Syslinux - Jan 2014 - USB boot problems on Gigabyte GA-M55Plus-S3G

In message <BLU0-SMTP47F18ED7837B2CE7C672C88BBE0 at phx.gbl>, 
Ady <ady-sf at hotmail.com> wrote:
>@Ronald,
>
>I have to admit I am a little bit frustrated.
lol

Join the club!

I've invested hours and hours and hours on this little project, and
all I have at the end is a board that _still_ has a brain damaged
BIOS that won't boot things that everything else I own will happily
boot.  I could (and probably should and probably will) replace this
board with a newer and better one for about $55 USD, which is less
than what one single hour of my time is worth.
>Are you really abandoning the tests?
Having asked for help here, I felt obliged to provide much information
in return.  Plus I always like to be supportive of free open software
projects (and have been already, for nearly 25 years).  But there's
got to be a limit.  Unfortunately, I did actually have a few other
projects already on my plate that I needed to get done this lifetime.
>Your last email mentions several different procedures you tried, but 
>not the one I suggested after extracting Clonezilla:
>d:
>cd d:\utils\win32\
>syslinux64.exe --mbr --active --directory /syslinux/ --install d:
I'm not seeing the point of carrying out this additional experiment.

As I said, I have a perfectly good RUFUS-generated bootable FreeDOS
USB stick.  It boots perfectly in my other systems but doesn't even
show up in the Boot Priority list of the GA-M55PLUS-S3G!  Isn't that
enough evidence, even just all by itself, to convince us all that 
the GA-M55PLUS-S3G BIOS is hopelessly brain damaged?  If not, then
combine it with the fact that I also have Clonezilla *and* UBCD *and*
OpenELEC sticks that also boot just fine everywhere except on the
GA-M55PLUS-S3G, and the verdict is clear, I think.  This board is
worth any more of my time, and most probably isn't worth any more
of your's either.
>By the time I am writing this, the issue about the "LBA" flag has 
>already been answered by others. Unfortunately, I wasn't available so 
>to answer you before. It would had saved them some time.
It's OK.  I myself actually *had* no question about that LBA flag.
Others raised questions about it, but personally, I have just been
trying to report facts... as many of them as I could gather... in
an effort to try to be responsive to all of the queries that have
been posted from all of you guys who actually work on and understand
all this stuff.  (Boot loaders are *not* a part of *my* forte.  Like
not at all.)   I don't know what the LBA flag is and quite frankly
I don't even care.  I just reported that GParted was saying that a
RUFUS-generated stick had it set to "on", and that my (uneducated)
guess was that this was important and significant.
>Just for generic information, the partition IDs used by MS depend not 
>only on the filesystem, but also on which version of DOS/Windows 
>supports it. And when I say "supports it", I actually mean the
fdisk
>plus format utilities that came with each version. The reasons for 
>this are off-topic now.
Thank you.  Yes, I gleened from earlier posts in this thread that
there are different system ID byte values, depending on whether the
partition contents should be addressed using LBA or not.  (Not that
I even understand much of this LBA versus C/H/S stuff.  I don't.
I only understand this stuff well enough, in general, to try to
personally stay well and far away from dealing with it all, as much
as I can, leaving it all instead to folks like the smart people on
this list, who understand it all far better than I ever will.)
>There is one fact that I know: your USB drive *is* potentially 
>bootable in this particular system. I know it because of your own 
>emails.
I agree that *in theory* (since I can at least partially boot Win7
from/via USB) there is a possibility that I could take some USB
device, produced by some nice tool like RUFUS... or in some other
manner... and fiddle and diddle it, for a little while or a long
while, in one step or maybe several, and that I might eventually
get it to boot on/with this motherboard.  But what's the point?
It will never just work "out of the box".
>All we need is to use the correct set of files, with the correct 
>version of Syslinux, with the correct command line to install 
>SYSLINUX in the adequate directory.
Again I ask "What is the point?"

Are people going to start releasing special releases of Clonezilla,
UBCD, and OpenELEC... not to mention Rufus... that have been tailored
specially so that they will work on this one brain dead motherboard?
I don't think so.
>Regarding the USB not being listed, it can happen for several 
>reasons. I was requesting from you to use F12 from POST, every time. 
>If you can't find the specific USB drive the first time, have you 
>tried again F2 and looking under a different category?
I *have* managed, thus far, to extract at least a little relevant
information from Gigabyte tech support about all this.  The last
message I got from them was completely clear and unambiguous.
If and only if a device appears in the Boot Priority list (reached
via the BIOS Setup screens which are in turn reached via DEL during
POST) then the board can potentially boot from it... assuming all
else is well, e.g. that it actually contains something bootable.
If however a given device DOES NOT appear in the BIOS Boot Priority
list, then it CANNOT be booted from.  Period.
>I hope this email encourages you to try the procedure and report 
>back.
Thank you for your kindness and efforts, but no, not really.  It just
doesn't appear to be worth any further investment of time at this point.

Why don't you talk to that Rufus guy?  If he produces a new release
which he thinks might (out-of-the-box and with no fiddling, or hex
editing, or any such stuff) allow me to boot to FreeDOS from a USB
using this motherboard, I'll be more than happy to download it and
give it a try.  In the absence of that, my offer to donate this board
to you (as soon as I get a replacement) stands.  You can then do as
you wish with it to your heart's content.


