[syslinux] After USB boot problems on Gigabyte GA-M55Plus-S3G

Thomas Schmitt
2014-01-22T08:46:15Z

Hi,

Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
> what exactly did we determine that GA-M55Plus-S3G is failing
> to support?

It appears to be related to the choice of CHS addressing with
the FAT filesystem. This opens the door for misperceived factors
of heads per cylinder and sectors per heads.

My current suspicion is that the partition end did not expose
the effective factors in its end CHS address, so that the
filesystem and the BIOS were not using the same factors.
(Alternatively the FAT system could be in sync with the exposed
 factors, but the BIOS hates them because they are neither 64,32
 nor 255,63.)

Aha, your fdisk -l results are posted now:

  ubcd.0 : Geometry: 22 heads, 21 sectors/track, 1016 cylinders
           (because end CHS is 969, 21, 21)

  oe.0   : Geometry: 151 heads, 42 sectors/track, 1021 cylinders
           (because end CHS is 92, 150, 42)

Both sticks show very unusual factors for heads and sectors
which are hardly intentional. If BIOS gets confused like fdisk,
then the failure to find files is quite plausible.

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

Could you please exercise what is described for Linux in
  http://www.syslinux.org/doc/usbkey.txt
and check whether
  mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sda 0 64 32
prepares a problematic stick for a normal installation of
Clonezilla, which then boots ?

This might involve the need to learn how to perform the
advised mkdiskimage run on systems other than Linux.
Such examples would be valuable for the wiki improvement.
(What is a usual address of a stick on MS-Windows ? "E:" ?)

I understand that the mkdiskimage option -4 is not what is
advised in Gene's wiki enhancement. So please also check,
whether it works without that option.
  http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/maverick/en/man1/mkdiskimage.1.html


Have a nice day :)

Thomas