Hi, I'm working on making an USB flash disk bootable and have succeeded in booting Linux using syslinux from disk in USB-HDD mode. Is there a way to do it in USB-FDD mode, possibly also using syslinux as a bootloader? Thanks in advance. -- [ Adam Wysocki :: www.gophi.rotfl.pl :: +48889004440 ] [ Software Development Department, ArcaBit Sp. z o.o ] [ Ul. Fortuny 9 :: 01-339 Warszawa :: www.arcabit.pl ]
On 1/18/06, Adam Wysocki via ArcaBit <gophi at arcabit.pl> wrote:> Hi, > > I'm working on making an USB flash disk bootable and have succeeded in > booting Linux using syslinux from disk in USB-HDD mode. Is there a way > to do it in USB-FDD mode, possibly also using syslinux as a bootloader? > > Thanks in advance. > > -- > [ Adam Wysocki :: www.gophi.rotfl.pl :: +48889004440 ] > [ Software Development Department, ArcaBit Sp. z o.o ] > [ Ul. Fortuny 9 :: 01-339 Warszawa :: www.arcabit.pl ] > > _______________________________________________ > 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. > >Why are you trying to do that? I don't think it will work if USB-FDD is supposed to mean the standard 1.44MB 2x drives that plug into usb. Are you perhaps having problems with the drive not working in all systems (especially since some dumb bios manufacturers don't even bother to add usb-hdd support.) If so, you might want to look at using USB-ZIP instead. There is some info in the syslinux archive about doing this. A tool is included in there to help with this. The basic idea is to repartition the flash drive so that it has the same sort of geometry as a zip disk, fooling a dumb bios into thinking you actually have a zip disk rather than a flash drive.
El Mi?rcoles, 18 de Enero de 2006 16:30, Adam Wysocki via ArcaBit escribi?:> Hi, > > I'm working on making an USB flash disk bootable and have succeeded in > booting Linux using syslinux from disk in USB-HDD mode. Is there a way > to do it in USB-FDD mode, possibly also using syslinux as a bootloader?My experience: I was able to boot in USB-FDD mode only my real USB Floppy drive (1.44), and my USB-TO-IDE Enclosure for a laptop Hard Drive was only able to boot on bioses that support USB-HDD mode. Others USB enclosures that my bios does not report as USB-TO-IDE and REPORTS as MASS-STORAGE-DEVICE not allways works even the BIOS has support for USB-HDD. For booting with my Card Reader, I was able to boot in USB-ZIP mode formatting the cards with one single partition. for flash drives, the same procedure using mkbootfat & syslinux, (published on this list). Some flash drives like Kingston Traveller has something wrong in their partition tables, the main data are moved forward in the drive about 16, 32 or 64 sectors of 512 bytes (diferent models), so it does not matter if we wipe out the original partition structure and use as a drive with or without partition table on whatever system, if you do that on that media you got a super compatible flash drive. Booting my Gentoo Live DVD iso on my USB Hard drive is not always posible, cause the BIOSES then I was able to boot the ISO with a small CD-ROM that founds later the drive with proper drivers and so on. Did you find a BIOS upgrade, for your boards? I was able to boot with pen drives on one mo.bo. jus after making a bios upgrade :P> Thanks in advance.-- Gustavo Guillermo P?rez Compunauta uLinux www.compunauta.com
Starting with 3.20-pre6 there is a script included which generates the C code to create the complex menu from a ".menu file". You can specify menus and submenus, user authentication, user permissions, context sensitive help and the like using just the .menu file. Check out the "test.menu" and "test2.menu" in the "menu" subdirectory for examples. Since this has not been tested heavily (only tested with the provided sample files), please create your own .menu files and let me know of any bugs. - Murali