[syslinux] Boot 32GB Multi-partition Flash as USB-ZIP

[Ray Rashif]

On 25 November 2010 04:01, Ferenc Wagner <wferi at niif.hu> wrote:
> Ray Rashif <schivmeister at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I have a Pentium 4 machine that does not boot from my 32GB SanDisk
>> Cruzer. Its first partition is 24GB and FAT32, to serve as
>> cross-platform storage. There is a second partition of 7GB in EXT2
>> which is bootable and contains a Linux system armed with syslinux
>> (extlinux). This works fine booting off of recent laptops and desktops
>> alike.
>>
>> This particular desktop has in its BIOS everything related to USB and
>> booting configured well. "USB Boot" is "Enabled". There is a "Legacy
>> USB Emulation" or something along those lines set to "Full-speed", and
>> "High Speed USB" is "Enabled". Changing these has no effect.
>>
>> In the boot options, there is only the floppy under "Removable
>> Storage". The SanDisk is successfully detected as a Hard Disk and has
>> to be moved up in the list. In this case, the SanDisk gets first
>> priority.
>>
>> The BIOS does get it right, because I see a syslinux error flashing
>> by: "Missing operating system"
>
> What code is in your MBR?  The mbr.bin from Syslinux?  Are the LBA
> fields correct in your partition table?

That's right:

cat /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin > /dev/sdb

I'm not too sure about the LBA stuff. How should I check this? I
initially did the partitioning of the disk with KDE's
partitionmanager, resulting in a FAT32 with 'LBA' set and an EXT2 with
'boot' set. I only did the labelling of the FAT in Windows because
mtools' mlabel was messing up the allocation unit.

Like I mentioned, recent hardware have  no problem booting off of the
stick. I'm particularly curious because the BIOS of this old desktop
looks like it knows the difference between a ZIP and a Flash drive.

I'm thinking that this should work if I created a partition #4 in
fdisk with the correct heads, and then (regardless of the tool)
created partition #1 and #2. Is that thought right?


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