Syslinux - Nov 2008 - Syslinux 3.70 - BSS DOS boot says: "Could not find kernel Image: linux".

Hello, I'm trying to create and boot a Win98SE-DOS OS through Hard Disk
emulation. My src files are from a Win98SE 1440K floppy image file, with a x86
boot sector (dl'd from the net - I have no floppy drive and a slow net link
3.2KB).

I don't know what to put into the partition boot record of my image and how
to load dos.bss properly (the docs explain for floppy images not for HD images).
Could someone help. I don't have a fast link so I can't download lots of
stuff and I have no physical floppy disk present on any of my two machines
(Celeron 400Mhz and Cyrix 233 - acts as my test client)

Can I use the COM option in Syslinux to boot MSDOS directly by skipping the boot
loader bit and running IBMBIO.COM in PCDOS.. or some other file in Win98SE-DOS

I tried the following (what am I doing wrong??):
mkdiskimage testImage 60 16 63
(-F was grumbling about not enough clusters even though i set fat_bits=16 in
mtools.conf - for some reason..)

losetup -o 32256 /dev/loop0 testImage
mount /dev/loop0 /mnt
cp -R /dosImageMountPoint/* /MyImageMntPoint/

dd if=~/Winb98SE.IMA of=dos.bss count=1 bs=512
cp dos.bss /MyImageMntPoint/
cp syslinux.cfg /MyImageMntPoint/
cat syslinux.cfg
LABEL PCDOS/Ghost Boot - Console Connect
      SAY Loading: DOS Boot Loader.....
      TIMEOUT 100
      BSS dos.bss

(TIMEOUT doesn't seem to be working.. I get:
"Could not find kernel image: linux", instantly!)

.../mtools/syslinux  -o 32256 testImage

qemu testImage, result (hand typed - abbreviated ):
Options apmbios pcibios eltorito

ata0 master: QEMU HardDisk ATA7 HardDisk (29 MBytes)
ata1 master: QEMU CDROM ATAPI-4 CD-Rom/DVD-Rom

Booting from Hard Disk...

SYSLINUX 3.70 0x490fedad EBIOS [etc...]
Loading: DOS Boot Loader......
Could not find kernel image: linux
boot:
[repeats]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 10:39 AM, Radio Tron <paleywiener at yahoo.com>
wrote:
> Hello, I'm trying to create and boot a Win98SE-DOS OS through Hard Disk
emulation. My src files are from a Win98SE 1440K floppy image file, with a x86
boot sector (dl'd from the net - I have no floppy drive and a slow net link
3.2KB).
>
> I don't know what to put into the partition boot record of my image and
how to load dos.bss properly (the docs explain for floppy images not for HD
images). Could someone help. I don't have a fast link so I can't
download lots of stuff and I have no physical floppy disk present on any of my
two machines (Celeron 400Mhz and Cyrix 233 - acts as my test client)
>
Hmm... it does but possibly some of the finer points might be
missing(saying procedure is identical).
>
> Can I use the COM option in Syslinux to boot MSDOS directly by skipping the
boot loader bit and running IBMBIO.COM in PCDOS.. or some other file in
Win98SE-DOS
>
I think that's the intention behind obtaining the boot sector from the
floppy image.
> cat syslinux.cfg
> LABEL PCDOS/Ghost Boot - Console Connect
>      SAY Loading: DOS Boot Loader.....
>      TIMEOUT 100
>      BSS dos.bss
>
> (TIMEOUT doesn't seem to be working.. I get:
> "Could not find kernel image: linux", instantly!)
I think the order is wrong to get the desired behavior.  Do you want
it to always boot the desired LABEL statement but present the boot:
prompt for a timout of 100?

Also, I'm unsure if labels including " " (blank space) or
"/" are
allowed (SYSLINUX did mangle label names to DOS file names 8.3 but no
longer.  I always stick to nice Linux/vfat file names to be
safe[-_.a-zA-Z0-9]).  "SAY" might not be allowed within the
"LABEL"
statement.

DEFAULT pc_ghost
TIMEOUT 100

LABEL pc_ghost
	MENU LABEL PCDOS/Ghost Boot - Console Connect
	BSS dos.bss
>
> SYSLINUX 3.70 0x490fedad EBIOS [etc...]
> Loading: DOS Boot Loader......
> Could not find kernel image: linux
> boot:
> [repeats]
>
What do you mean by "[repeats]"?  Do you mean that if you hit the
enter key it says:
"Could not find kernel image: linux
boot:"
again?

Seeing as you already have QEMU, it would probably work better if you
created a copy of the Win98SE image, use it as a floppy disk image to
QEMU, along with the other two ATA devices you're using already (1
image and the CD is unknown).  ebd.cab contains fdisk.com, format.com,
and sys.com which would allow you to make the FAT filesystem on the
HDD image bootable.  I don't think that using the bss file generated
from the floppy will work on the HDD image as the two filesystems will
differ, at least in size if not type (FAT 12/16).

-Gene

Hallo, Radio,

Du (paleywiener) meintest am 11.11.08:
> Hello, I'm trying to create and boot a Win98SE-DOS OS through Hard
> Disk emulation.
I've decompressed the partially compressed files and put all into a  
(virtual) 2,88 MB diskette. Works fine.

        ftp://hullen.mydyn.de/pub/DOS/w98-288.img

(not everytime online)

I'm booting it via PXE; entry in

        "/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default"

label w98
        kernel memdisk
        append initrd=images/w98-288.img

Viele Gruesse!
Helmut

Hey guys, thank you! It's working awesomely! It was the LABEL
misconfiguration that was causing syslinux to break. I tried what you suggested
to create the image properly, and now can boot into DOS via PXE :) This is
really cool!

----
label Win
   kernel memdisk
   append initrd=testImage keeppxe
      
I'm having trouble with UNDI, now that I can load the OS, so I enabled
"keeppxe" but UNDI still does not work. Can this be fixed within
SYSLINUX? I think there is some problem with the Symantec/3COM UNDI driver..
maybe it requires the PCDOS instead of
MSDOS.. any suggestions?

Intel has a PXE development kit, but it requires NT4 (I have win2K, XP and 2003
server).
Also, the download from their site no longer works and I had to get the kit from
some strange .ru site. Is there an open-src alternative for UNDI, or an
explanation for how to get UNDI to work? Does UNDI do the same thing as NDIS -
an API for an OS to access LAN hardware?