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

Ronald F. Guilmette
Fri, 10 Jan 2014 09:18:47 -0000

In message <BLU0-SMTP557B92590B4CC34F8318088BB30 at phx.gbl>,
Ady <ady-sf at hotmail.com> wrote:

>Since in all cases you get to see at least the Syslinux copyright
>message, the problem doesn't seem to be related to whether your BIOS
>can identify the USB disk and boot from it.

I can only agree.

>Some GA motherboards might identify some USB drives as "HDD",
instead
>of "USB-HDD". I would suggest pressing F8 during POST and double
>check where exactly your USB drive is listed.

I suspect that you must mean F12 rather than F8.  On my specific motherboard,
F8 during POST does nothing, however F12 brings up a boot menu.

Anyway, in the F12 boot menu there is no clear indication of what thing
(or things) the BIOS thinks are or not present.  (What made you think
that there would be?)

>Regarding UBCD, it sounds like some conflicting path. From your
>description, you should see a "boot:" prompt.

Yes, that does appear also.  But I have no idea what to enter there.

Is there something specific I should try?  /boot/syslinux ?

>But the original UBCD
>includes its syslinux.cfg in '/boot/syslinux', a
"standard" location.
>So either you have a wrongly customized UBCD in your USB drive,

No, UBCD on my USB stick has not been customized in any way.  It's a
totally unmodified image that I downloaded.  And it boots and works
perfectly, with no trouble whatsoever, on multiple other systems that
I have here.

>or your BIOS is not booting from that specific UBCD drive.
>
>So, do you have other drives connected to this system?

No.   Zero.  Nada.  None.

I may not always be the sharpest pencil in the box, but I do know enough
to eliminate as many variables and potential sources of problems as
possible when trying to debug a problem like this.

(For the specific system in question, I only ever mount/attach actual
hard drives to the thing by inserting them into one of two externally
accessible hot swap racks.  There are -no- drives actually hard mounted
inside the tower case.  So you see, it is quite trivial for me to remove
all drives from this system for testing purposes, and I have done so
throughout all of my testing with these USB flash drives.)

>Do you have
>Syslinux also installed to those other drives? Can you disconnect /
>disable all other drives in this system (at least for testing
>purposes)?

See above.  There are no other drives either contained in or connected
in any way to the system I am using for testing this stuff.

>Regarding Clonezilla Live, the latest version uses Syslinux
>6.03-pre1, so you might be using an older release.

I probably am, however at this point I have no compelling reason to
believe that my results will be any different when/if I upgrade to a
slightly fresher Clonezilla.   (The version I'm using was the freshest
"stable" release available as of less than a month ago.)

>The "ldlinux.c32"
>file should be also part of the Syslinux 6.03-pre1 installation. If
>you see a (hidden) file named "ldlinux.sys"...

See?  I'm sorry.   I don't follow you.  Where should I be looking for
this file you are talking about, exactly?

>but you don't see the
>corresponding (from the same Syslinux version) "ldlinux.c32", then
>you are probably not installing Syslinux correctly in that USB drive.

Hey!  I read a small amount already (as I was trying to research these
problems) about various version skew problems that people had, apparently,
created for themselves between the first level Syslinux thing and this
later stage ldlinux.c32 thing.  But if there are any such issues/problem
that are relevant to, or that pertain to the problems that _I_ have
described here, then *I* did not create them.  I do not hack or diddle
these tools that I have mentioned... Clonezilla, UBCD, or even OpenELEC
(yet)... in any way.  I just download the latest images that are meant
for installing on a USB flash drive, and then I just dd them to my USB
flash drives, or do whatever the standard install instructions tell me
to do.  I am not attempting to be clever.  I'm just doing exactly the
same things that everybody else... the great unwashed masses... are doing
with these tools.... just ploping them onto USB sticks and NOT customizing
them at all.  And as I say, they all work great *except* whn I'm trying
to boot them from this bleedin' *&%$%$#@ Gigabyte motherboard.

>As a remainder, all files under the /syslinux directory of your
>Clonezilla USB drive should match the same version of Syslinux that
>you installed as bootloader.

My hope and belief is that the maintainer/distributor of Clonezilla has
alread seen to it that this is the case.  Do we have any reason to suspect
otherwise?

>I would suggest downloading the latest Clonezilla Live release
>available and using the "manual" method to install it in your USB
>drive. Other methods are probably going to fail (by mixing different
>versions of Syslinux).

I suppose that I can give that a try, but it seems like we are sort of
just shooting in the dark here.

>With regards to OpenELEC, my guess is that something similar to the
>Clonezilla issue is going on.

Given that the failure messages are identical, I can only agree with
your supposition.

But the question remains... What exactly *is* going on here?

>In other words, review the method you are using to install Syslinux
>in those USB drives;

See above.

Given that I am not doing anything out of the ordinary, and just doing
as instructed when it comes to installing these things on USB drives...
the same as zillions of other users of these same tools... and given that
everything works just peachy with these USB sticks *except* when they are
plugged in to the Gigabyte motherboard, where does that leave us?

>and for whichever version of Syslinux you
>install as bootloader in one drive, the necessary *.c32 modules
>should match the same Syslinux version (including, if necessary, its
>corresponding lib*.c32 files for 5.xx and newer Syslinux versions).

OK.  And how would I go about verifying that all those things are or
are not the case?

Please understand that I know nothing specific about SYSLINUX and friends.
Until now, I had no reason to even want to.