[syslinux] Debian bug#604245: Syslinux fails (does not receive key presses on Sony vaio Z12C5E)

[Gene Cumm]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 14:48, Gyorgy Jeney <nog.lkml at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 22 November 2010 22:46, Ferenc Wagner <wferi at niif.hu> wrote:
>> "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa at zytor.com> writes:
>>
>>> For a regression... I really need it narrowed down... 3.71 to 4.02 is a
>>> huge change.
>>
>> That's of course true.  György, are you willing to test some
>> intermediate syslinux versions on this machine?
>
> I checked out the git version of syslinux and tried to do a bisection,
> but there where so many un-testable points (uncompilable, fails due to
> something else) between syslinux-3.86 (last known working) and
> syslinux-4.00 (first known non-working) that I gave up on the
> bisection.
>
> But then I noticed that I wasn't following the (debian) instructions
> properly and I was writing the image to /dev/sde, instead of
> /dev/sde1.  As soon as a partition was created, an appropriate MBR
> installed, the image in question worked on the Sony.
>
> Is such partition-less configurations supported?

Floppies do it all the time but they also make the file system across
the entire device and not just a partition.

Strange, I would have expected an error from the installer about no file system.

-- 
-Gene