[syslinux] Unable to get syslinux.efi to work, grub2 boots tho

Ady Ady ady-sf at hotmail.com
Thu Aug 2 15:09:34 PDT 2018


> Hi,
> 
> I am trying to get a UEFI bootable USB. And I am unable to make it 
> working. I have two x86_64 systems and both of them 'hangs' when I 
> choose to boot UEFI from USB.
> 
> I've created fat32 formated partition with ef00 type. I placed EFI/BOOT 
> there with content of efi64/ distribution, I've created syslinux.cfg and 
> renamed syslinux.efi to BOOTX64.EFI.
> 
> However, it does just hangs.
> 
> I then replaced BOOTX64.EFI with the copy of grubx64.efi and I got a 
> working GRUB2 shell, so I suppose the problem is within syslinux.
> 
> I tried sys-boot/syslinux-6.03 and sys-boot/syslinux-6.04_pre1 with no luck.
> 
> any hints how to get syslinux on UEFI working?
> 
 
I guess you are in Gentoo.

Even if you are not using Debian, you could:

1_ Download the syslinux-related binary packages from the Debian 
"experimental" (_not_ to be confused with "unstable") repository 
(currently, "6.04~git20171011.af7e95c3+dfsg1-3") and take:

* from the "syslinux-efi" package: 
usr\lib\SYSLINUX.EFI\efi64\syslinux.efi

* from the "syslinux-common" package: 
usr\lib\syslinux\modules\efi64\ldlinux.e64


2.1_ Copy the new syslinux.efi to the "ESP" of your USB device, under 
its "EFI/BOOT/" directory, naming it as "BOOTX64.EFI".

2.2_ Copy the new ldlinux.e64 to the same directory.

3_ In the "ESP" of your USB device, rename any-and-all files named as 
"syslinux.cfg" to something else; there should be no file with such 
name in the "ESP" of your USB device.

When booting your USB now, syslinux.efi should not find the 
configuration file, so you should end with the boot prompt on screen, 
with some kind of information message (because no cfg was found).

FWIW, there have been some reports (in Debian's community) of some 
hardware successfully booting with the current "experimental" binaries; 
the same hardware fails to boot with the current "stable" binaries. So, 
progress :).

HTH,
Ady.




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