[syslinux] Sysylinux-6.03 freezes at Loading kernel..., works smooth with 4.06 via SD-CARD

Ady ady-sf at hotmail.com
Thu Nov 20 04:04:08 PST 2014


> 
> 
> Hi,
> First of all thank you so much for your prompt suggestions/help. I 
> really appreciate this.
> Here is the syslinux.cfg which works perfect with syslinux-4.06
> ----
> PROMPT 0
> TIMEOUT 50
> SERIAL 0
> 
> DEFAULT mylabel
> LABEL mylabel
> 
> KERNEL vmlinuz0
> APPEND initrd=initrd.img root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait rootfstype=ext3 
> console=tty0 console=ttyS0,9600
> ----
> 
> To further round off the error possibilities I used the same 
> configuration as above with syslinux-6.03 but with USB, initially i got 
> the system hanging at Probing EDD, but after using 'edd=off' in the 
> APPEND line I was successfully able to boot my kernel/initrd with 
> syslinux-6.03 using a USB.
> 
> So, lets assume my BIOS does not support EDD, but because it worked 
> with USB (edd=off) so I assume one of the changes like (EDD,  the 
> __intcall() 16-bit interrupt mechanism has been replaced with direct 
> function calls(32-bit) using ELF object support, memset() calls are 
> added prior to intcall()) is responsible for not loading the kernel 
> properly into the memory, PLEASE note, if I land into the boot prompt 
> and call initrd first, that gets loaded successfully, I get the OK... 
> so everything here is OK with my hardware and IRQ assigment as well, 
> the system however hangs when I call linux-kernel.
> 
> I have tried most of the suggestions you offered above already, no 
> success. Even tried different kernels, but they all get stuck while 
> loading.
> 
 
1_ Have you actually checked whether there is a firmware update 
available?
2_ The EDD error should not happen. This suggests that Syslinux 6.03 is 
triggering either some BIOS problem, or that your USB drive needs to be 
reset (a simple FAT filesystem format is _not_ enough).
3_ Have you actually tried different hardware combinations?
4_ Have you actually tried testing in a VM?
5_ Can you please try without using the SERIAL directive, without 
appending serial console arguments and no serial output at all?

Please use the official prebuilt binaries downloaded from kernel.org, 
as-is, no 'make' anything. In the past we have seen hours wasted on 
trying to replicate some strange behavior.

The fact that you notice other kernels failing in this same hardware 
cannot discard a bug in Syslinux 6.03, but it cannot discard a firmware 
problem either.

Please let me clarify that we are not really interested in just a 
yes/no answer, but an actual report of the behavior seen under each of 
the aforementioned situations.

Regards,
Ady.



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