[syslinux] USB bootable (using syslinux)

Agostinho Carvalho agostinho.df.carvalho at hotmail.com
Mon Jul 20 12:01:10 PDT 2009


> Zipdrives traditionally used partition 4.
> 
> 	-hpa
> 

Hello

I used partition 4 because it's recommend in doc/usbkey.txt, where it says:

The proper mode to boot a USB key drive in is "USB-HDD".  That is the
ONLY mode in which the C/H/S geometry encoded on the disk itself
doesn't have to match what the BIOS thinks it is.  Since geometry on
USB drives is completely arbitrary, and can vary from BIOS to BIOS,
this is the only mode which will work in general.

Some BIOSes have been reported (in particular, certain versions of the
Award BIOS) that cannot boot USB keys in "USB-HDD" mode.  This is a
very serious BIOS bug, but it is unfortunately rather typical of the
kind of quality we're seeing out of major BIOS vendors these days.  On
these BIOSes, you're generally stuck booting them in USB-ZIP mode.

THIS MEANS THE FILESYSTEM IMAGE ON THE DISK HAS TO HAVE A CORRECT
ZIPDRIVE-COMPATIBLE GEOMETRY.

.
.
.

    mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sda 0 64 32

(The 0 means automatically determine the size of the device, and -4
means mimic a zipdisk by using partition 4.)

Then you should be able to run

    syslinux /dev/sda4

... and mount /dev/sda4 and put your files on it as needed.



That's why I used it.

Instead of using MEMDISK, can I use other methods to boot an MS-DOS pendrive system?

Thank you
Agostinho C.

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