Syslinux - Jan 2014 - USB boot problems on Gigabyte GA-M55Plus-S3G

> 
> It looks like Clonezilla and Ultimate Boot CD both prescribe
> special installation procedures for USB stick.
> isohybrids can be put onto stick just by e.g.: dd of=/dev/sdb
> Make a backup of the stick if you later want to restore its
> partitioning.
> 
 
The (recent yet not latest) versions of Clonezilla that used Syslinux 
5.xx will fail in some systems when writing the isohybrid image with 
dd to the USB drive. Latest Clonezilla Live images correct this 
problem (with Syslinux 6.03-pre1), among additional booting issues 
that were resolved in the very latest testing Clonezilla release.

Recent versions of UBCD use Syslinux 4.07, which will also fail in 
some systems when using dd' to write the isohybrid image to USB 
drives. Using the included scripts or the manual methods should avoid 
these issues.

Hi,

Ady wrote:
> The (recent yet not latest) versions of Clonezilla that used Syslinux 
> 5.xx will fail in some systems when writing the isohybrid image with 
> dd to the USB drive.
> [...]
> Recent versions of UBCD use Syslinux 4.07, which will also fail in 
> some systems when using dd' to write the isohybrid image to USB 
> drives.
Is the reason for these failures known ?
Can it be high boot image addresses and the partly uninitialized
32 bit processor register ?

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

Whatever, i asked about isohybrid because this brings its own
partitioning.

The two failure messages indicate that some file access does not
work. If it is about partitions and/or file addresses, and if it
happens with isohybrids too, then we have a path for experiments.
If isohybrid does not show the problem, then we have a difference
which might help to find the problem trigger.

Maybe it is all random. More variations should tell.


To Ronald F. Guilmette:
I assume that the content of the USB drive can be read without
errors after the machine was booted by some means.
Was this already tested ?


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Am 10.01.2014 13:10, schrieb Thomas Schmitt:
> Is the reason for these failures known ?
> Can it be high boot image addresses and the partly uninitialized
> 32 bit processor register ?

I've seen similar boot failures. Some older BIOSes seem to fail booting 
from higher LBAs (might be the partially uninitialized register). In 
this case when booting with Syslinux from FAT you have to first 
install/populate the boot directory and afterwards install the big 
squashfs containers. In some cases however Syslinux seems to corrupt the 
FAT filesystem so that writing large files on the FS will result in 
corrupted files. I will investigate later on this to find out if the 
issue still exists in 6.03.

Thus one should try booting the "difficult" main board first with 
Isohybrid ISOs that use a low LBA and proper path names. The official 
Ubuntu image does so or recent LessLinux images 
http://blog.lesslinux.org/ Use either Win32DiskImager or the linux 
command dd to overwrite the thumb drive:

dd if=/path/to/image.iso of=/dev/sdx

BTW: There are lots of cheap USB thumb drives out there that flip bits 
after a few hundred writes! So in LessLinux I implemented an integrity 
check upon first boot from thumb drives. You can manually check the 
written thumb drive after disconnecting and reconnecting:

md5sum /path/to/image.iso
dd if=/dev/sdx bs=2048 count=` ls -la /path/to/image.iso | awk '{print 
$5 / 2048 }' ` | md5sum

Regards,
Mattias

-- 
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> Hi,
> 
> Ady wrote:
> > The (recent yet not latest) versions of Clonezilla that used Syslinux 
> > 5.xx will fail in some systems when writing the isohybrid image with 
> > dd to the USB drive.
> > [...]
> > Recent versions of UBCD use Syslinux 4.07, which will also fail in 
> > some systems when using dd' to write the isohybrid image to USB 
> > drives.
> 
> Is the reason for these failures known ?
> Can it be high boot image addresses and the partly uninitialized
> 32 bit processor register ?
> 
 
I'll try to clarify. My apologies if this is too detailed.

Regarding the specific case with the GA-M55Plus-S3G, we currently 
don't know what's the problem (yet).

Whichever the reasons for the failures in that particular system, the 
tests should not be performed with ISO images and/or methods that are 
already known to have problems.

In the case of the latest UBCD, it uses Syslinux 4.07.

Syslinux versions 4.07, 5.xx (elflink branch) and 6.xx prior to 
6.03-pre1 (firmware branch) include the "isolinux: Update LBA in 
getlinsec loop" patch, which introduced a problem with isohybrid 
images in certain systems (discussed during November 2013 in this 
Syslinux mailing list).

The only official (pre)release that currently includes the required 
correction is Syslinux 6.03-pre1. Some few distros that were already 
using Syslinux 5.xx or 6.02 also updated the code (but not all of 
them did).

In recent versions of Clonezilla (and GParted) Live, Syslinux 5.xx or 
6.02 were used. During the last 12 days, Clonezilla Live updated to 
Syslinux 6.03-pre1, and some additional booting issues were solved, 
thus releasing some new testing images.

In addition to the specific versions of Syslinux, and whichever other 
booting problems, the procedure to write the image to the USB is 
particularly relevant.

Almost all the popular user-friendly tools (such as Unetbootin, 
Tuxboot, YUMI, LiLi, etc.), running either under Windows or under 
Linux, are yet to be compatible with Syslinux 5.xx or 6.xx.

Finally, most distros are still using older versions of Syslinux 
(packages), such as 4.05 (and even older).

So,...

When we are talking about testing UBCD, we shall avoid using dd'.

When we talk about Clonezilla Live, only the very latest release is 
valid for testing (because prior recent versions had some booting 
problems, and because those same prior versions used Syslinux 
versions that we already know to be potentially faulty).
>From the several methods to write to USB media supported by 
Clonezilla, currently the only one that we could trust for testing 
purposes is the 'manual' method, using the binary files that 
Clonezilla Live itself provides. Using any other method, including 
using a Syslinux package installed in some distro instead of using 
the Syslinux version provided by Clonezilla Live itself, increases 
the chances of failure (e.g., mixing one version of the bootloader 
with c32 modules from a different version; lacking the required 
lib*.c32 modules or ldlinux.c32).

There is still a chance that using dd' with the very latest 
Clonezilla Live would result in success too, but the method that 
currently provides the best chances is the "manual" method using the 
binary files provided by Clonezilla Live itself.

I hope at least this long email can help others with similar issues.

Regards,
Ady.