Bug#220139: isolinux/syslinux on special hardware
On Tue, Nov 11, 2003 at 10:26:52AM +0100, Bjoern Laessig wrote:
> I used google a while. Maybe it is interesting for you:
>
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2002/debian-cd-200205/msg00165.html
>
|
| >El Torito BIOSes are absolute crap. There is no question about it.
| >Unfortunately there is right now *NO* configuration which works on all
| >machines. If you want a configuration that works on all machines,
| >you're talking boot floppies. It really is that bad.
|
| Hello to all you folks who are pushing for us to have all new machines.
| I think that going with no-emulation mode is a worst case scenario.
|
| Go over to Mandrake please and hang with those folks for a while.
| Then come back to a sane world populated with debian-heads.
| The choice is clear: we will lose a lot of folks with old machines
| who will not be able to use Debian any more. Old hands will be upset.
| The CD will not boot; they will not know to try the rest of the set;
| they will only have the first CD; the CD will be given away;
| the old machines will be tossed. We will lose the third world.
| We will lose the old office networks of ready-for-linux machines.
| They will use windows 95.
|
|
| yes BIOS makers do not follow the standards.
|
| They do follow the floppy booting standard disk type 00.
| A floppy will boot the bad BIOS.
| Therefore floppy emulation works on most machines.
|
| if you want to exclude most machines, simply switch to
| no emulation mode.
| XP does it. It must be a bad thing.
| It does push the sales of new machines.
| 'no emulation' mode demands a new machine.
|
| if you want to boot on most CD booting machines
| just like RedHat 7.3
| then use floppy emulation.
|
| I vote for floppy emulation to boot from CD.
|
| Cheers, Bill Bennet
> http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/syslinux/2002-December/001324.html
To follow-up http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/syslinux/2002-December/001325.html
says:
| On Fri, 20 Dec 2002 15:47:18 +0000, Roberto De Leo <deleo@unica.it> wrote:
|
|
| >My main question is the following: a few (windows) users burned an isolinux
| >image I prepared with isolinux and could not boot the CD, so they tried
| >to make it bootable with Nero choosing the floppy image as "Nero boot image"
| >and it worked! How can it be possible that the CD produced with isolinux
| >does not boot and the one made with Nero/syslinux does with the very same
| >BIOS?
|
| If you use isolinux you are booting with El Torito in "no emulation" mode,
| while if you use a floppy boot image you're likely booting in "floppy
| emulation mode". Maybe that bios is ok with emulation mode and not the other
| way.
|
| The advantage of isolinux is that you can ignore the limits of floppy images
| (large initrd's) and/or choose at boot which floppy image to boot.
|
| However, if all you need is the equivalent of a floppy image on CD, you can
| produce the image with mkisofs and a floppy image (maybe with syslinux)
| without using isolinux. This would be more similar to what those windows
| users did.
|
| --
| giulioo@pobox.com
To me it looks like that bugreport 220139 is a support request
for a range hardware that boots from CD-ROM on special way.
Not having the same hardware makes it hard to fix such problems.
>
> Björn Lässig
>
Geert Stappers
Reply to: