Syslinux - Oct 2003 - pxelinux+memdisk experience & problem..

hi:
  i try to make some images for pxelinux+memdisk.
the version i try is 2.0.6 and 2.0.7pre5

  for 2.88M floppy image, first i make a 1.44M boot floopy,
then use "winimage" to load the disk and transfer it to
2.88M format, then save the image. it seems a easy way to make
a 2.88M boot image.

  for harddisk image, i use vmware to build a virtual machine
with 20M harddisk, make it boot and put everything on it. then
boot this machine with Mandrake cdrom, enter rescue mode, make
a ramdisk(mkfs.ext2 /dev/ram0;mount /dev/ram0 /mnt/disk), dd the
harddisk(dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/disk/hd.img), ftp hd.img to server.

  both images works fine with pxelinux+memdisk. but i got some little
problems.

  1. i try gzip the image. but memdisk complain about
"bad gzip magic number" and refuse to load. myabe i m doing
something wrong. my procedure is  "gzip dos.img" and get
"dos.img.gz". then  i rename "dos.img.gz" to
"dos.img".

  2. memdisk eat 70-100K low memory. i read from archive it's
because i got a "broken pxe stack" so memdisk can not release.
but i try several pxe bootable desktop & notebook, including
emboot pxe boot disk for vmware. none can release the memory.
so maybe someone can give a clue what pxe stack is good,
then i can give it a try and make sure what's the problem..

   3. a stupid question. can we make floppy image bigger than
2.88M ? it seems not possible, but.. maybe any surprise?

   thanks for any advice!!

Best Regards,
tbsky

tbsky at annsky.com wrote:
> 
>   1. i try gzip the image. but memdisk complain about
> "bad gzip magic number" and refuse to load. myabe i m doing
> something wrong. my procedure is  "gzip dos.img" and get
> "dos.img.gz". then  i rename "dos.img.gz" to
"dos.img".
> 
That should work.  What version of MEMDISK are you using?
>   2. memdisk eat 70-100K low memory. i read from archive it's
> because i got a "broken pxe stack" so memdisk can not release.
> but i try several pxe bootable desktop & notebook, including
> emboot pxe boot disk for vmware. none can release the memory.
> so maybe someone can give a clue what pxe stack is good,
> then i can give it a try and make sure what's the problem..
What version of PXELINUX are you running?  On what platform?  What is
the error code displayed?
>    3. a stupid question. can we make floppy image bigger than
> 2.88M ? it seems not possible, but.. maybe any surprise?
Sure you can.  You can make up your own format just fine.  However,
MEMDISK won't know what geometry to use (since you made it up), so you
have to specify the geometry on the command line.  See the memdisk
documentation.

	-hpa

> tbsky at annsky.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>   try 2.06 & 2.07 pre5. on mandrake linux 9.1. there seems no error
>> code. memdisk just load fine. i try both harddisk & floppy disk
images,
>> with freedos or win98se dos. everything works fine, but with
"mem" i can
>> see that i got 4xx KB after a clean boot. and the total low memory is
>> only 5xx KB.
>>
>
> There will be a message "Failed to free base memory" followed by
an
> error code.  I need to know this in order to see what the problem is.
>
> 	-hpa
  my test environment:
  vmware 4.05 with emboot pxe boot disk,  pxelinux 2.07 pre5.

  with floppy image, the error message is:
......
Ready.
Failed to free base memory, error FF00-0000-F000FE6E

  with harddisk image, there are no error message. the full
  message for harddisk image below:
.......
Ready.
MEMDISK 2.07 2.07-pre5  Copyright 2001-2003 H., Peter Anvin
e820: 0000000000000000 000000000008d800 1
e820: 000000000008d800 0000000000012800 2
e820: 00000000000dc000 0000000000004000 2
e820: 00000000000e4000 000000000001c000 2
e820: 0000000000100000 0000000007df0000 1
e820: 0000000007ef0000 000000000000c000 3
e820: 0000000007efc000 0000000000004000 4
e820: 0000000007f00000 0000000000100000 1
e820: 00000000fec00000 0000000000010000 2
e820: 00000000fee00000 0000000000001000 2
e820: 00000000fffe0000 0000000000020000 2
Ramdisk at 0x06b40000, length 0x1388000
command line: initrd=dos.img keeppxe BOOT_IMAGE=memdisk
MEMDISK: image seems to have fractional end cylinder
Disk is hard disk, 20000 K, C/H/S = 317/2/63
Total size needed = 1436 bytes
Old dos memory at 0x8d800 (map says 0x8d800), loading at 0x8d000
1588: 0xffff 15E801: 0x3c00 0x05b4
INT 13 08: Success. count = 1, BPT = 0000:0000
old: int13 = ec6c25fc  int15 = f000f859
new: int13 = 8d000008  int15 - 8d00023c
Loading boot sector... booting...

tbsky at annsky.com wrote:
> 
>   my test environment:
>   vmware 4.05 with emboot pxe boot disk,  pxelinux 2.07 pre5.
> 
vmware is known broken.

	-hpa

Hello,
> >   vmware 4.05 with emboot pxe boot disk,  pxelinux
> 2.07 pre5.
> 
> vmware is known broken.
do you mean broken in the sense that it does not work
with pxelinux or something else?

kind regards
Dirk


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Hi,

Dirk Haus <sysobpxe at yahoo.de> schrieb am 04.11.03
09:52:54:
> > >   vmware 4.05 with emboot pxe boot disk,  pxelinux
> > 2.07 pre5.
> > 
> > vmware is known broken.
> 
> do you mean broken in the sense that it does not work
> with pxelinux or something else?
vmware doesn't handle PXE roms very well, so pxelinux doesn't have
anything
to talk to. I don't know if anyone managed to get vmware to boot pxelinux
clients,
as far as I know it's still broken. So please take some real PC with a
pxe-capable
network card and try this first.

Regards,

Josef
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Dirk Haus wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> 
>>>  vmware 4.05 with emboot pxe boot disk,  pxelinux
>>
>>2.07 pre5.
>>
>>vmware is known broken.
> 
> 
> do you mean broken in the sense that it does not work
> with pxelinux or something else?
> 
It's known not to allow memory to be released correctly.

Unfortunately the memory release procedure is complex, and many firmware 
vendors seem like they don't care, and thus broken.

	-hpa