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

[Ferenc Wagner]

Gyorgy Jeney <nog.lkml at gmail.com> writes:

> On 24 November 2010 20:25, Ferenc Wagner <wferi at niif.hu> wrote:
>
>> György, could you please make sure that it's a keyboard issue only, for
>> example by introducing a short timeout by replacing "timeout 0" with
>> "timeout 50" in syslinux.cfg?  If your pendrive is /dev/sde, then do
>>
>> # zcat boot.img.gz >/dev/sde
>> (just as you did originally, resulting in this bug report)
>> # mount /dev/sde /mnt -oloop
>
> Just curious, is there a reason to use a loopback device here?

That's the typo I left in accidentally to make your life harder.
Sorry for that.  (I was testing the above on a loop mount.)

>> # sed -i '/^timeout/s/0/50/' /mnt/syslinux.cfg
>> # umount /mnt
>>
>> and then try to boot the installer from the pendrive.  Now it should
>> automatically choose the default item in the boot menu after 5 seconds
>> (unless syslinux is actually frozen by this time).
>
> I tried that.  When the menu appears, at the bottom, it counts down 5,
> 4, 3, 2, 1 and then reads something from the USB key for some time
> (the activity light flashes on the key) and then just hangs at the
> menu with the count being 1.  I waited about a minute before rebooting
> at this point.

Looks like it actually tries to load the kernel.  Could you please fully
rewrite syslinux.cfg to contain only the following four lines and retest?

default linux
append initrd=initrd.gz
prompt 1
timeout 50

This should skip the menu and also make the kernel more verbose.

>> I wonder what the SYSLINUX banner says [...]
>
> SYSLINUX 4.02 debian-20101014 EDD Copyright (C) 1994-2010 H. Peter Anvin et al
>
> In both the partitionless and partitioned version.

Thanks.  So it uses the same disk access method (EDD) in both cases.
-- 
Cheers,
Feri.