[syslinux] ISOLINUX boot problem: request for help

[Peter Bartke]

H. Peter Anvin schrieb am Sat, Jul 28, 2007 at 07:48:51PM -0700:
> Peter Bartke wrote:
> > H. Peter Anvin schrieb am Fri, Jul 27, 2007 at 07:25:00AM -0700:
> >> 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.
> > 
> > Please tell when you have got ideas for testing this case. 
> > 
> > What I am trying now: systematically playing with `mkisofs' options to
> > look for a bootable combination.
> 
> That is probably wise, especially the -sort option.
> 

I needed some time and changed the options of the mkisofs invocation in 
Tomas' make_iso.sh script, leaving all other factors the same,
especially I always reburnt with K3B the same brand (Sony) of CD:
 
mkisofs -o "$ISONAME" -v -J -R -D -A "$CDLABEL" -V "$CDLABEL" \
-no-emul-boot -boot-info-table -boot-load-size 4 \
-b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin -c boot/isolinux/isolinux.boot ../.

1) Leaving out -D and -J in any combination - no boot
2) I installed from source the newest alpha version of the cdrtools
    - and stumbled over all this mess with cdrecord/wodim. Then I 
   used mkisofs-2.01.01a31 from schily with the original options 
   - no boot.
3) I made file slsort 
      boot 2500
      slax 2000
      boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin 2900
      boot/isolinux/isolinux.boot 2890
      boot/isolinux/isolinux.cfg 2880
      boot/vmlinuz 2800
      boot/initrd.gz 2790
      slax/base/001-core.lzm 2690
      slax/base/002-apps.lzm 2680
      slax/base/003-network.lzm 2670
      slax/base/004-xorg.lzm 2660
      slax/base/005-xapdeps.lzm 2650
      slax/base/006-kde.lzm 2640
      slax/base/007-kdeapps.lzm 2630
      slax/base/008-office.lzm 2620
      slax/base/009-devel.lzm 2610
  and inserted option -sort slsort into the above command.
  To my opinion this should place the boot machinery contiguous to 
  the beginning of the track - no boot.

I am now on the edge giving up with this problem. The most probable
cause may be not finding the drive/file in stage 2 for uncompressing.
But I ran out of creative ideas. Perhaps tomorrow I try as a last 
resort a hardware change: swapping Master and Slave on IDE bus. Maybe
this has some effect on an eventually buggy BIOS. 

Peter