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

In message <73645861681468542 at scdbackup.webframe.org>, 
"Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup at gmx.net> wrote:
>me:
>> > Check whether it fails with Clonezilla.
>Ronald F. Guilmette:
>> Please be specific.  For Clonezilla, there are many different versions
>
>Any failure on the same stick which also succeeds is enough
>to kill the theory of bad relation between USB stick and
>mainboard.
>You have proven this by the success and failure with the 2 GB
>stick.
OK.  I believe that I understand what you just said.  (Actually, I for
one never even contemplated the possibility of any sort of bad inter-
action between a specific USB stick and a specific motherboard.  Do
such instances ever actually crop up, in practice?  I would guess
not.)
>So the problem must be either in partitioning or in the filesystem
>format. That's out of my personal expertise, though.
Mine too.
>> I await your direction.
>
>I lack the skills for explicit directions how to explore
>the plausible suspicions of Ady and Peter:
Very well.  I await detailed instructions from one or both of them.
>CHS means Cylinder/Head/Sector addressing method.
I knew that, actually.
>The Master Boot Record (MBR) at the beginning of the stick has
>a partition table with block addresses in two alternative forms.
Hummm... so the world has not entirely done away with the kludgy,
antiquated and anachronistic old C/H/S addressing scheme just yet,
eh?

Too bad.  We should be rid of it once and for all.  (As I understand
it, it has been AT LEAST more than a decade and a half... or maybe
two... since the notion of physical/addressable cylinders had any
relevance to any actual products on the market.)
>There are FAT filesystems which operate via CHS addresses,
Still??  Who uses them?  Why do they continue to use them?

(I guess that there will always be some hold-out who is still running
MS-DOS 5.0 or Windows 3.1.  But I don't think that any of the rest of
us should provide any support or encouragement to them.)
>So Peter proposes to try 32 sectors per head and 64 heads per...
If Peter desires me to run another test, he will need to give me
detailed instructions on what exactly he wants done. I will then
attempt to follow those instructions to the best of my ability, but
my hope is that I will only need to fetch files, dd them to sticks,
and then try booting them.


Regards,
rfg

Hi,
> Hummm... so the world has not entirely done away with the kludgy,
> antiquated and anachronistic old C/H/S addressing scheme just yet,
> eh?
It must actually have been your preparation of the USB stick which
has chosen a FAT filesystem with CHS.
I refer to this statement of yours, of Fri, 17 Jan 2014 13:48:21 -0800:
>> Furthermore, and separately, regardless of the install method (Linux or
>> Windows) the Clonezilla install instructions say that one must first
>> *begin* with a USB stick that has already had a FAT file system placed
>> onto it.
Whatever you did or did not to fulfill this demand, is directly
or indirectly to blame for the state of the stick before you
installed Clonezilla.

> Who is the primary developer/maintainer?
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/boot/syslinux/syslinux.git/tree/README
says: "SYSLINUX is: Copyright 1994-2011 H. Peter Anvin et al"

> may I safely assume
> that the goal of what we have all been doing is to produce (at some
> point) a new version of Syslinux that will cater better to older
> motherboards and older Award BIOSes, such as what I have?
The currently best theory is that the problem is due to the
choice of partitioning and filesystem, and not due to
peculiarities of SYSLINUX.

But this has still to be confirmed by you installing a working
Clonezilla into a stick with partitioning and filesystem as
proposed by Ady or by H. Peter Anvin.

If the theory is right, then the place for improvement would
be in the installation docs of Clonezilla et.al, which could
warn of the pitfalls which you encounter.
Especially Ady's proposals are worth to be taken into respect
because his test image demonstrates that it is possible to
boot your mainboard from a FAT-formatted USB stick.

> I await detailed instructions from one or both of them [Ady
> and H. Peter Anvin].
Well, Ady gave you instructions.
See his mail of Sat, 18 Jan 2014 08:25:10 +0200, near the end:
steps 1_ to 3b_.

If details are unclear, then you should tell up to what
instruction you understand, and where you get stuck.

I understand it as:
Put Ady's test image onto an USB stick to get an LBA driven
FAT32 filesystem. Then copy Clonzilla's files except some
of its SYSLINUX files into that filesystem.
This should boot Clonezilla's system via the SYSLINUX
installation provided by Ady's test image and the boot
configuration provided by Clonezilla.


My own question to Ady was, whether it would be worthwhile
to erase his SYSLINUX files from the FAT32 fileystem too,
and to make a normal install of Clonezilla into the empty
FAT32 filesystem.
If Ady's proposal seems too complicated, then just try mine.

If it works, then we are done here. If not ... well ...


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

> 
> OK.  I believe that I understand what you just said.  (Actually, I for
> one never even contemplated the possibility of any sort of bad inter-
> action between a specific USB stick and a specific motherboard.  Do
> such instances ever actually crop up, in practice?  I would guess
> not.)
 
Actually this was your case. In this regard, there are two categories 
of problematic combinations:
_ specific brands / models of USB drives (together with certain 
software tools or with specific mainboards);
_ partitioning and formatting values that "play not-nice" with 
certain mainboards / BIOS versions, or the other way around.

You _were_ falling in the second one.
> >There are FAT filesystems which operate via CHS addresses,
> 
> Still??  Who uses them?  Why do they continue to use them?
You were using it. Remember that you were initially seeing "CHS" in 
the Syslinux "copyright" notice. So, when formatting with FAT, use 
FAT32-LBA (aka. FAT32 with "LBA" flag), among other
"adequate"
settings.
> >So Peter proposes to try 32 sectors per head and 64 heads per...
> 
> If Peter desires me to run another test, he will need to give me
> detailed instructions on what exactly he wants done. I will then
> attempt to follow those instructions to the best of my ability, but
> my hope is that I will only need to fetch files, dd them to sticks,
> and then try booting them.
> 
 
There is no need to test other CHS values. You are already succeeding 
with Nx255x63 with LBA (you are seeing "EDD" in initial Syslinux 
copyright line when booting). So, fortunately we have passed that 
point.

Regards,
Ady.

> My own question to Ady was, whether it would be worthwhile
> to erase his SYSLINUX files from the FAT32 fileystem too,
> and to make a normal install of Clonezilla into the empty
> FAT32 filesystem.
 
There are several things that we now know, from the results of prior 
tests.

One of those things that we know is that Clonezilla Live's script 
installs 'ldlinux.sys' in the root directory of the filesystem in the 
USB device, instead of installing it as './syslinux/ldlinux.sys', 
where the rest of the Syslinux-related files are copied by the same 
scripts. This is one improvement to be made by its developers.

For this reason, my test.img already has './syslinux/ldlinux.sys' 
correctly installed, so using Clonezilla Live script to install 
SYSLINUX would be a step back.

Regards,
Ady.