[syslinux] Fedora 21 extlinux 6.03 boot failure

Andrew J. Schorr aschorr at telemetry-investments.com
Fri Jul 3 08:01:28 PDT 2015


Hi,

On Fri, Jul 03, 2015 at 07:13:18AM +0300, Ady via Syslinux wrote:
> 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).

Sorry I wasn't clear.  Fedora 19 was installed on a / and /boot partition.  I
then installed Fedora 21 on a separate / partition and overwrite all the
extlinux components in /boot/extlinux with the new versions.  I have followed
the same procedure many times.  The extlinux.conf file has entries for both
Fedora 19 and Fedora 21, but the syslinux-extlinux installation was entirely
Fedora 21 version 6.03.

With this configuration, this one system fails to boot Fedora 21.  This
approach worked fine on over 20 other systems upgraded the same way.  It resets
after printing these messages:

   SYSLINUX 6.03  Copyright (C) 1994-2014 H. Peter Anvin et al
...
(displays boot menu using menu.c32)
...
   Loading /vmlinuz-4.0.5-200.fc21.x86_64... ok
   Loading /initramfs-4.0.5-200.fc21.x86_64.img...ok

This machine is attached to a serial console.  There is no error message; it
just reboots at that point.

But the same Fedora 21 extlinux 6.03 setup is able to boot the Fedora 19
partition successfully.  Once I am up and running Fedora 19, I run the
following commands (using Fedora 19 extlinux version 4.05):

   dd if=/usr/share/syslinux/mbr.bin of=/dev/sda
   extlinux --install /boot/extlinux

If I then reboot the system, it is able to boot into either Fedora 19 or
Fedora 21 without any problems.  It is true that I do get some minor
complaints:

   SYSLINUX 4.05 2011-12-09 Copyright (C) 1994-2011 H. Peter Anvin et al
   menu.c32: not a COM32R image
   boot: 

But I can select the desired label from the "boot:" prompt, and now it boots
successfully into Fedora 21.

> 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).

I don't think it's a mismatch issue.  I have followed the same scripted
procedure many times without any problems.

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

There is probably a more recent BIOS, but why would that matter?  The
system boots fine under syslinux 4.05 and has problems under 6.03.
I may be able to upgrade the BIOS next week.

> 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).

The completely vanilla 6.03 setup fails to boot.  The problem is that there
is no error message, so it's very hard to troubleshoot.

> 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.

I have not yet.

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

I'll give that a try.  An error message would be really helpful in chasing
this down.

> 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.

I wasn't aware of that.

Thanks,
Andy


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