[syslinux] Dual-booting VMware and chainbooting GRUB

[Pete Zaitcev]

On Sat, 19 Mar 2011 08:23:21 -0400
Gene Cumm <gene.cumm at gmail.com> wrote:

Gene, thanks for the reply.

> > I am having trouble trying to dual-boot VMware and Linux, and I tried
> 
> I'm assuming either VMware ESX or VMware ESXi Installable, correct?
> ESXi is also known as the vSphere Hypervisor.

This is ESXi 4.1 demo that comes with vSphere.

> >  VMware uses Syslinux, so I thought this would be
> 
> Last I checked, they used Syslinux 3.63.  Was chain.c32 already in the
> FAT file system?  Where did you get it from?

Indeed they only provide mboot.c32 and safeboot.c32 with their 3.63.
I copied chain.c32 from Syslinux 4.02 that comes with Fedora 14.
That has additional advantage of recognizing the option grub=.
Basically I bet that the COMBOOT API was stable between 3.63 and 4.02.

> > LABEL linux
> >  COM32 chain.c32
> >  APPEND hd1
> 
> This will depend on a properly configured MBR at that drive.

I verified that it was properly configured by swapping SATA cables
and booting from it directly. Of course, shifting the Linux drive
to the other position requires changing hd0 to hd1 in grub.conf,
but that is something not related to my Syslinux problem.
If only manage run GRUB, I will fix up the rest.

> > LABEL vmware
> >  COM32 safeboot.c32
> >
> > None of the above works except the VMware. Chainloading hd1 ("linux")
> > ends with no new messages, nothing happening. System is not locked up
> > though, ctlr-alt-del reboots it. Same happens with label "grub".
> > Labels "grub2" and "grub3" complain of partition not found.
> >
> > Does anyone have any suggestions?

> Newer versions of SYSLINUX also understand the LOCALBOOT directive but
> I'd have to check what version it was introduced in.

I suspect that the other drive may not be available from BIOS,
or not being hd1. Is this something that can be checked?

Greetings,
-- Pete