[syslinux] Syslinux + Localboot

[Gene Cumm]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Matthew Holevinski <eylusion at gmail.com> wrote:
> I went ahead and setup a DBAN installation on the Thumbdrive, that
> works just fine with my machines:
> LABEL gdisk
> MENU LABEL ^3. DBAN - Wipe Disk
> KERNEL dban
> APPEND initrd=dban.gz root=/dev/ram0 init=/rc nuke="dwipe --autonuke
> --method dod522022m" floppy=0,16,cmos

One step closer to a desired solution.  Good to know.

> But, I still can't get local boot to work i've tried chain hd1 1, and
> hd0 1, hd0 1 just reboots the thumbdrive on all the machines
> i've tried this on. The only thing I can think of is that all the
> computers I try this on have SATA drives. Anyone got a localboot
> to work off a thumbdrive with sata hd's ?

Yes.  Using:
KERNEL chain.c32
APPEND hd1

> Currently my last attempt was with
> LABEL boothd
> MENU LABEL ^7. Boot First Hard Drive
> KERNEL chain.c32 hd1 1
>

I don't know how well appending the options on the KERNEL line works.
It should read (or at least the standard is):
KERNEL chain.c32
APPEND hd1 1

Have you tried just:
KERNEL chain.c32
APPEND hd1

This implies "hd1 0" which will attempt to boot the master boot code
on the disk (see com32/modules/chain.c for more details).  Unless you
have a specific reason for "hd1 1", I'd stick with "hd1" as it is the
most likely to work on any machine that can still boot on its own.

> And it just sits there saying booting and locks up

This acts as if there's no boot code at that partition.  I had this
happen to me when I attempted to mistakenly boot to a partition that I
had previously zeroed out while playing with the GX620 I talked about
yesterday.  If the first partition on the hard drive doesn't have any
boot code, this is what happens.  Ctrl-Alt-Del also won't respond.

>>> On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Gene Cumm <gene.cumm at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 5:42 PM, Matthew Holevinski <eylusion at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> chain hd0 1 doesn't work
>>>>> is that because all the machines i work on have sata drives?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Currently I'm testing with my thumbdrive on a Dell OptiPlex GX620 BIOS
>>>> A11 (SATA HDD).  When I do "chain.c32 hd0" it boots to the thumbdrive
>>>> again.  If I try "chain.c32 hd1" it boots the hdd.  I also tested a
>>>> Dell OptiPlex GX260 (PATA HDD) with the same results.
>>>>
>>>> I believe this is because if the active BIOS boot device is acting
>>>> like a hard drive, it is always the first.  If the HDD was the active
>>>> BIOS boot device, it would be first.  If you booted from a CD/DVD, the
>>>> HDD would be first.  If you booted from a ZIP drive, I think the HDD
>>>> would be the first HDD but I'm uncertain on this one.