[syslinux] Fedora 21 extlinux 6.03 boot failure

[Ady]

> Hi,
> 
> I discovered a very strange situation.  I have 22 systems running Fedora 21
> (F21) with bundled syslinux-extlinux 6.03.  On one of those systems, I am
> having trouble booting.  This machine was upgraded from Fedora 19 (F19), so can
> boot either the new or the old O/S -- F19 is on one disk partitition, F21
> is on another, and there's a shared /boot partition.  On this one machine,
> when I try to boot into F21 using the F21 version of extlinux, the system
> resets (reboots) right at this point:
> 
>    Loading /vmlinuz-4.0.5-200.fc21.x86_64... ok
>    Loading /initramfs-4.0.5-200.fc21.x86_64.img...ok
> 
> And then it reboots.  If I instead choose the F19 partition from the extlinux
> boot menu, it boots successfully into F19.  I tried this with 2 different
> versions of the F21 kernel (3.19.7 and 4.0.5), and I observed the same
> behavior.
> 
> If I boot up into F19 and install the F19 version of syslinux-extlinux
> (4.05), I can then boot successfully into either F19 or F21.
> 
> To summarize: F21 extlinux 6.03 can boot only the F19 partition,
> but F19 extlinux 4.05 can boot either F19 or F21.  The same setup works
> without any troubles on 21 other computers, but on this particular one,
> the F21 extlinux cannot boot the F21 kernel/initramfs.
> 
> The machine in question is very old -- it's an Intel S5000VCL motherboard
> with a Xeon E5420 CPU and 1 GB of memory.  I don't have any others with
> this same motherboard.  But I do have older systems with less memory that
> work fine (for example, an Intel SE7230NH1LX motherboard with
> a Pentium 4 cpu and 512 MB of memory).
> 
> Is there any way of troubleshooting this?
> 
> Thanks,
> Andy
 
It is not so clear to me which version of Syslinux (or which version of its 
Fedora's packages) you are actually using to boot these systems (not just the one 
currently failing).

The behavior you are describing "sounds" as if some version mismatch between the 
bootloader file and some c32 module might be going on, although there is no detail 
that would differentiate this particular system from the others (that keep working 
OK).

The typical suggestion might be relevant here: Is there any BIOS update available 
for this system?

If you change the version of the bootloader actually booting the system 
(independently of the version of the packages you might have installed in the 
particular OS you want to boot), then you should be sure that the c32 files being 
used to boot (independently of the version of the packages you might have installed 
in the particular OS you want to boot) are using the exact same version (i.e. 
copied from the same exact package as the extlinux command being used to install 
the bootloader).

Have you tried to use the official upstream binaries downloaded from kernel.org 
(instead of the packages installed in your OSes)? When you do, please remember to 
copy over the c32 files too from the same official upstream archives.

There is a chance that _not_ using (vesa)menu.c32 might help you see more details.

I won't get into the NASM 2.11.06 issue (neither into any other potential building 
issue). The previously mentioned troubleshooting steps go first.

Regards,
Ady.
 
 
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