[syslinux] ISOLINUX boot problem: request for help

Duke McAllister mr-roboto at linuxmail.org
Sun Jul 29 10:39:01 PDT 2007


> Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 07:25:00 -0700
> From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa at zytor.com>
> Subject: Re: [syslinux] ISOLINUX boot problem: request for help
> To: For discussion of SYSLINUX and tftp-hpa <syslinux at zytor.com>
> Message-ID: <46AA003C.7030203 at zytor.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> Peter Bartke wrote:
> >
> > Remember, I installed on this computer SUSE 9.3/10.1/10.2, the first two
> > by DVD, the last by 5 openSuSE CDs, Slackware 11/Slackware 12 were
> > installed by 3 CD's. The Slax Distribution 5.1.8 Live CD starts without
> > problems. Only Slax 6.0RC4 and Slax 6.0RC5 showed this problem. Thus I
> > discussed it first on the Slax forum with main developer Tomas. Finally
> > I came here. After analyzing I can only suspect a combination of
> > isolinux.bin and kernel 2.6.21.5 guilty. This very kernel boots
> > perfectly by Grub from disk!
> 
> It probably isn't the kernel so much as the exact alignment mkisofs ends
> up using to put it on the CD, i.e. it depends mostly on other files.
> This has been reported a number of times; I just haven't found a
> workaround for it.  It's a massive problem that the BIOS doesn't report
> an error, but instead fail silently.  This makes it very, very hard for
> ISOLINUX to know that a workaround is needed.
> 
> Since you happen to have a very reproducible case even when isolinux.bin
> is changed, this might be very valuable.  I'm about to embark a plane,
> but I will think about what kind of workarounds could possibly help.
> 
> 	-hpa
> 
> 

Gentlemen:  I have extensive experience using ISOLINUX and all rec 
versions of Slax (incl Slax-6-RC5) and have never had a single 
"phantom" problem w/ the pair.  In fact, I just made my 1st RC5 disc 
on Fri and it worked flawlessly, as expected.

When things don't work, they're usu attributable to a couple of things:

1)  the -boot-info-table option:  the absence of this cmd-line option 
can cause discs to work fine on one PC and fail in bizarre (ie. different) 
ways on other PCs.  Personally, I use a commercial GUI program (in Windows) 
for creating my ISOs, but K3B is available, esp if you remaster on a PC 
that has more than one optical drive (one to boot with, one to burn with.)  
Actually, one could use the version of K3B under RC5 to create an ISO or 
burn directly to disc.  Moreover, the make_iso script provided on the 
Slax CD definitely works.

2)  single-session CDs:  Bec Slax is relatively small and bec I've 
extended other CD projects using multiple sessions, I "thought" this mite 
be possible w/ Slax.  No.  One must close (finalize) -boot-info-table 
discs for them to work reliably on multiple PCs.  Have wasted many CD-Rs 
in pursuit of this goal and it's simply too unreliable, so I would strongly 
discourage this practice.  The final straw for me was when I tried a newly 
burned-remastered RC3 (also open) disc on a client's PC.  Had been working 
on everything else, but the open RC3 disc failed immed trying to load the 
kernel and dropped rite back to the 'boot:' prompt.

3)  no CD-RWs:  After doing this sort of thing for several years and having 
noticed a reference to this in one of your replies:  NO CD-RWs !  
If you need test a remastered live CD project, use QEMU, Virtual Box, or 
VMWare.  You can also use the 'from=' parameter to load the contents of your 
custom filesystem (ie. /boot and /slax) from a sub-dir on your hdrive (eg. 
/mnt/hda1/rc5), then boot using something like 'from=/mnt/hda1/rc5' appended 
to the ISOLINUX cmd-line.

I've made literally dozens of bootable CDs/DVDs using ISOLINUX as the sole 
bootloader, in the past year and most incorporate Slax 5 or 6.  I've even 
started a discussion forum on the subj called Super-Disc: 
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=94398

In theory, this issue could represent the emergence of a new BIOS 
incompatibility, but one mite consider these factors first.

Hope this helps....


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