Cristian Savu
2006-Oct-31 06:08 UTC
[syslinux] Laptop+SDMMC+Extlinux+Memdisk+Floppy images=headaches
Hello syslinuxers I'm stuck with a scientific problem which gives me headaches: I have a laptop (Gateway MX3410) which has a SD memory card reader. Recently an interesting thought crossed my mind: why don't I setup a 2GB SD card as a harddrive and put some rescue tools on it. So I dug on the net and I came across the idea of using memdisk to boot floppy images without the need of a floppy drive. All references I found were about using ISOLINUX with MEMDISK. But personally I prefer EXTLINUX since it has more flexibility, given that it can use ext2 fs. So I installed an MBR on the SD card, then I installed an MBR loader with lilo (lilo -M /dev/sda). Then I used fdisk to create a partition and to make it active (primary partition). I then formatted the partition with mke2fs and ran extlinux to make it bootable. I copied on it a few floppy images (i.e. a sample dos boot disk, the bootitng floppy install disk, a win98 boot disk) and added the extlinux.conf file with the required sections like: label bootit kernel memdisk append initrd=bootit.img label boot98 kernel memdisk append initrd=boot98.img label freedos kernel memdisk append initrd=freedos.img and I thought I would go on and try to see what happens... Well, pretty much nothing, and I really don't know what the problem is because all the floppy images seem to start booting a little, but then the system hangs. For instance, if I try to boot the MSDOS floppy, I get the message "Starting MS-DOS" and then the system just hangs. Actually, the full message is like this: some 12-13 lines like: e820: 00000000fff800000 0000000000000080000 2 then: Ramdisk at 0x1bda8000, length 0x00168000 command line: initrd=images/boot_flp.img floppy=0 BOOT_IMAGE=memdisk Disk is floppy 0, 1440 K, C/H/S = 80/2/18 Total size needed = 2008 bytes, allocating 2K Old dos memory at 0x9dc00 (map says 0x9dc00), loading at 0x9d400 1588: 0xffff 15E801: 0x3c00 0x1ada INT 13 08: Success, count = 0, BPT = 0000:0000 old: int13 = e8a87ab8 int15 = f000f859 new: int13 = 9d400008 int15 = 92400290 Loading boot sector... booting... Starting MS-DOS... and that's all folks, it never goes any further than this... Another example, the bootit floppy image also starts booting but it stops on a black screen with the mouse cursor on it. Interesting, the cursor can be moved with the touchpad, so something IS working, but not all the way to the end. For conformance I will mention that all images were made with dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/path/to/image.img and they are valid because I copied them back to floppies and they booted fine from a FDD. I will also mention that the SD card is used in BIOS as a USB HDD and its boot order is before the IDE HDD. Also, I successfully managed to actually install bootit on the SD card just as on any HDD, I also made bootable partitions with DOS and Knoppix and they worked very fine, only this combination of extlinux and memdisk and bootable floppy images does not work. I also tried a FAT16 partition and isolinux and memdisk and the same floppy images, the result is the same, system hangs at boot. If someone could give me an advice or an indication, point out some mistake I might have made or simply make some comments, I would very much appreciate it. Thanks, Chris ____________________________________________________________________________________ Get your email and see which of your friends are online - Right on the New Yahoo.com (http://www.yahoo.com/preview)
Quinn Plattel
2006-Nov-13 20:38 UTC
[syslinux] Laptop+SDMMC+Extlinux+Memdisk+Floppy images=headaches
I think this another bios/memdisk issue. I have had this problem since last year on only specific machines (mainly IBM Thinkpads). If I were you, I would try the latest grub4dos and use grub4dos's memdisk way instead of syslinux's memdisk. It works for me :-) Quinn On 10/31/06, Cristian Savu <jesse_blue7 at yahoo.com> wrote:> Hello syslinuxers > > I'm stuck with a scientific problem which gives me headaches: > > I have a laptop (Gateway MX3410) which has a SD memory card reader. > Recently an interesting thought crossed my mind: why don't I setup > a 2GB SD card as a harddrive and put some rescue tools on it. > So I dug on the net and I came across the idea of using memdisk > to boot floppy images without the need of a floppy drive. > All references I found were about using ISOLINUX with MEMDISK. > But personally I prefer EXTLINUX since it has more flexibility, > given that it can use ext2 fs. > > So I installed an MBR on the SD card, then I installed an MBR loader > with lilo (lilo -M /dev/sda). Then I used fdisk to create a partition > and to make it active (primary partition). I then formatted