[syslinux] Dual-booting VMware and chainbooting GRUB

[Gene Cumm]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 16:38, Pete Zaitcev <zaitcev at redhat.com> wrote:
> 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.

Just a demo license; you have the full product for ESXi Installable.

>> >  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.

COMBOOT I believe was stable between 3.86 and current 4.03/4.04-pre14.
 v4.xx introduced a new COM32 format that's strictly incompatible.
I'm pretty certain this is your issue.

Now, as far as 3.63 to 3.86, there were new COMBOOT API calls
introduced (and deprecated).  You'll need to either strictly use 3.63,
figure out how to get a safeboot.c32 module (which, by the looks of
it, I think is VMware closed source, unfortunately) for 4.xx, or
gamble and try to install 3.86 and use the standard modules from 3.86
while using VMware's safeboot.c32.

You might be able to make do with 3.86 (or even something in between)
but it may fail just the same.  You'll have the most compatibility
with the same version (although it may be possible to build from
source on a 3.63 tree).

-- 
-Gene