[syslinux] Booting firmware harddisk image with memdisk fails

[Dag Wieers]

On Sat, 23 May 2009, Jernej Simončič wrote:

> On Friday, May 22, 2009, 11:10:38, Dag Wieers wrote:
>
>> 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).
>
> I noticed that PC-DOS freezes on some systems when booted with
> memdisk, too (and btw, this has happened at least since
> syslinux/memdisk 2.13).
>
> I suggest you try to create another bootable disk with a different
> brand of DOS, and copy the files for firmware flashing from your
> existing disk, it'll probably work then.

I updated my BIOS using the docking station hoping that it simply was an 
issue with the BIOS I had, but I can now confirm that even with the latest 
X200s BIOS this is still an issue.

What I do not understand is that the X200 owner (with very similar 
hardware) did not have this issue.

Also, the memdisk/DOS freeze is something that was bugging me since 2004 
at least and happened both on Thinkpads (T30 iirc) as well as Xseries 
systems (then called netfinity).

Here are some posts of the tests I did back then:

 	http://syslinux.zytor.com/archives/2004-January/002999.html

And it popped up several times after that:

 	http://syslinux.zytor.com/archives/2004-October/004099.html

If there's anything I can do to help debug this issue I am very committed. 
In fact when Peter was at FOSDEM it would have been the perfect 
opportunity to debug it hands-on. Maybe he needs to come over in 2010 
again ?

Let's vote ;-)

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