[syslinux] Gigabyte motherboards and Syslinux

[Rodney Beede]

Rodney Beede wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 4:44 PM, H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
>   
>> Rodney Beede wrote:
>>     
>>> Perhaps something in the NTLDR boot loader on the BartPE usb key is
>>> also hard coded by the motherboard bios?  One possible attack avenue
>>> may be to load syslinux via the NT boot loader as a menu option.  It
>>> has an Award bios if that helps.
>>>
>>> I found the usbkeys.txt that discusses modifying the partition
>>> structure on the usb device so it more closely mimics a USB-ZIP
>>> device.  I believe BartPE uses this method of partition creation which
>>> may explain why it works.  I'll try doing that, booting in USB-ZIP,
>>> and see if it works.
>>>
>>>       
>> Ah, yes, I have seen this bug with Award BIOSes in the past.
>>
>> The workaround is to use a partition table with zipdrive geometry (64
>> heads, 32 sectors) and boot in USB-ZIP mode.  You might find the
>> mkdiskimage script from the Syslinux distribution useful.
>>
>>        -hpa
>>
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>>
>>     
>
>
> Sure enough that resolved the problem.  In fact I even selected
> "USB-HDD" instead of "USB-ZIP," and it still booted just fine.  I'm
> going to file a bug report with Gigabyte about that bios.
>   

I am happy to announce that Gigabyte has responded to my support ticket 
and fixed the buggy bios.  The F2B revision of the Award bios for the 
GA-MA790GP-DS4H motherboard works correctly with usb keys that have no 
partitions and are initialized with syslinux.  It also still works 
correctly with usb keys that have the special forth partition (usb-zip 
emulation).

Rodney Beede