[syslinux] extlinux geometry issue

[H. Peter Anvin]

Dick wrote:
> I hope this issue can be fixed or someone could tell me what I'm doing
> wrong.

What you're doing wrong?  Using a broken BIOS and complaining here
rather than to your vendor.

> I finally found out how to fix this issue, by entering the correct
> values for --sectors and --heads when installing extlinux.
> So by using the default settings it froze my BIOS, and now it works by
> using the values from "fdisk -l" (which are: 253 heads, 62
> sectors/track)

Your partition table has bizarre geometry, and the BIOS is probably
obtaining the geometry from the partition table.  That's all fine and
good; the problem is that it then doesn't report then correct geometry
when Syslinux asks "what's your geometry"?  In fact, the fact that
--sectors and --heads worked when used indicates that the geometry query
BIOS call in fact just returns an error.

I generally recommend using zipdrive geometry (64 heads, 32 sectors) for
USB sticks -- it works on a few systems which are otherwise broken.
This should be used for fdisk as well as extlinux.

	-hpa

-- 
H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center
I work for Intel.  I don't speak on their behalf.