Regards,
rfg

In message <35321.1389823644 at server1.tristatelogic.com>, I wrote:

Ady>I hope this email encourages you to try the procedure and report 
Ady>back.
>
>Thank you for your kindness and efforts, but no, not really.  It just
>doesn't appear to be worth any further investment of time at this point.
To further clarify, I still do have a pending query queued up (via
e-mail) to the Gigabyte tech support folks.  Their last e-mail to me
said that yes, this board *can* boot *something* from USB, but they
were not specific in saying what it could boot.

I wrote back to them explaining that I have been unable to (fully)
boot Win7... because of the Win7 no-early-USB-driver-loading problem...
and that I have been unable to boot Clonezilla and UBCD and OpenELEC
from USB sticks attached to this system (for reasons that are still
not abundantly clear, at least to me).  I then asked them, quite
pointedly, what specific thing (or things) THEY have been able to
successfully boot via USB with this board.  I am still awating
their response, but so far their silence is deafening.

If and when they (Gigabyte tech support) ever tell me of some package
or product that they claim will in fact boot (via USB) on this board,
then I will independently test their assertions myself, and if I can,
in fact, get whatever they used for testing to boot on this board
(via USB) then I will report back here.  You guys can then tear apart
(and reverse engineer) whatever that bootable thing is and figure out
why it can boot on this board, while nothing else can.

After that, if anyone wants to produce a test image that I can simply
download and directly dd to a USB stick, then I will be happy to test
that too.  However to the best of my knowledge, bits are bits, and if
nobody can produce something that can simply be dd'd to a USB stick
and then booted on this motherboard, then nobody can produce *anything*
that will work with this motherboard.  If any of you folks can produce
something that actually works with this screwy board, then I see no
reason why you shouldn't be able to create a simple, dd-able image from
that thing, whatever it is.  I, as an ordinary end-luser, shouldn't
have to employ specializsed install tools, nor should I have to break
out my hex editor.  Bits are bits, an image is an image, and a USB
stick is a USB stick.  If you can get all of the bits lined up the
way they need to be for this board, then dd should work, but if you
can't, then nothing will.  (That's my opinion, and worth what you
paid for it.)


Regards,
rfg


P.S.  In the thin little hardcopy manual that came packed with this
board, there are numerous screen shots of the various BIOS setup
screens.  In the shots of the screen where you get to select the
1st, 2nd, and 3rd boot devices, an entry for "USB-HDD" is *not*
present among the options.  Such an option *is* however present
among the BIOS setup options on/in my actual board, leading me to
believe that the addition, to the BIOS, of support for booting from
USB was a last minute revision to the BIOS for this board.  Did this
new option receive adequate testing, prior to rollout, by Gigabyte?
I think the evidence that I've already posted about all this speaks
for itself.

Hi,

(mixing statements from various mails)

Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
> To repeat, I already do know exactly how to set or unset the bootable
> flag.
Sorry for not getting this right on the first reading.

I currently understand that a set active/bootable flag prevents the
USB stick from showing up in BIOS, and that without that flag it
begins to boot but fails with files not found.

> After that, if anyone wants to produce a test image that I can simply
> download and directly dd to a USB stick,
> [other mail]
> Well, I now have a _minimal_ install of ArchLinux
If you installed Archlinux from an ISO image, then this is probably
a test candidate for USB stick. 

E.g. archlinux-2013.11.01-dual.iso contains an isohybrid MBR
which makes it suitable for dd'ing on the whole device (not
into a partition or slice of the device).
On my olde FreeBSD 8, the whole stick appears as /dev/da0.

After copying to stick, /sbin/fdisk shows 2 MBR partitions:
Number 1 has the active/bootable flag set. So you will have
to unset it on the stick.
Partition number 2 is for EFI booting and embedded inside
partition 1. Some people frown on that layout. If there is
suspicion that your mainboard hates it, then you may delete
the second partition. It marks the content of a single file
in the image (/EFI/archiso/efiboot.img) which you will not
need with PC-BIOS.

Another candidate image would be
 
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/debian-7.3.0-i386-netinst.iso
which would have the advantage of not containing EFI/GPT stuff,
that might introduce more confusion. (I could not figure out
whether your mad board claims to be capable of EFI.)

> I, as an ordinary end-luser, shouldn't
> have to employ specializsed install tools,
>From the user point of view you would indeed be best off if you
returned the board to the seller and demand a different one.
Its firmware is ill. No doubt. Its reaction on the active/boot
flag clearly indicates it.

But we bystanders are interested in learning how to succeed
even with this miserable hardware. One never knows when one
of our users steps into the same puddle.
So we use you as probe, as long as you are willing to boldly
go where no human has gone before.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

> After that, if anyone wants to produce a test image that I can simply
> download and directly dd to a USB stick, then I will be happy to test
> that too.
To be honest, the last instructions I posted were simpler and shorter 
than the rest of the tests, and even shorter than writing the emails 
:).

Anyway, if you are sincerely willing to dd an image, I am willing to 
prepare and upload a simple "test" image to dd to your USB device, 
with the following features:

_ One FAT32 (lba) "smallish" partition.
_ Alternative MBR, with bootable code but with no "active" partition.
_ The only intention of this image should be to successfully boot 
SYSLINUX 6.03-pre1 from your USB drive and then show a "hello world" 
message.

Are you willing to dd such image (*not* using Windows OS) and provide 
feedback?

Regards,
Ady.