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

Ronald F. Guilmette
Fri, 17 Jan 2014 22:22:16 -0000

In message <BLU0-SMTP2805E16A0E7A33B925EDF458BB80 at phx.gbl>,
Ady <ady-sf at hotmail.com> wrote:

>Now, to move forward with Clonezilla in your USB drive, we need to
>proceed with some steps that are not as simple as dd'ing an image.

Apologies for my impertinence, but I have one question:  Why?

I was under the impression that we had reached an agreement under
which _you_ would perform all necessary bit-fiddling... insuring that
all steps are down exactly as you think best... and that THEN you would
give me an image that I could simply dd to a stick and try.  Did we not
agree upon that?

I am not trying to be difficult. I am genuinely concerned that there
will be some small/obscure aspect of one or more of the steps you ask
me to do in preparing a USB stick for the next desired test that I
will inadvertantly/unintentionally phuck up.  In this area, you are
the expert, and you know what you are doing, whereas with respect to
all of this booting & BIOS stuff, my ignorance asymptotically approaches
infinity.

I will send you an off-list e-mail, following this one, where I will give
you directions to a writable FTP directory on my server where you can
place test images for me to try (using dd).  (Or alternatively, you may
continue to place them elsewhere and then send me links.)

>I hope I was clear enough in the above instructions, as it would be
>relatively easy to confuse which files should be copied and ...

This is my point.  You gentlemen have all been most kind and diligent
in pursuit of answers to these problems.  I don't want to be responsible
for screwwing up some small aspect of the next desired test, and thus
wasting your time with meaningless or misleading test results produced
from a test that I have screwed up somehow.

>Then boot the USB drive (using F12 during POST as before).

To be clear, I *have not* been using F12 during POST for any of my recent
tests.  There has been no need to do so.

In the case of the tests that have performed where there has been success
in booting, I have _only_ had the test USB stick attached, and no other
sticks or drives attached to the system, and the (successful) stick does
show up...  as the *only* listed item... in the BIOS Boot Priority list.
Thus, it is unnecessary to go into the BIOS boot menu, because the BIOS
is seeing one and only one attached bootable device, so it just attempts
to boot that device.

In the case of the tests that have performed where there has been failure,
the test stick does not, in general, even show up in the BIOS Boot Priority
list, so the BIOS never even attempts to boot the thing.  (In some cases
there has been a failure when the stick *does* show up in the Boot Priority
list and *after* the SYSLINUX banner has been printed, but I have been
diligent in describing and reporting those.)

If you think that it would help somehow for me to be making explicit boot
device selections using F12 then I will do so, in future.


Regards,
rfg