Mailing List Archive

Can someone tell me if syslinux will work on a harddisk ?

I have a 4mb flash device that plugs into the IDE connector
on the motherboard, and i'm trying to get syslinux to work
with it, so I can load a Linux kernel and an initrd.

I'm not having any luck with it.

Then it dawned on me that the boot loader in syslinux might
be expecting a floppy drive rather than an atapi hard disk.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Jim McQuillan
jam@Ltsp.org

Hi,

Jim McQuillan <jam@McQuil.com> schrieb am 06.02.02:
> Can someone tell me if syslinux will work on a harddisk ?

http://syslinux.zytor.com/faq.php#harddrive

> I have a 4mb flash device that plugs into the IDE connector
> on the motherboard, and i'm trying to get syslinux to work
> with it, so I can load a Linux kernel and an initrd.
>
> I'm not having any luck with it.
>
> Then it dawned on me that the boot loader in syslinux might
> be expecting a floppy drive rather than an atapi hard disk.

So you have some Compact Flash adaptor, or at least the same
functionality. These behave just like a hard disk. I have some
here, but with >128 MB. Try if you get them to boot, if not I'll
try what I can do about this.

You need:
- a master boot record
- a FAT16 partition
- activated
- with a bootsector
- syslinux installed there

The MBR and boot sector are not automagically installed by syslinux.

Regards,

Josef

______________________________________________________________________________
E*TRADE - neu in Deutschland. Jetzt Depot eröffnen + Prämie erhalten
http://etrade.web.de

Josef Siemes wrote:

>
> You need:
> - a master boot record
> - a FAT16 partition
> - activated
> - with a bootsector
> - syslinux installed there
>
> The MBR and boot sector are not automagically installed by syslinux.
>


The boot sector is, actually (except the so-called BPB part of it, which
is really the MS-DOS superblock) but not the MBR.

-hpa