Syslinux - Oct 2007 - DOS/Freedos: Can't use mkfloppyimg.sh or mkdiskimage for +8M images ( Murali (????? ?????) )

Sorry for the delay, I should not send email on an holiday week-end.

I'll try to answer all the questions by explaining what does work
for me right now, and what I'd like to do.

I have a script to create the a USB stick or an ISO image. The boot
media contains many DOS images, and I use versamenu to select one
of them.  If my DOS image is smaller than 8megs, everything is working
fine as expected.

To create my dos image, I did use Murali
script and pick the freedos floppy image from
http://www.fdos.org/bootdisks/autogen/FDSTD.144.gz

I modify cwhosthe script, put FDSTD.144 as the OLDIMAGE
I set NEWIMAGE to dexter1.img
I set the SIZEMB to 10

The script return the following information
Your floppy image is in dexter1.img. When using it in iso/pxelinux, dont forget
to add
"floppy c=10 s=32 h=64" to the argument of memdisk

I modify syslinux.cfg/isolinux.cfg and create a menu entry 
label Dexter-bios8217-bmc146
   menu label Dexter Bios:8217  BMC:146
   KERNEL /kernel/memdisk
   append initrd=/initrd/dexter1.img floppy c=10 s=32 h=64

When I try to boot, the system hang. You could see a screenshot at
http://picasaweb.google.com/gaetanlord/Public/photo#5119197248621294290

But if I do the same with "SIZEMB=8", this does work but freedos
report the following message

WARNING: Using suspect partition PRI:1 FS 0e: with calculated values
         175-9-63 instead of 21-254-63

But the same message also apply if I use the 1.4M freedos image itself.


Probably something change, because in Murali document
http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~gmurali/gui/isodos.html
he mention being able to do 10M image.

The syslinux doc talk about mkdiskimage to create disk image. I try
to use it without success.  What I did is the following

mkdiskimage  /tmp/dexter1.img 2 255 63  (this create a 16M image)
mount -o loop,offset=32256 /tmp/dexter1.img /mnt/loop
++ I copy my dos file in /mnt/loop
I change my syslinux.cfg to be
   label 1Dexter-bios8217-bmc146
   menu label Dexter Bios:8217  BMC:146
   KERNEL /kernel/memdisk
   append initrd=/initrd/dexter1.img harddisk c=2 s=63 h=255

But when I boot the imagem the system hang, like what you could see in 
this snapshot.
http://picasaweb.google.com/gaetanlord/Public/photo#5119361870422782706

Thank for any pointer that could help to solve this problem







> The mkfloppyimg.sh script [
> http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~gmurali/gui/files/mkfloppyimg.sh] does the
> following
> 
> Input: Old bootable DOS image, Size of New Image
> 
> * Use mkdosfs to create a new image of specified size
> * Mount both old and new images
> * Copy contents from old to new (using cp)
> * Unmount both images
> * dd the first 512 bytes from old to new EXCEPT bytes 11 to 61 (inclusive)
> * Prints the C/H/S values to be used with memdisk [Gets the values for
> mkdosfs output]
> 
> I have used it before to create a 10MB image, but that was a long while
ago.
> May be mkdosfs has changed its output?
> 
> - Murali
> 
> On 10/5/07, H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
> >
> > Gaetan Lord wrote:
> > >
> > > I use the mkfloppyimg.sh script and it is working fine up until
8M in
> > > size, if I go higher than this, it doesn't work, and I
can't boot the
> > > image. I did try to do the same with mkdiskimage without success,
I
> > > probably miss something in the way to create the image. My
question is
> > > simple, is there any recipe to create a +8M dos/freedos image I
could
> > > use with syslinux.
> > >
> >
> > It would probably help if you explained what you actually did.
> >
> >         -hpa
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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.
> >
> >
> 
> 
> --
> Murali
> 
> ?????? ????? ????, ???????? ??????
> (What we know is only a handful, what we dont is the rest of the world)
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 12:27:59 -0700
> From: " Murali (????? ?????) "  <murali at google.com>
> Subject: Re: [syslinux] DOS/Freedos: Can't use mkfloppyimg.sh or
>        mkdiskimage     for +8M images
> To: "For discussion of SYSLINUX and tftp-hpa" <syslinux at
zytor.com>
> Message-ID:
>        <ad7aea780710071227q59531236t71d8477a7583b48d at
mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> On 10/5/07, Gaetan Lord <email at gaetanlord.ca> wrote:
> >
> > Hi
> >
> > Maybe HPA or Murali could help me with this one, or anyone who got the
> > following working. I spend numerous hours reading the list and
> > googling without success.
> >
> > I'd like to create a bootable USB stick and  CDROM that will do
the
> > following.
> >
> > I will have a menu, from which I could pick a specific dos image (not
> > partition). The dos images could have up to 20Megs in size.  The goal
> > is to have a  configuration that will contains tools for different
> > type of hardware. To ease the process, I want to automate image
> > creation (floppy or harddisk), and use it with memdisk.
> >
> > I use the mkfloppyimg.sh script and it is working fine up until 8M in
> > size, if I go higher than this, it doesn't work, and I can't
boot the
> > image. I did try to do the same with mkdiskimage without success, I
> > probably miss something in the way to create the image. My question is
> > simple, is there any recipe to create a +8M dos/freedos image I could
> > use with syslinux.
> >
> >
> Which of the following happens
> (1) mkfloppyimg.sh is failing and not creating the image
> (2) memdisk is not booting the created image
> (3) memdisk is booting the image, but DOS complains while booting.
> 
> Also what is the exact error message you are seeing?
> 
> I am assuming you gave the "floppy" and "c/h/s" values
to memdisk, since
> otherwise you would not have been able to boot a 8MB image.
> 
> - Murali
-- 
Gaetan Lord, un etre humain parmis tant d'autre, et unique pour sa
bien-aim?e.

The relative speed of a computer, regardless of CPU architecture, is
inversely proportional to the number of Microsoft products installed.
   -- From a Slashdot.org post

Gaetan linny Lord wrote:
> 
> When I try to boot, the system hang. You could see a screenshot at
> http://picasaweb.google.com/gaetanlord/Public/photo#5119197248621294290
> 
> But if I do the same with "SIZEMB=8", this does work but freedos
report the following message
> 
> WARNING: Using suspect partition PRI:1 FS 0e: with calculated values
>          175-9-63 instead of 21-254-63
> 
> But the same message also apply if I use the 1.4M freedos image itself.
This implied that freedos detected a hard disk image.  It would be good 
to get the memdisk output messages for this.
> But when I boot the imagem the system hang, like what you could see in 
> this snapshot.
> http://picasaweb.google.com/gaetanlord/Public/photo#5119361870422782706
You're using memdisk 3.36 in EDD mode, which is known broken.  Upgrade 
to 3.52.

	-hpa