[syslinux] USB boot problems on Gigabyte GA-M55Plus-S3G

[Mattias Schlenker]

Am 16.01.2014 08:17, schrieb Thomas Schmitt:
> Another candidate image would be 
> http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/debian-7.3.0-i386-netinst.iso 
> which would have the advantage of not containing EFI/GPT stuff, that 
> might introduce more confusion. (I could not figure out whether your 
> mad board claims to be capable of EFI.)

The board first appeared mid 2006, it is even AM2 and not AM2+. As far 
as I remember the first EFI mainboards in the PC market (not Mac, not 
servers) appeared late 2007, but often were limited to some kind of "CSM 
only mode" and cannot be switched to EFI boot. Since early 2010 nearly 
every freshly released mainboard/notebook seems to support EFI (at least 
without Secure Boot), albeit before Windows 8 they usually were 
configured to CSM as default.

I've seen some totally broken EFI implementations originating from 
between 2008 and 2010, for example early TianoCore implementations that 
do not allow to be configured as "CSM only" or "EFI only" and get 
totally confused if a USB thumb drive contains GPT, compat MBR and UEFI 
as well as legacy boot partitions (a layout that works flawlessly on 
modern UEFI implementations and old BIOSes).

> From the user point of view you would indeed be best off if you 
> returned the board to the seller and demand a different one. Its 
> firmware is ill. No doubt. Its reaction on the active/boot flag 
> clearly indicates it. But we bystanders are interested in learning how 
> to succeed even with this miserable hardware. 

To fix broken firmware I would first suggest to check if a BIOS update 
is available and then reset the BIOS to it's defaults.

As a bystander I am taking notes for every piece of ill hardware. 
Between 1% and 5% of all computers out there seem not to behave as 
expected when booting from removable media. I am preparing bootable live 
systems for magazines and customers like botfree.eu  on a monthly base. 
Those might sum up to a few hundred thousand or a bit more than a 
million "cover mount" DVDs per year I prepare. 1% of a million is the 
usual noise, more than 5% means extra work. So I am trying to keep track 
of even the weirdest bugs.

Regards,
Mattias

-- 
Mattias Schlenker - Redaktion + EDV-Beratung + Linux-CD/DVD-Konzepte
August-Bebel-Str. 74 - 04275 LEIPZIG - GERMANY

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