[syslinux] Problem with memdisk and DOS on USB

Jérôme Poulin jeromepoulin at gmail.com
Fri Jan 11 06:42:57 PST 2008


Sorry for the delayed response, I though delay were longuer than that
and went to sleep, thanks for the fast response.
I just tried with syslinux with the same results, here is a listing
now that I have two computers to proceed:

After some confusion with forgetting to use 8.3 names, I finally typed:
syslinux: /memdisk safeint initrd=/dos622.img

It started...
Ramdisk at 0x3f5000000
command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/memdisk safeint initrd=/dos622.img
Disk is floppy 0, 1440 K, C/H/S = 80/2/18, EDD off
Using safe INT 15h access to high memory
Total size needed = 2459 bytes, allocating 3K
Old dos memory at 0x9f000 (map saus 0x9f000), loading at 0x9e400
1588: 0xffff 15E801: 0x3c00 0x3e50
INT 13 08: Success, count = 2, BPT = 9f00:0614
old: int13 = 9f00000a  int15 = 9f00037c
new: int13 = 9e40000a  int15 = 9e40037c
Loading boot sector... booting...

Non-System disk or disk error
Replace and press any key when ready

To setup syslinux I used:
dd if=/dev/sdb of=usb-backup.img bs=1M count=1 # Backed up the old
boot sector and more
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb/lexar/p1
cat /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.img
syslinux /dev/sdb1
umount /mnt/usb/lexar/p1
reboot

I hate DOS :)
Thanks for your help again!

On Jan 11, 2008 5:40 AM, Ferenc Wagner <wferi at niif.hu> wrote:
> "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa at zytor.com> writes:
>
> > H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> >> Jérôme Poulin wrote:
> >>> I would like to add that for every image I tried, I tried to use
> >>> safeint, raw and bigraw, and after hours of trying, I'm giving up. I
> >>> also tried loading it from GRUB Legacy, with the same results. Is it
> >>> my Laptop's BIOS (HP NX6310), USB boot, any idea?
> >>
> >> Have you tried using syslinux?  I really don't have time to second-guess
> >> all the bugs in Grub.
> >
> > That being said, I think what you're seeing is an interaction between
> > your laptop's USB BIOS and memdisk, but I don't know for sure.
>
> I guess it may be the same problem I hit recently and posted to the
> list with subject 'memdisk boot failure'.  I still have this problem
> and started to suspect it's some kind of geometry problem.  Booting in
> QEMU gives me a couple of warnings in the FreeDOS (1.1.35, build
> 2035b-cvs) InitDisk phase:
>
>  - InitDiskWARNING: using suspect partition Pri:1 FS 06: with calculated values
>   0-0-50 instead of    0-1-1
> WARNING: using suspect partition Pri:1 FS 06: with calculated values  990-31-63
> instead of 1023-23-49
> C: HD1, Pri[ 1], CHS=    0-0-50, start=     0 MB, size=  1950 MB
>
> fdisk on the pendrive gives:
>
>    Disk /dev/sda: 2045 MB, 2045247488 bytes
>    24 heads, 49 sectors/track, 3396 cylinders
>    Units = cylinders of 1176 * 512 = 602112 bytes
>
>       Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
>    /dev/sda1   *           1        3396     1996823+   6  FAT16
>
> I tried changing the partition Id to 0e, but that didn't help.
>
> minfo from mtools prints this:
>
>    device information:
>    ===================
>    filename="/dev/sda1"
>    sectors per track: 49
>    heads: 24
>    cylinders: 3396
>
>    mformat command line: mformat -t 3396 -h 24 -s 49 -H 49 u:
>
>    bootsector information
>    ======================
>    banner:"MTOOL399"
>    sector size: 512 bytes
>    cluster size: 64 sectors
>    reserved (boot) sectors: 1
>    fats: 2
>    max available root directory slots: 512
>    small size: 0 sectors
>    media descriptor byte: 0xf8
>    sectors per fat: 244
>    sectors per track: 49
>    heads: 24
>    hidden sectors: 49
>    big size: 3993647 sectors
>    physical drive id: 0x0
>    reserved=0x0
>    dos4=0x29
>    serial number: 6766C6CC
>    disk label="NO NAME    "
>    disk type="FAT16   "
>
> I booted Finnix (small live Linux distro) from the same pendrive,
> modprobed edd and checked the int13 info under /sys/firmware/edd.  The
> default values were 1024/16/63 and the legacy maximums 1023/15/63.
> This last piece is the only info which is specific to my BIOS, which
> simply freezes booting FreeDOS after printing InitDisk.
>
> I will try booting under other BIOSes as I get to it, but maybe you
> can find something in the haystack above.  Perhaps it's not even a
> memdisk but a DOS bug, which loops encountering some strange artifical
> geometry...  I don't know.
> --
> Regards,
> Feri.
>
>
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