[syslinux] boot fails on some system

[Ady Ady]

> I used syslinux to make an external usb hard drive booting up "system rescue cd" from a FAT primary partition.
> The procedure I followed was setting on the boot flag on the FAT partition and copying the content of the iso image to it and renaming isolinux to syslinux wherever needed. I then unmounted the device and ran "syslinux -d /syslinux/ -i /dev/sdxn" where sdxn is the appropriate partition. It worked nicely on both laptops i have at hand.
> 
> Then I wanted to try the same using an ext2 partition instead and so using extlinux. For this, after creating an ext2 partition, moving the boot flag to it and copying the live linux files, I copied the file mbr.bin from the syslinux package to the hard drive mbr. Then I ran "extlinux -i /mnt/mountpoint". This time booting up "system rescue cd" failed on one of the two laptops. Afterwards even retrying to boot from the FAT partition resulted with the same computer in failing. I hadn't saved the initial mbr content, so couldn't restore it, hence mbr.bin should still be in place and this might be what the failing laptop doesn't like.
> 

(snip)

How _exactly_ did you "copy" (again) the mbr.bin file (and why again)? 
Which command did you use? Before you executed such command, was the 
filesystem volume mounted or unmounted?

Please post the exact command you used for formatting the FAT volume. 
Please also post the command you used when creating the ext2 volume.

If you repeat the _whole_ initial procedure you described (installing 
mbr.bin, then using FAT and the 'syslinux' installer), can you boot 
then?

Regards,
Ady.