the > partition with mke2fs and ran extlinux to make it bootable. > I copied on it a few floppy images (i.e. a sample dos boot disk, > the bootitng floppy install disk, a win98 boot disk) and added the > extlinux.conf file with the required sections like: > > label bootit > kernel memdisk > append initrd=bootit.img > > label boot98 > kernel memdisk > append initrd=boot98.img > > label freedos > kernel memdisk > append initrd=freedos.img > > and I thought I would go on and try to see what happens... > > Well, pretty much nothing, and I really don't know what > the problem is because all the floppy images seem to > start booting a little, but then the system hangs. > For instance, if I try to boot the MSDOS floppy, > I get the message "Starting MS-DOS" and then the system > just hangs. > > Actually, the full message is like this: > > some 12-13 lines like: > > e820: 00000000fff800000 0000000000000080000 2 > > then: > > Ramdisk at 0x1bda8000, length 0x00168000 > command line: initrd=images/boot_flp.img floppy=0 BOOT_IMAGE=memdisk > Disk is floppy 0, 1440 K, C/H/S = 80/2/18 > Total size needed = 2008 bytes, allocating 2K > Old dos memory at 0x9dc00 (map says 0x9dc00), loading at 0x9d400 > 1588: 0xffff 15E801: 0x3c00 0x1ada > INT 13 08: Success, count = 0, BPT = 0000:0000 > old: int13 = e8a87ab8 int15 = f000f859 > new: int13 = 9d400008 int15 = 92400290 > Loading boot sector... booting... > Starting MS-DOS... > > > and that's all folks, it never goes any further than this... > > Another example, the bootit floppy image also starts booting > but it stops on a black screen with the mouse cursor on it. > Interesting, the cursor can be moved with the touchpad, so > something IS working, but not all the way to the end. > > For conformance I will mention that all images were made with > dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/path/to/image.img > and they are valid because I copied them back to floppies and they > booted fine from a FDD. > I will also mention that the SD card is used in BIOS as a USB HDD > and its boot order is before the IDE HDD. > Also, I successfully managed to actually install bootit on the > SD card just as on any HDD, I also made bootable partitions with > DOS and Knoppix and they worked very fine, only this combination > of extlinux and memdisk and bootable floppy images does not work. > I also tried a FAT16 partition and isolinux and memdisk and the same > floppy images, the result is the same, system hangs at boot. > > If someone could give me an advice or an indication, point out > some mistake I might have made or simply make some comments, > I would very much appreciate it. > > Thanks, > > Chris > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ > Get your email and see which of your friends are online - Right on the New Yahoo.com > (http://www.yahoo.com/preview) > > _______________________________________________ > SYSLINUX mailing list > Submissions to SYSLINUX at zytor.com > Unsubscribe or set options at: > http://www.zytor.com/mailman/listinfo/syslinux > Please do not send private replies to mailing list traffic. > >
H. Peter Anvin
2006-Nov-14 05:07 UTC
[syslinux] Laptop+SDMMC+Extlinux+Memdisk+Floppy images=headaches
Cristian Savu wrote:> > Actually, the full message is like this: > > some 12-13 lines like: > > e820: 00000000fff800000 0000000000000080000 2 >Could you list those lines? They could be very important.> > Ramdisk at 0x1bda8000, length 0x00168000 > command line: initrd=images/boot_flp.img floppy=0 BOOT_IMAGE=memdisk > Disk is floppy 0, 1440 K, C/H/S = 80/2/18 > Total size needed = 2008 bytes, allocating 2K > Old dos memory at 0x9dc00 (map says 0x9dc00), loading at 0x9d400 > 1588: 0xffff 15E801: 0x3c00 0x1ada > INT 13 08: Success, count = 0, BPT = 0000:0000 > old: int13 = e8a87ab8 int15 = f000f859 > new: int13 = 9d400008 int15 = 92400290 > Loading boot sector... booting... > Starting MS-DOS... > > > and that's all folks, it never goes any further than this... > > Another example, the bootit floppy image also starts booting > but it stops on a black screen with the mouse cursor on it. > Interesting, the cursor can be moved with the touchpad, so > something IS working, but not all the way to the end. > > For conformance I will mention that all images were made with > dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/path/to/image.img > and they are valid because I copied them back to floppies and they > booted fine from a FDD.Do hard disk images boot? -hpa
H. Peter Anvin
2006-Nov-14 05:08 UTC
[syslinux] Laptop+SDMMC+Extlinux+Memdisk+Floppy images=headaches
Cristian Savu wrote:> Hello syslinuxers > > I'm stuck with a scientific problem which gives me headaches:Oh yes, what *version* of syslinux and memdisk are you running? Could you try out 3.32-pre5? -hpa