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

[Gyorgy Jeney]

On 24 November 2010 16:34, Ferenc Wagner <wferi at niif.hu> wrote:
> Gyorgy Jeney <nog.lkml at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> 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?
>
> Hi all,
>
> First of all: I confused myself, isohybrid is totally out of the
> picture, your didn't use an ISO but an HD image.  Now the really
> confusing this is that the documentation of the HD image
> http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/squeeze/main/installer-amd64/current/images/hd-media/boot.img.gz
> *really* says it should be extracted straight into a full disk device,

Ok, I see now.  the "easy way" says to dump the image on the device
proper, the "flexible way" talks about partitions, MBRs and things.

> but the image does not contain a partition table, so actually it's a
> big, irregular floppy image.  The same is true for the lenny image, btw.
> So I'd summarize the issue as: Syslinux 3.71 works when booted
> partitionless (with the Syslinux boot sector in the place of the MBR)
> from a USB drive on your machine, but 4.02 does not.

Yes.

> Now, as I understand, your manual testing followed the partitionless
> scheme as well, and shows that even 3.86 works in this way, and 4.00
> already fails.  Right?

That's correct.

> On the other hand, if you created a partition on your USB drive and
> extracted the squeeze HD image into the partition, it started to work,
> right?

Yes.

nog.