[syslinux] Booting firmware harddisk image with memdisk fails

[Dag Wieers]

Hi,

I once again have a problem with memdisk failing to boot a harddisk image 
to update my Thinkpad X200s firmware. I extracted the harddisk image 
from the eltorito type 4 ISO using the isobar tool.

Then I added memdisk using this image as initrd to my grub, rebooted and it
boots into PC DOS and then freezes (ctrl-alt-del still works to reboot the 
system).

Inside Qemu however it works fine and boots into the firmware update tool. 
So it seems yet another BIOS+memdisk issue.

I tried the latest 3.81pre9 yesterday as well as RHEL5's default 3.11, and 
they both freeze the same way. I also tried all the possible options for 
memdisk (although not any combination).

Is there a specific version I can try to see if this is a regression ? Is 
there something I can provide to help you debug this problem ? Is it 
possible some BIOS option can change the behaviour of memdisk ?

I noticed that on ThinkWiki someone (the author) did exactly the same 
thing on his X200 without a problem. But may have a different 
BIOS firmware/syslinux/BIOS options.

 	http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/BIOS_update_without_optical_disk

Let me know,
-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]