply things are hunky-dory, but it's something.
> 

OK, I'll check that.

> > The computer is a P4 on ASUS P5GD2, 1GB RAM, AMI BIOS, 3 SATA disks, DVD-ROM,
> > CD-RW.  It _successfully_ boots from disk several SuSE distros, Slackware 12
> > and the unchanged content of the incriminated CD, written to an empty
> > partition, with the following GRUB-menu.lst entry:
> > 
> > title Slax 6.0 RC5
> >     root (hd1,5)
> >     kernel (hd1,5)/boot/vmlinuz init=linuxrc vga=0x31a splash=verbose \
> >            load_ramdisk=1 ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0  rw 
> >     initrd (hd1,5)/boot/initrd.gz
> > 
> > So I know the kernel on the failing CD is bootable. The corresponding
> > isolinux.cfg entry on the CD is
> > 
> >   LABEL slax
> >   MENU LABEL Slax Text mode
> >   KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
> >   APPEND vga=normal initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw
> > 
> > I tried isolinux.bin from three versions of syslinux, including the newest. I
> > tried to get more info by running isolinux-debug.bin from syslinux-3.51,
> > resulting in permanently the same messages (see above) and a boot stall
> > afterwards.
> > 
> > I would very much appreciate any hints how to proceed further isolating the
> > cause of the failure.
> 
> What it looks like to me is that ISOLINUX reads the data in question,
> but gets corruption from the BIOS.  What kernel version are you trying
> to boot?

I'm also suspicious of the BIOS of the ASUS P5GD2 board. 
This is the output of `lshw':
          description: BIOS
          vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
          physical id: 0
          version: 1005.009 (02/03/2005)
          size: 64KB
          capacity: 448KB
          capabilities: isa pci pnp apm upgrade shadowing escd cdboot
bootselect socketedrom edd int13floppy1200 int13floppy720
int13floppy2880 int5printscreen int9keyboard int14serial int17printer
int10video acpi usb agp ls120boot zipboot biosbootspecification

The Kernel is 2.6.21.5. slax-6.0.0-rc5.iso with this kernel apparently 
boots for a lot of people.

The first lines of the successful boot form harddisk are:

Jul 25 20:41:01 ravel kernel: Linux version 2.6.21.5-smp (root at midas)
(gcc version 4.1.2) #2 SMP Tue Jun 19 14:58:11 CDT 2007
Jul 25 20:41:01 ravel kernel: BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
Jul 25 20:41:01 ravel kernel: 127MB HIGHMEM available.
Jul 25 20:41:01 ravel kernel: 896MB LOWMEM available.
Jul 25 20:41:01 ravel kernel: found SMP MP-table at 000ff780

Could there lurk a memory fragmentation problem as in ancient ages?

> 
> 	-hpa
> 

Peter
> _______________________________________________
> SYSLINUX mailing list
> Submissions to SYSLINUX at zytor.com
> Unsubscribe or set options at:
> http://www.zytor.com/mailman/listinfo/syslinux
> Please do not send private replies to mailing list traffic.
>