[syslinux] drive size limit for syslinux

[Gene Cumm]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 12:52, Rance Hall <ranceh at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2011/3/9 Jernej Simončič <jernej.listsonly at ena.si>:
>> On Wednesday, March 9, 2011, 17:16:00, Rance Hall wrote:
>>
>>> Is there a non-bug reason why this wouldn't work, like a drive size
>>> limit in syslinux?
>>
>> It's probably some kind of BIOS limitation (or bug) - try updating
>> your laptop's BIOS first.
>>
>> Also, how are you booting off the USB drive - by using the USB-HDD
>> option in BIOS, or by selecting the USB disk by name from among the
>> Hard drives?
>>
>> --
>> < Jernej Simončič ><><><><>< http://eternallybored.org/ >
>>
>> Everything goes wrong at once.
>>       -- Thyme's Law
>>
>>
>
>
> Ok, I thought I had the current BIOS but I'll double check that to be sure.
>
> There is no USB-HDD boot option, the bios just scans all the drives it
> know about at boot time and offers the option to boot to another one
> other than default if I press a certain key while booting up.  It
> scans all physical drives, cd drives, and usb devices looking for boot
> information prior to creating the list of bootable choices.

Most of the machines I have do not present a choice but do use HDD mode.

(re-added from first email)

> I get an error indicating that no OS can be found.

Could you report the exact wording?  Different things will report
similar but differing messages.

> I triple checked and followed the exact same procedure in both cases,
> so I'm lost as to what is wrong.

Could you explain your procedure?  Did you use fdisk to create the
partition, make it the only active partition and write an MBR?  Did
you happen to use syslinux's -m and -a options?

Would you be able to send a compressed archive of the first 512 byte
sector of the device (the MBR) and the partition (VBR)?

-- 
-Gene