[syslinux] syslinux + freedos + bochs

ganapathy murali krishnan
Mon, 25 Apr 2005 18:14:04 -0000

[Last time I sent this email, it ended up inside another thread. So I am
sending it again]

I am trying to install syslinux inside bochs and I am having weird
issues. Here is what I did

01) Install bochs
02) Download fdos (10MB hard disk image)
03) bochs now boots into freedos without any issues
04) use bximage (part of bochs) to create a floppy.img
05) boot into freedos (via bochs) and format A:
06) quit bochs
07) run make on syslinux sources
08) configure mtools to  interpret floppy.img as A:
09) copy syslinux.com and ldlinux.sys to floppy.img (using mtools)
10) boot into freedos (via bochs)
11) At this point I see syslinux.com as well as ldlinux.sys in A:
12) I make a backup of ldlinux.sys to backup.sys (copy command in FreeDOS)
12) Now I execute "syslinux a:" and get a usage message "syslinux
[-sfma] drive: [bootsectfile]"
     even though my syntax seems to be correct
13) I now try "syslinux -s a:" and get an error message "cannot
read
ldlinux.sys".
14) If I look at the directory contents, ldlinux.sys is no longer there!
15) When I try to copy backup.sys to ldlinux.sys and I get an error
saying the file exists
16) Now I see that ldlinux.sys has been made hidden (dir /a lists it)
but it has zero size.

I can provide any other information you need. Also, can I install
syslinux on C: directly?


I have tried using bochs on Linux as well as Windows. Also syslinux 3.07
as well as the latest 3.08-pre*, results in the same problem.
Is there some documentation somewhere on how to prepare a SYSLINUX image
for use with bochs, or better still an image which I can download and
use to test my COM32 code.

- Murali