[syslinux] Debugging memdisk loaded via pxelinux

Miller, Shao shao.miller at yrdsb.edu.on.ca
Tue Oct 25 05:37:44 PDT 2011


Good day, Michael T. Davis.

In regards to your query for how to query disk geometry, I'd suggest
installing Syslinux to the USB flash drive's working partition and
running Syslinux' DISK.C32 module from the 'boot:' prompt.  You will get
the values for heads and cylinders, then you'll know what to pass to
MEMDISK for the same size of image.

  boot: disk.c32
  DISK 0x80:
    C/H/S: 16 heads, 1 cylinders
           63 sectors/track, 1 drives
    EDD:   ebios=1, EDD version: 30
           16 heads, 2 cylinders
           0 sectors, 512 bytes/sector, 63 sectors/track
           Host bus: ISA, Interface type: ATA

So:

  LABEL usb_image
    KERNEL memdisk
    APPEND h=16 c=2
    INITRD usb_image.hdd

Also, please be sure that you are capturing the entire USB flash device,
and not just the partition, when creating your image.

- Shao Miller




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