Syslinux - May 2010 - syslinux can't read the configuration file on USB

Hi,

I have the following weird problem with syslinux, and I was hoping
that some1 on this list might be able to help:

I am using syslinux 3.86 on CentOS-5.4 64bit.
I'm creating a custom installation image for my distribution
(customized centos). I first create a file with the image, and later
on I write it to a USB disk. This procedure have been working quite
good for a very long time.

Recently I made some changes to my distro (added more files under one
of the subdirectories), and started getting the following error
messages when the PC boots with the USB disk:
---
Unknown keyword in configuration file: <<<garbage>>>
Unknown keyword in configuration file: <<<garbage>>>
Unknown keyword in configuration file: <<<garbage>>>
No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found!
boot:
---

Naturallly, since there's no configuration, the syslinux is an unusable
state.

I discovered that if during the creation of the image, I don't add one
of the rpm_dirX sub directories, the problem disappears. (any of them,
it doesn't matter)

The size of the USB image is exactly 2GB and the contents of the
filesystem is approximately 1.6GB.

The file system looks something like this:

/ISOs/custom.iso
/Builds/version/RPMs/rpm_dir1/{many rpms here}
/Builds/version/RPMs/rpm_dir2/{many rpms here}
/Builds/version/RPMs/rpm_dir3/{many rpms here}
/custom.msg
/initrd.img
/ldlinux.sys         (got here after running syslinux)
/syslinux.cfg
/vmlinuz


Any ideas?


Best regards,
Noam Meltzer

Noam Meltzer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have the following weird problem with syslinux, and I was hoping
> that some1 on this list might be able to help:
>
> I am using syslinux 3.86 on CentOS-5.4 64bit.
> I'm creating a custom installation image for my distribution
> (customized centos). I first create a file with the image, and later
> on I write it to a USB disk. This procedure have been working quite
> good for a very long time.
>
> Recently I made some changes to my distro (added more files under one
> of the subdirectories), and started getting the following error
> messages when the PC boots with the USB disk:
> ---
> Unknown keyword in configuration file: <<<garbage>>>
> Unknown keyword in configuration file: <<<garbage>>>
> Unknown keyword in configuration file: <<<garbage>>>
> No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found!
> boot:
> ---
>
> Naturallly, since there's no configuration, the syslinux is an unusable
> state.
>
> I discovered that if during the creation of the image, I don't add one
> of the rpm_dirX sub directories, the problem disappears. (any of them,
> it doesn't matter)
>
> The size of the USB image is exactly 2GB and the contents of the
> filesystem is approximately 1.6GB.
>
> The file system looks something like this:
>
> /ISOs/custom.iso
> /Builds/version/RPMs/rpm_dir1/{many rpms here}
> /Builds/version/RPMs/rpm_dir2/{many rpms here}
> /Builds/version/RPMs/rpm_dir3/{many rpms here}
> /custom.msg
> /initrd.img
> /ldlinux.sys         (got here after running syslinux)
> /syslinux.cfg
> /vmlinuz
>
>
> Any ideas?
>
>
> Best regards,
> Noam Meltzer
>
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>
Can you try syslinux-4.00-pre45:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/Testing/

In Syslinux 4.xx, filesystems are implemented in C instead of assembler.
So Syslinux 4.xx may work.

- Gert Hulselmans