Syslinux - Oct 2008 - Failure to boot isohybrid image from USB stick

Hi,

i did not succeed to get my test computer (Asus A7V8X-X
of 2004) to boot from an isohybrid image.
I tried 
 
http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/RIPLinux-7.0-non-X.iso
which is obviously isohybrid enabled.

The system has a "Promise Ultra 133 TX2" IDE controller
which supercedes the mainboard BIOS.
To make the system react on the USB stick i set boot
option "USB ZIP" on both BIOSes. (Unclear whether the
mainboard BIOS is in effect at all after the IDE
controller takes over.)
None of the BIOSes offered me any other USB boot
option (like "USB HDD" or so).

The outcome with RIPLinux-7.0-non-X.iso :

 to USB via RIP's mkusb.sh as FAT:    boots
 to USB via dd of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
  unprocessed RIP .iso image:         stalls
  by syslinux-3.72/util/isohybrid:    stalls
  by xorriso-0.2.9:                   stalls
  
"stall" looks like what one usually experiences by
a non-bootable floppy in the drive at boot time:
a blinking text cursor and no boot progress.

Any proposals what to do in order to find out
what is wrong with isohybrid MBRs on that machine ?

-------------------------------------------------

The development version 0.2.9 of xorriso is now
able to perform the operation of
syslinux-3.72/util/isohybrid on the fly while
generating the ISO image.
By default an MBR is generated if util/isohybrid
would not abort. A missing magic number in
isolinux.bin prevents MBR generation but does not
prevent the ISO image generation with El Torito.

The MBR feature is ready for multi-session on
overwriteable media (USB stick, disk file, DVD+RW,
BR-RE, ...). On sequential media (CD-R[W], DVD-R,
DVD+R) the MBR can only be written by the first
session.

-------------------------------------------------

MBR generation has been tested against a mock-up of
the perl script isohybrid with various sets of
ISO size and isolinux.bin LBA.
Except the random $id all bytes did match.

It has also been tested with RIPLinux-7.0-non-X.iso.
xorriso took the files from the mounted RIP image
and added its own El Torito and MBR.
I compared the MBR produced by xorriso and the MBR
which was produced by syslinux-3.72/util/isohybrid
for the same image (after its end padding was removed).
Again, only $id differed.

-------------------------------------------------

Interested testers please download:
  http://scdbackup.sourceforge.net/xorriso-0.2.9.tar.gz

Example of writing a prepared file tree under /mnt
as ISO image directly onto USB stick at /dev/sdb:

  xorriso -as mkisofs -o /dev/sdb \
     -b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin -c boot/isolinux/boot.cat \
     -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \
     /mnt

resp.:

  xorriso -outdev stdio:/dev/sdb \
          -blank as_needed \
          -boot_image isolinux dir=/boot/isolinux \
          -map /mnt /

The MBR feature may be disabled by adding option
  -as mkisofs ... isolinux_mbr=off ...
resp.
  -boot_image isolinux isohybrid=off

Default is mode "auto". Mode "on" would prevent the
ISO image generation if no isohybrid magic number can
be found in isolinux.bin.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Selon Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup at gmx.net>:
> Hi,
>
> i did not succeed to get my test computer (Asus A7V8X-X
> of 2004) to boot from an isohybrid image.
> I tried
>
Wich bios version did you have actually?
With the bios version I originally had on a Asus A7V8X-E motherboard, I was only
able to boot from an usb-fdd like image.
With the lastest bios, I was able to boot with usb-fdd, usb-hdd and usb-zip
images.

Tests have been at the time of 3.11 version or just after.
I haven't yet tested with isohybrid.

Gilles

Hi,

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>
http://live.debian.net/cdimage/lenny-builds/current/i386/iso-cd/debian-live-
> lenny-i386-standard.iso
That one is not isohybrid-ready yet. Your script
refuses with:
  syslinux-3.72/utils/isohybrid:
  /dvdbuffer/debian-live-lenny-i386-standard.iso:
  bootloader is missing isolinux.bin hybrid signature

What i want to test is an ISO image that is (except
the random $id) a byte-by-byte copy of an image that
is proven to have booted on some system.


The other significant test would be if somebody could
successfully boot from USB stick. 
 
http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/RIPLinux-7.2-non-X.iso
E.g. copied to /dev/sdb by

  dd if=RIPLinux-7.2-non-X.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

(This overwrites partitioning and filesystem on the stick)

The image already has an isohybrid MBR but one may apply
utils/isohybrid once more before copying to stick.
Both ways did not work for me.
If it boots for somebody then i do not have to look
for any other proven image.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas