Syslinux Download ~UPD~

There is advice to rename directories/files manually from isolinux to syslinux (Trying to boot from usb - Ask Ubuntu) - when I used usb_inst.sh, only syslinux/isolinux.bin would have to be renamed. There is also advice to copy syslinux.cfg to the root of the USB flash thumbdrive (Cannot boot Live USB, Linux - Super User). But still no improvements - syslinux is still complaining that it is missing the configuration file - which apparently is the syslinux.cfg.

also [SOLVED] Stuck on boot: Syslinux Problem [Archive] - Ubuntu Forums: "_Debugging syslinux is described at , but effective debugging (if I recall correctly) requires recompiling it to add the debug hooks._". However, Development/Debugging - Syslinux Wiki talks about something called bochs; and I suspect that is to debug syslinux itself - not necessarily to "debug" (or query) the environment it is in.

Syslinux Download

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Turns out, it isn't really clear how to enable such debugging, that will show what syslinux "sees" when plugged in a given computer; given that I do load into syslinux at boot, the problem is what does it see as a filesystem. I tried to enable the DEBUG environment variable as shown above (after adding override OPTFLAGS := to the Makefile) - but that, in itself, generated no new messages during boot failure. I have used the following command to "burn" the USB thumbdrive (after unmounting it from the Gnome applet):

Grepping through the source, I realized there is something called rosh (Read-Only SHell) - however, that compiles as a rosh.c32 - and one is supposed to have it as a boot kernel option in syslinux.cfg - which, as noted, I cannot load. So rosh.c32 is unfortunately not much help for my problem.

However, given that rosh implements the ls command, I tried to copy relevant portions into the code of syslinux - and trigger a ls / listing of the root when syslinux scans for the configuration file. With those changes, recorded in syslinux-e40ba60-rosh-ls.patch; now I get the following when I boot:

Interestingly; for the root /, the _ls function at least returns "0 files"; the others ("/syslinux", and the empty string "") already fail at the opendir call - and so the _ls function doesn't even get called!

However, that still doesn't solve my problem - why does syslinux, after boot, see 0 files under the root /? What else could I do to debug this problem? I wouldn't mind patching some C code into syslinux - but I just don't know what I should be looking for, that would point me to correct preparation of the USB thumbdrive for booting on the desktop machine...

The script "mkdiskimage" which is supplied with the syslinux distribution can be used to initialize USB keys in a Zip-like fashion. To do that, calculate the correct number of cylinders (31 in the example above), and, if your USB key is /dev/sda (CHECK THE KERNEL MESSAGES CAREFULLY - IF YOU ENTER THE WRONG DISK DRIVE IT CANNOT BE RECOVERED), run:

So, as a partial answer - I guess the way to debug this, would be for syslinux to somehow write on the thumbdrive the CHS geometry it sees during the syslinux installation; and on boot, to query the BIOS (I guess) about which CHS geometry the BIOS sees - and then dump these two geometries to screen; if there is a mismatch, then it is likely one should run mkdiskimage (unfortunately, I wouldn't know how to code that into syslinux)

There are a few interesting things in respect to syslinux, now that this USB thumbdrive is used to boot multiple operating systems. First of all, the thumbdrive is, still, first made bootable with syslinux --install while empty (which places a file ldlinux.sys in the partition's root) - which corresponds to the mkdiskimage step above; and only afterwards are files (like kernel images, and including /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg) copied to it.

Now, I'd first build the CD image ISO in ubuntu-builder, and test it using VirtualBox (as qemu on my machine is way too slow for that). Once the ISO image was shown to work as expected, then only the files under its casper directory are relevant for the USB thumbdrive thus prepared; and they can be referenced through a boot menu entry in syslinux.cfg. So, I'd edit the syslinux.cfg on the thumbdrive, and copy the casper image files (e.g. filesystem.squashfs) to the thumbdrive - and test it with qemu as above. Once this qemu step passed, I'd move the USB thumbdrive on the target PC with the broken drive - and interestingly, here I might get syslinux boot failures of multiple sorts (during different boot stages):

It turns out, any of these can appear whenever I try to change and save the syslinux.cfg file on the thumbdrive; or when I make changes in the casper image files, and I rsync or copy them to the thumbdrive. Maybe the copying process (since it may change the sectors where the files are located on the thumb), "confuses" parts of the boot process - although, this shouldn't happen, since also the working procedure above starts from a blanked, syslinux'd thumbdrive, to which files are copied after; so I think this may point to failing sectors on the thumbdrive.

