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

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

> Hummm... so the world has not entirely done away with the kludgy,
> antiquated and anachronistic old C/H/S addressing scheme just yet,
> eh?

It must actually have been your preparation of the USB stick which
has chosen a FAT filesystem with CHS.
I refer to this statement of yours, of Fri, 17 Jan 2014 13:48:21 -0800:

>> Furthermore, and separately, regardless of the install method (Linux or
>> Windows) the Clonezilla install instructions say that one must first
>> *begin* with a USB stick that has already had a FAT file system placed
>> onto it.

Whatever you did or did not to fulfill this demand, is directly
or indirectly to blame for the state of the stick before you
installed Clonezilla.


> Who is the primary developer/maintainer?

http://git.kernel.org/cgit/boot/syslinux/syslinux.git/tree/README
says: "SYSLINUX is: Copyright 1994-2011 H. Peter Anvin et al"


> may I safely assume
> that the goal of what we have all been doing is to produce (at some
> point) a new version of Syslinux that will cater better to older
> motherboards and older Award BIOSes, such as what I have?

The currently best theory is that the problem is due to the
choice of partitioning and filesystem, and not due to
peculiarities of SYSLINUX.

But this has still to be confirmed by you installing a working
Clonezilla into a stick with partitioning and filesystem as
proposed by Ady or by H. Peter Anvin.

If the theory is right, then the place for improvement would
be in the installation docs of Clonezilla et.al, which could
warn of the pitfalls which you encounter.
Especially Ady's proposals are worth to be taken into respect
because his test image demonstrates that it is possible to
boot your mainboard from a FAT-formatted USB stick.


> I await detailed instructions from one or both of them [Ady
> and H. Peter Anvin].

Well, Ady gave you instructions.
See his mail of Sat, 18 Jan 2014 08:25:10 +0200, near the end:
steps 1_ to 3b_.

If details are unclear, then you should tell up to what
instruction you understand, and where you get stuck.

I understand it as:
Put Ady's test image onto an USB stick to get an LBA driven
FAT32 filesystem. Then copy Clonzilla's files except some
of its SYSLINUX files into that filesystem.
This should boot Clonezilla's system via the SYSLINUX
installation provided by Ady's test image and the boot
configuration provided by Clonezilla.


My own question to Ady was, whether it would be worthwhile
to erase his SYSLINUX files from the FAT32 fileystem too,
and to make a normal install of Clonezilla into the empty
FAT32 filesystem.
If Ady's proposal seems too complicated, then just try mine.

If it works, then we are done here. If not ... well ...


Have a nice day :)

Thomas