[syslinux] installing syslinux on a fresh system (SATA)

[Mau Z]

Thanks all,

I did find  extlinux in  "my syslinux tarball" (I think that I understand
my confusion now - I will explain at the end).
So, now almost everything is fine......
Clearly my extlinux.conf is working (I can see my output on the console
(SAY XXX))

I have a bzImage + rootfs.tar
I tried :

0) mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/MyMountForSda1   -->> success
1) cd /mnt/MyMountForSda1   -->> success
2) tar xvf rootfs.tar   -->> success
3) cp bzImage  .     -->> success
4) ls   -->> success, looks like everything is in the correct place
5) reboot

Here is my extlinux.conf

prompt 1

DEFAULT linux

LABEL linux

SAY Now booting my first extlinux

KERNEL bzImage

APPEND ro root=/dev/sda1



When I reboot I see :

Now booting my first extlinux  -->> (   :-)   )

boot:                                     -->> ( here it stops    :-((  )

BUT I can manually write "/bzImage" and press ENTER

Now the kernel starts loading    :-))))   (and crashes after 3 seconds, but
that's a different story).


So, it looks like my only issue (with extlinux) is to find the bzImage.

What did I do wrong ?
Maybe my extlinux.conf is not good ????    I also tried

prompt 1

DEFAULT linux

LABEL linux

SAY Now booting my first extlinux

KERNEL /bzImage

APPEND ro root=/dev/sda1

but I got the same results........

Any advice ? It looks like I am on the edge.....



Thanks
Mau



On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 12:24 PM, Ferenc Wagner <wferi at niif.hu> wrote:

> Mau Z <zmau1962 at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > I understand you (mostly).
> > 0) How do i "install the MBR code as well and to activate your
> partition."
>
> Find mbr.bin in the mbr directory of your syslinux tarball, then:
> # cat mbr.bin >/dev/sda
>
> To activate the partition (mark it bootable for the MBR code):
> # fdisk /dev/sda
> Print the partition table with the 'p' command.  There should be a
> single '*' in the 'Boot' column, in the row of sda1.  Use the 'a'
> command to toggle as necessary.
>
> > 1) "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt"  -->> successfully completed.
> > 2) "mkdir /mnt/extlinux"  -->> successfully completed.
> > 3) "extlinux --install /mnt/extlinux"     -->> does not work.
> >     Funny, but it it seems that there is no such thing as extlinux
> anymore.
>
> The extlinux binary is in the extlinux directory of your syslinux
> tarball.  It's one of the various installers, see
> http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/EXTLINUX.
>
> If you don't use a separate boot partition on your disk (to be mounted
> under /boot), but use a single (ext2) partition for everything, then
> using /mnt/boot/extlinux above would be more natural.  Syslinux does not
> care, though.
> --
> Regards,
> Feri.
>