If you're struggling to get syslinux to boot, ROSH (Read-only Shell) can be useful, as you mentioned. To start ROSH, you can simply type rosh at the boot: prompt (if you do have a working graphical menu, press escape to drop back to the boot: prompt.

Now everything is going alright and I'm able to boot, I have the syslinux menu and even load vmlinuz and initrd! The os is actually loading (I have the splash screen) but then I have the error (something about Busybox):

Ok, I don't really know what that means but it sounds like it's difficult or impossible. I wanted to create bootable Windows sticks, which requires syslinux to prepare the USB stick. The famous bash script "bootiso" requires it.

Oh, I should also mention for anyone experiencing the same problem; I transferred my "syslinux.cfg" file over from the old (bad) usb stick so my configuration file remained intact and all my settings were still there when I booted up. I was surprised that I could read my XPEnology usb on my Mac computer.

There are 2 syslinux.cfg files, 1 for BIOS and 1 for UEFI. I do forghet that some time and edit the wrong one on my UEFI boxes. The reason i do edit them is that i have at least 2 LE versions on my box (stable, nightly) and select with the help of menu.c32 or vesamenu.c32.

A old installation is updated with a image with PR 2698. After that the user does getedid which changes syslinux.cfg, but it is a UEFI system with a existing /flash/EFI/BOOT/syslinux.cfg and getedid only changes /flash/syslinux.cfg. So the UEFI system will still use the /flash/EFI/BOOT/syslinux.cfg which is not changed.

getedid will continue to update /flash/EFI/BOOT/syslinux.cfg if it exists AND the user has booted using UEFI. If the file doesn't exist (never installed, or deleted by the user) or the system is not booting with UEFI, then getedid will update /flash/syslinux.cfg.

Currently (in PR2698) we do neither, *except* when the user is booting in "run" mode when we know the file we're deleting is always an exact copy of /flash/syslinux.cfg, so no custom changes will be lost.

After PR2698, clean installations will not have /flash/EFI/BOOT/syslinux.cfg, but users with upgraded installations can choose to move or delete the file if they wish (and they should, to avoid future confusion).

Going forward I imagine any documentation will refer only to /flash/syslinux.cfg as referencing two files is confusing, and we'll just have to deal somehow with legacy installations (ie. "Delete /flash/EFI/BOOT/syslinux.cfg - you don't need it").

I am interested in trying Alpine Linux, so I downloaded the latest x86 iso and started the setup-alpine process, but got stuck when an error appeared.

The screen showed a message that sfdisk and syslinux and missing and sent me back to the # prompt.

I tried this twice with the same result.

Any clue?

- Although I am not familiar with the other Alpine Linux isos, as I have only ever used the 'Standard' iso (see its link at Downloads), maybe you should try that Standard iso if you have tried one of the smaller images: I wonder whether it contains the missing 'sfdisk' and 'syslinux'.

- Also, isn't your system 86_64, which is rather standard (for laptops/desktops) nowadays? You mentioned that you downloaded the x86 iso instead, which typically is for older 32-bit computers. Maybe that has something to do with it.

If you have another operating system installed on the other partitions, please bear in mind that Alpine's bootloader is not Grub2, which is so common in other Linux/GNU systems, but rather syslinux (see wiki for further info). I wonder whether that is the rub - there might be a clash if so. My Linux knowledge is not advanced, mind you.

By the way:

1. When you ran setup-alpine, you know that you would have to select 'sda' as the disk target, and then 'sys' in the next question (see Install to disk)?

2. You know that your partitioning would probably be rearranged automatically by setup-alpine - and thus your data would be altered?

Good luck!

Ok, the standard .iso gave me the same error over and over, even if I downloaded and burned it again.

Always missing syslinux.

Anyway, I downloaded the extended .iso, which seems to work fine, booted, logged in and did the following: ff782bc1db