[syslinux] Failure to boot isohybrid image from USB stick

[Gene Cumm]

I appologize for the delay but I figure it's better to at least give
this information out.

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 4:42 PM, Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup at gmx.net> wrote:
> What i want to test is an ISO image that is (except
> the random $id) a byte-by-byte copy of an image that
> is proven to have booted on some system.
>
>
> The other significant test would be if somebody could
> successfully boot from USB stick.
>  http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/RIPLinux-7.2-non-X.iso
> E.g. copied to /dev/sdb by
>
>  dd if=RIPLinux-7.2-non-X.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
>
> (This overwrites partitioning and filesystem on the stick)

I found a spare 1GB USB "Thumb" drive (specifically, a Kingston Data
Traveler DTI/1GB; USB ID 13FE:1D00).  Running the above command using
RIPLinuX-7.2.iso worked with no trouble at all on one of my systems
(Dell Latitude D630 BIOS A12).  I did manually select to boot from
this (but this should not have any bearing on the ability of the
system).  I then tried RIPLinux-7.2-non-X.iso with the USB
automatically in the list (and used before the HDD) and had equal
results.

Just as a side reference, I've seen issues with certain BIOS revisions
in PXELinux with local booting versus chain loading.  LocalBoot would
work but adds an extra 1-3 seconds but using chain.c32 with hd0
wouldn't work.  These were resolved by upgrading to the current BIOS,
thereby upgrading the MBA (3Com onboard cards).

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 1:02 PM, Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup at gmx.net> wrote:
> At least with the BIOS in question it seems
> to be about isohybrid, not about hardware
> detection. (Although unpacking RIP's archive
> lasts about 10 minutes which is absolutely
> not normal. USB hardware is 2.0. Shrug.)

Load time for RIPLinuX-7.2 of less than 13 seconds on the above system
(about 85 MiB, around 7MB/s).  Based on what Sergey Vlasov
<vsu at altlinux.ru> said, and the comparison of performance, he's
probably right that it's performing like a 1.5Mbps (Low speed) or
12Mbps (Full Speed) USB system and not the 480Mbps of a High Speed
system(USB 2.0).  I normally get 10-30 seconds off of a CD and closer
to 2 - 5 seconds in a VM (using a disk-backed virtual CD).

Testing this same drive on an older desktop (Dell OptiPlex GX260 BIOS
A09; Oldest system I have on hand that I know can USB Boot; Also is
USB 2.0) takes 195 seconds (3 minutes 15 seconds) total to load with
the kernel loaded in about 7 seconds.  This is around 500 kB/s, about
half of what a 12Mbps system should be capable of.

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 2:35 PM, Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup at gmx.net> wrote:
> Will it suffice to replace /boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin
> in the RIP-7.0 image or will i have to learn how
> to build own bootable systems ?
> (What's the best quick guide for dummie programmers ?)

Kent Robotti makes creating an altered disk very easy.
CD:boot/mkiso.sh however it only tries to use mkisofs from cdrecord.
I've modified it (for myself) to detect and use mkisofs but then fail
over to trying genisoimage and using it if detected.