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

Hi,

I did found the problem, a combination of 2 factor.

1- I taught that I did install the latest syslinux, but in fact it was
the 3.36 version.
2- Thank to kevin Connelly, he point me to a problem he got with
mkdosfs command. The default FAT16 do not work, but the FAT12 do. By
adding -F12 to the mkdosfs command fix the problem. The default F16 do
seem to work for <8M floppy image.

Thank you


On 10/9/07, Gaetan linny Lord <email at gaetanlord.ca>
wrote:
>
> 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 Lord wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I did found the problem, a combination of 2 factor.
> 
> 1- I taught that I did install the latest syslinux, but in fact it was
> the 3.36 version.
> 2- Thank to kevin Connelly, he point me to a problem he got with
> mkdosfs command. The default FAT16 do not work, but the FAT12 do. By
> adding -F12 to the mkdosfs command fix the problem. The default F16 do
> seem to work for <8M floppy image.
> 
The default is probably FAT12 for < 8 MB.

I didn't know FreeDOS had the "FAT12 only on floppies" limitation,
I
thought only older versions of MS-DOS did.

	-hpa