[syslinux] EXTLINUX

[Collins, Cris]

It hangs at the blinking cursor right after the BIOS finishes 
initializing the system. The partition on the usb drive is marked as 
active. I tried with the -z option as well, however I don't think it was 
necessary because I had been somewhat successful using Lilo. I had some 
problems compiling 4.0 under RHEL 5.4 so I moved to 3.86.
 

nasm -f elf -Ox -g -F dwarf -DDATE_STR="'0x4c2a4af8'" \
                -DHEXDATE="0x4c2a4af8" \
                -l pxelinux.lsr -o pxelinux.o -MP -MD .pxelinux.o.d pxelinux.asm
ld -m elf_i386  -T syslinux.ld -M -o pxelinux.elf pxelinux.o \
                --start-group libcore.a ../com32/lib/libcomcore.a /usr/lib/gcc/i386-redhat-linux/4.1.2/libgcc.a --end-group \
                > pxelinux.map
objdump -h pxelinux.elf > pxelinux.sec
perl lstadjust.pl pxelinux.lsr pxelinux.sec pxelinux.lst
objcopy -O binary pxelinux.elf pxelinux.raw
./lzo/prepcore pxelinux.raw pxelinux.bin
./lzo/prepcore: pxelinux.raw: output too big (30197, max 0)
make[1]: *** [pxelinux.bin] Error 1
rm ldlinux.raw isolinux-debug.raw pxelinux.raw isolinux.raw ldlinux.o pxelinux.o isolinux.o isolinux-debug.o
make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/syslinux-4.00/core'
make: *** [all] Error 2



I got a smaller ramdisk to boot under isolinux.

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> On 06/29/2010 10:57 AM, Collins, Cris wrote:
>   
>> I am trying to boot a ramdisk on a usb stick in read-only mode using 
>> extlinux. When the system boots all I am getting is a blinking cursor. 
>>     
>
> At what point?
>
>   
>> The stick booted with lilo, but I had some issues with lilo so I am 
>> trying extlinux.
>>
>> 1) I partitioned the stick as a linux partition, formated it ext2, and 
>> mounted /dev/sda1 on /mnt/flash.
>> 2) I am running extlinux 3.86.
>> 3) excuted "extlinux -i  /mnt/flash"
>> 4) created /mnt/flash/extlinux.conf
>> 5) contents:
>> DEFAULT linux
>> prompt 1
>> timeout 1200
>> LABEL linux
>> KERNEL vmlinuz
>> APPEND initrd=initrd.img rw prompt_ramdisk=0 ramdisk_blocksize=1024 
>> ramdisk=2966000 root=/dev/ram0
>> 6) excuted "cat mbr.bin > /dev/sda"
>> 7) copied initrd.img and vmlinuz to /mnt/flash
>> 8) umounted /mnt/flash
>>     
>
> Is your ext2 partition marked active?
>
> You may want to try the new Syslinux 4.00 that was just released.
>
>   
>> I know it sounds strange but I wanted to do the same with isolinux, but 
>> get the following error:
>> .
>> .
>> .
>> .
>> 16384 ram181(driver?)
>> No filesystem could mount root, tried: romfs
>> Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 
>> unknown-block(1,0)
>>
>> Any ideas how might get this to work?
>>     
>
> This means the kernel booted fine, it just isn't pointed to a valid root
> filesystem.  Device 1,0 is /dev/ram, so I'm guessing you're missing your
> initrd, or you have the wrong filesystem driver for your particular initrd.
>
> 	-hpa
>