[syslinux] syslinux and btrfs-formatted dos/MBR partition

[Gene Cumm]

On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 7:42 AM, David de Marneffe
<daviddemarneffe at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Gene, thanks for your reply.
>
> Yes BIOS mode. The config wants a menu, which loads fine under ext4
> and not under btrfs. Under btrfs I have also tried to remove the
> syslinux.cfg file altogether (which should trigger the boot: prompt if
> I am not mistaken) and the result is the same: only the copyright line
> appears and no prompt.
>
> The three letter sequence is EDD.

Thanks.

> The disk is 160GB, here is the fdisk. Tried to install on /dev/sda6
> and /dev/sda3.
>
> Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
> Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0x92e4538c
>
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1              63   167750729    83875333+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
> /dev/sda2       167750791   296093695    64171452+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
> /dev/sda3   *   296094015   312496379     8201182+  83  Linux
> /dev/sda4       312496380   312576704       40162+  ef  EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
> /dev/sda5       167750793   259915634    46082421    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
> /dev/sda6       259917824   296093695    18087936   83  Linux
>
> It's true I am normally chainloading my Linux installations from the
> WinXP bootloader, and that is what I initially tried with my btrfs
> attempts, however in the course of testing I just backed up my MBR and
> let syslinux overwrite it (yes I did set the boot flag before
> installing syslinux and overwriting the MBR). That didn't make any
> difference.

Which MBR?  How did you install it?  The common Microsoft one can not
boot a non-primary partition but the Syslinux mbr.bin and altmbr.bin
can.

-- 
-Gene

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text,
especially the archives of mailing lists.
Q: Why is Top-posting such a bad thing?

"No one ever says, 'I can't read that ASCII(plain text) e-mail you sent me.'"