[syslinux] Can USBstikA boot USBstkB ?!

eas lab lab.eas at gmail.com
Wed Jun 14 02:21:38 PDT 2017


> I don't think that syslinux be in concern here. If I understand well
> Slackware is installed on a hard disk partition that you want to access
> through the USB-adaptor to IDE/SATA.

No. I'm not married to Slak. It's important to distinguish between
verbatim/pasteable and what the old-writer merely thinks/remembers.
I want to be able to boot ANY installation/partition as I vaguely
remember I could do with the old USBstik.

> To mount /, the initramfs needs to know the partition's name reported
> by lsblk, that you'd give as a kernel parameter in the command line, as
> said by message.txt.

In the limiting case, there's only the 4 partitons of M$pook & stkA
& stikB, which gives only 3 sdX1 to test BLINDLY.

> But that also needs a kernel driver to handle the USB adapter.

There are 2 separate goals:
1. booting a second USB-stik;
2. perhaps more difficult: booting ID or SATA via the USB-adapter.
Apparently the USB-adapter is smart enough to hide the IDE/SATA.

Using the principle of "successive refinement": my question was
 "Can USBstikA boot USBstkB ?".  If so, then I'll tackle the IDE/SATA.

When running debian7 and the USB adapter: `lsblk` lists all the
 IDE or SATA partitions. But that's not the question; which is
<can syslinux boot USBstkB from USBstikA ?>

> To find out, you could:
> _ boot a Slackware installation media
? with what: GRUB2, original DVD, ...?
> _ as soon as you get a prompt type the (fake) login "root"
> _ then use the available command to identify the / partition
>   of the installed Slackware.
>   For instance type this command:
>     lsblk -o model,name,size,filesystem

> If you think you have identified the partition, you can check
> its content mounting it as /mnt, then looking into /mnt.
> Then reboot, boot off the custom boot stick and indicate this partition's
> name after root= in the command line.

> But if the partition is not in lsblk's output, I'm afraid that you are
> out of luck, unless the support for the USB adapter be provided somehow
> as an additional module in the initramfs, that you would need to rebuild.

AFAIK `lsblk` will only be in the fully running linux, which can't tell
me the capabilities of syslinux ?

> Didier

I want a solution based on the theory: the understanding of the
HUMAN designed syslinux. It is not BLACKMAGIC to be discover.

==TIA


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