Syslinux - May 2009 - Booting firmware harddisk image with memdisk fails

Hi,

I once again have a problem with memdisk failing to boot a harddisk image 
to update my Thinkpad X200s firmware. I extracted the harddisk image 
from the eltorito type 4 ISO using the isobar tool.

Then I added memdisk using this image as initrd to my grub, rebooted and it
boots into PC DOS and then freezes (ctrl-alt-del still works to reboot the 
system).

Inside Qemu however it works fine and boots into the firmware update tool. 
So it seems yet another BIOS+memdisk issue.

I tried the latest 3.81pre9 yesterday as well as RHEL5's default 3.11, and 
they both freeze the same way. I also tried all the possible options for 
memdisk (although not any combination).

Is there a specific version I can try to see if this is a regression ? Is 
there something I can provide to help you debug this problem ? Is it 
possible some BIOS option can change the behaviour of memdisk ?

I noticed that on ThinkWiki someone (the author) did exactly the same 
thing on his X200 without a problem. But may have a different 
BIOS firmware/syslinux/BIOS options.

 	http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/BIOS_update_without_optical_disk

Let me know,
-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]

i did it sucessfully on my t400 with syslinux 3.80 (built form source on a 
gentoo machine)

Michael

On Friday 22 May 2009 11:10:38 Dag Wieers wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I once again have a problem with memdisk failing to boot a harddisk image
> to update my Thinkpad X200s firmware. I extracted the harddisk image
> from the eltorito type 4 ISO using the isobar tool.
>
> Then I added memdisk using this image as initrd to my grub, rebooted and it
> boots into PC DOS and then freezes (ctrl-alt-del still works to reboot the
> system).
>
> Inside Qemu however it works fine and boots into the firmware update tool.
> So it seems yet another BIOS+memdisk issue.
>
> I tried the latest 3.81pre9 yesterday as well as RHEL5's default 3.11,
and
> they both freeze the same way. I also tried all the possible options for
> memdisk (although not any combination).
>
> Is there a specific version I can try to see if this is a regression ? Is
> there something I can provide to help you debug this problem ? Is it
> possible some BIOS option can change the behaviour of memdisk ?
>
> I noticed that on ThinkWiki someone (the author) did exactly the same
> thing on his X200 without a problem. But may have a different
> BIOS firmware/syslinux/BIOS options.
>
>  	http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/BIOS_update_without_optical_disk
>
> Let me know,

On Friday, May 22, 2009, 11:10:38, Dag Wieers wrote:
> Then I added memdisk using this image as initrd to my grub, rebooted and it
> boots into PC DOS and then freezes (ctrl-alt-del still works to reboot the
> system).
I noticed that PC-DOS freezes on some systems when booted with
memdisk, too (and btw, this has happened at least since
syslinux/memdisk 2.13).

I suggest you try to create another bootable disk with a different
brand of DOS, and copy the files for firmware flashing from your
existing disk, it'll probably work then.

-- 
< Jernej Simon?i? ><><><><><
http://eternallybored.org/ >

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
       -- (Sam) Brown's Law

Oops!  There's an erroneous space in that command-line I gave below,
plus you should call the file thinibm.hdd instead of thinibm.fat, in
order to clearly describe its reality.  - Shao

-----Original Message-----
From: Miller, Shao 
Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 15:38
To: 'For discussion of Syslinux and tftp-hpa'
Subject: RE: [syslinux] Booting firmware harddisk image with memdisk
fails

Very simple answer: The .ISO was created with Nero, and the HDD
"image"
is actually just enough to boot, then the rest of the sectors are on the
rest of the .ISO.  Extracting just this truncated HDD "image" does not
have everything in it.  Is has some of the files in the image's
partition's root directory, but nothing in the Flash\ directory, plus
some of the root files might be corrupted.  To _really_ extract this HDD
image, do:

dd if=6duj 08uc.iso of=thinibm.fat skip=108

(108 is the HDD image's starting sector, 27, times 4 times as many
512-byte sectors in a 2048-byte ODD sector.)

Enjoy!

- Shao Miller

-----Original Message-----
From: syslinux-bounces at zytor.com [mailto:syslinux-bounces at zytor.com] On
Behalf Of Dag Wieers
Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 15:32
To: For discussion of Syslinux and tftp-hpa
Subject: Re: [syslinux] Booting firmware harddisk image with memdisk
fails

On Sun, 24 May 2009, Miller, Shao wrote:
> Sorry Dag, I actually have no idea if this problem unit actually has
an
> HDD, as I couldn't be bothered to look it up, so I was assuming that
it
> did, and trying to get your QEmu test to mimic the hardware more
> closely.  Techincally, QEmu + PXELINUX would have been the most
accurate
> mimcry of the scenario, even beyond the test I suggested.  Instead,
I'll
> download the thing and report the correct geometry and any other
> findings.  - Shao
I verified the C/H/S working inside Qemu, and I forced it as well when 
booting the X200s and it still fails to boot. (btw C/H/S was 23/64/32)

So as I expected, memdisk works exactly the same wrt. C/H/S inside Qemu
as 
on the real iron. So the problem is definitely something else.

I did notice that the pause parameter does not work with memdisk, which
is 
unfortunate because it would help comparing the output.

-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]

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> I can only conclude that it has to do with a BIOS option or hardware
> configuration that triggers a bug in memdisk. I went over a lot of BIOS
> options, and changed some options that should not have any impact, to
> no avail.
>
> Peter, do you have anything worthwhile to add that I can test ?
>
> The harddisk image I am testing comes from the type 4 eltorito ISO at:
>
> 	http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-70348.html
>
> and can be extracted either with the isobar utility or with a patched
> geteltorito script. (both come packaged with RPMforge)
hi, I am the guy who made that isobar/geteltorito patch. Since you have
an ultrabase, I assume that you've also decided not to go cheap with a
regular harddrive and bought an SSD for your X200s. Did you try to put a
regular SATA harddrive, and setting AHCI mode on/off in BIOS (I have it
"On")? May be memdisk's hijacked INT13h has problems with
accessing SSD?

>>> Did you try to put a
>>>  regular SATA harddrive, and setting AHCI mode on/off in BIOS (I
have it
>>>  "On")? May be memdisk's hijacked INT13h has problems
with accessing SSD?
>>
>> I have an SSD and have AHCI on. I will try this evening to see if that
is the
>> problem.
>>
>> But if accessing the disk after memdisk is a problem, maybe it could be
>> useful to disable physical disks altogether with an option in memdisk.
I
>> don't know how hard it is to do that, but it definitely would be
useful.
>
> As Peter suggests, it is not related. I tried today on a friend's T60
with
> exactly the same problem. This system has no AHCI or SSD.
>
> However I do think it is related to disk access since in the early tests
> 2004/2005 freebsd and linux images clearly indicated problems scanning or
> accessing the disk when using memdisk.
Hm.. I tried to boot http://gag.sourceforge.net floppy image with
memdisk, and it boots even when  booting from a USB stick!
However it is not a usual floppy with FAT, looks that since it has
only one application, it does not need any filesystem.
May be Peter can look at its bootloader and see why FreeDOS/PC-DOS fails?