[syslinux] Dell problems with PXELINUX 3.62

[Miller, Shao]

Good day again Daniel,

So the first thing I did was to remove the >NUL for your XMSDSK line and
put a PAUSE after it in AUTOEXEC.BAT.  That way, I could see the error
message:

*** XMS RAMdisk v1.9I (FU - 08/98): XMS get free mem error.

Then I noticed that if you run AUTOEXEC.BAT manually from the DOS CLI,
XMSDSK actually succeeds!  So that led to a new test: Duplicate the
XMSDSK line.

...
pause
A:\DOS\XMSDSK.EXE 8192 Y: /t /y
pause
A:\DOS\XMSDSK.EXE 8192 Y: /t /y
pause
...

This also allowed XMSDSK to make the Y: drive.  This suggests that
whatever service XMSDSK is using needed a run-once in order to correct
some kind of condition, perhaps a leftover of PXELINUX.

Even though the second run of XMSDSK succeeds, the cabinet extraction
does not fully succeed.

I decided to rule out PXELINUX, so instead I put GRUB4DOS 0.4.4 on the
local HDD.  I booted to the HDD and ran GRUB4DOS.  From its CLI, I did:

kernel /memdisk
initrd /dellgx280.imz

and encountered the same failures as the PXELINUX case.  The "raw,"
"bigraw," "int," and "safeint" (default) modes all produce the same
failure.

Then I tested using GRUB4DOS' non-memory drive mapping technique, which
also failed.  To do this, I used an uncompressed copy of your image
which I had also been testing.  This caused me to have a tough time
believing that the disk _could_ work.

I tried PXELINUX from Syslinux 3.61 and it failed in the same way.  I
then tried the PXELINUX from Syslinux 3.36 as your organization has been
using _along_with_ MEMDISK 3.36 and it failed in exactly the same way.

Could you kindly confirm that you have _any_ PXELINUX and/or MEMDISK
versions that work with this image?  Perhaps there is a complication
outside of the Syslinux Suite?  A BIOS upgrade?

For the curious, here's MEMINFO.C32:

INT 15h = f000:f859  DOS RAM: 560K (0x8c000)  INT 12h: 560K (0x8c000)
INT 15 88: 0xfc00 (64512K)  INT 15 E801: 0x3c00 (15360K) 0x1e68
(498176K)
       0 0000000000000000 00000000000a0000 00000000000a0000 1 [-] usable
       1 00000000000f0000 0000000000010000 0000000000100000 2 [-]
reserved
       2 0000000000100000 000000001f586c00 000000001f686c00 1 [-] usable
       3 000000001f686c00 0000000000002000 000000001f688c00 4 [-] ACPI
NVS
       4 000000001f688c00 0000000000002000 000000001f68ac00 3 [-] ACPI
reclaim
       5 000000001f68ac00 0000000000975400 0000000020000000 2 [-]
reserved
       6 00000000e0000000 0000000010000000 00000000f0000000 2 [-]
reserved
       7 00000000fed20000 0000000000080000 00000000feda0000 2 [-]
reserved
       8 00000000fed00000 0000000000000400 00000000fed00400 2 [-]
reserved
       9 00000000fec00000 0000000000100000 00000000fed00000 2 [-]
reserved
       a 00000000fee00000 0000000000100000 00000000fef00000 2 [-]
reserved
       b 00000000ffb00000 0000000000500000 0000000100000000 2 [-]
reserved

By contrast, with BIOS version A00 (above was A08):

INT 15h = f000:f859  DOS RAM: 560K (0x8c000)  INT 12h: 560K (0x8c000)
INT 15 88: 0xfc00 (64512K)  INT 15 E801: 0x3c00 (15360K) 0x1e68
(498176K)
       0 0000000000000000 00000000000a0000 00000000000a0000 1 [-] usable
       1 00000000000f0000 0000000000010000 0000000000100000 2 [-]
reserved
       2 0000000000100000 000000001f588c00 000000001f688c00 1 [-] usable
       3 000000001f688c00 0000000000002000 000000001f68ac00 4 [-] ACPI
NVS
       4 000000001f68ac00 0000000000002000 000000001f68cc00 3 [-] ACPI
reclaim
       5 000000001f68cc00 0000000000973400 0000000020000000 2 [-]
reserved
       6 00000000e0000000 0000000010000000 00000000f0000000 2 [-]
reserved
       7 00000000fed20000 0000000000080000 00000000feda0000 2 [-]
reserved
       8 00000000fed00000 0000000000000400 00000000fed00400 2 [-]
reserved
       9 00000000fec00000 0000000000100000 00000000fed00000 2 [-]
reserved
       a 00000000fee00000 0000000000100000 00000000fef00000 2 [-]
reserved
       b 00000000ffb00000 0000000000500000 0000000100000000 2 [-]
reserved

Neither A00 nor A08 allow this image to boot.

- Shao Miller



-----Original Message-----
From: Miller, Shao 
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 07:15
To: Lindgren Daniel
Subject: RE: Dell problems with PXELINUX 3.62

I still have my GX280 with BIOS version A08 sitting here, so I will test
it out and try to find the trouble.  Thanks! :)  - Shao



-----Original Message-----
From: Lindgren Daniel
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 03:31
To: Miller, Shao
Subject: Dell problems with PXELINUX 3.62

Hi Shao,
 
Attached is a 2.88 MB (compressed) floppy image for you to test.

This is what pxelinux.cfg/default looks like when I've tested it (we use
menu.c32):

LABEL 13
    MENU LABEL Dell GX280 test
    KERNEL memdisk
    APPEND initrd=images/install/dellgx280.imz

I've removed all our internal stuff (network info etc) from the image.
If you want to modify it, WinImage can open it.