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

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

me:
> > Check whether it fails with Clonezilla.
Ronald F. Guilmette:
> Please be specific.  For Clonezilla, there are many different versions

Any failure on the same stick which also succeeds is enough
to kill the theory of bad relation between USB stick and
mainboard.
You have proven this by the success and failure with the 2 GB
stick.

So the problem must be either in partitioning or in the filesystem
format. That's out of my personal expertise, though.


> Also, the install instructions for Cloenzilla suggest a total of four (4)
> different ways to install the thing using MS Windows, and three (3)
> different install methods if the person is using Linux instead.

If there is one which promises to lead to LBA adresseing,
that would be the most hopeful candidate.


> I await your direction.

I lack the skills for explicit directions how to explore
the plausible suspicions of Ady and Peter:

Ady:
> I also "forced" a FAT32 LBA filesystem,
Ronald F. Guilmette:
>     *) with respect to Ultimate Boot CD (5.2.7), the answer is "CHS".
>     *) with respect to OpenELEC (3.2.3, I think), the answer is "CHS".
H. Peter Anvin:
> OK, it is "CHS"... which most likely means this is a geometry problem.

But i can give some background info:

CHS means Cylinder/Head/Sector addressing method.

The Master Boot Record (MBR) at the beginning of the stick has
a partition table with block addresses in two alternative forms.
A CHS triple of three numbers where up to 63 sectors are one head,
and up to 255 (or 256) heads are one cylinder. Alltogether 24 bit,
which can address at most 8 Gigabyte, but often less.
Then there is Logical Block Address (LBA), a linear counting of
blocks with 32 bit length. This allows to address 2 Terabyte.

There are FAT filesystems which operate via CHS addresses,
and such which use LBA. (Visualized by Gparted's "LBA flag",
i assume.)
The successful isohybrid images cannot be used via CHS.

The current best guess is that your mainboard does not like
some or all variants of CHS but works with LBA.
Whether your stick's FAT uses CHS or LBA is decided when you
partition the stick and format the empty FAT filesystem.

H. Peter Anvin:
> find the "magic
> geometry" that works on that machine, which may be 64/32 for example.
> However, in CHS mode 1024x64x32 is only 1 GiB,

So Peter proposes to try 32 sectors per head and 64 heads per
cylinder when you partiton the USB stick. The partitioning
program should offer you an opportunity to set these factors.

Maybe it suffices to format the partitioned stick to a FAT
filesystem variant which uses LBA.

(As said, i am no expert in partitioning, formatting and FATing.)


Have a nice day :)

Thomas