[Sugar-devel] Unbootable machine

[Jonas Smedegaard]

[dropping fedora list which flat out drops unsubscribed mail anyway]

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 11:18:00AM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>Bernie Innocenti wrote:
>>El Sat, 29-08-2009 a las 10:25 -0400, Luke Faraone escribió:
>>
>>
>>>Well, the USB format idea was left unimplemented as we (I) couldn't 
>>>get it working, but we should probably take a look at makebootfat to 
>>>achieve the same goals.
>>
>>Or just use parted instead of fdisk to wipe the MBR and create it from 
>>scratch.  It does the right thing on the USB sticks I tried.
>>
>
>Note that the Syslinux tool "mkdiskimage" can be used to create disk 
>images (or disk) with arbitrary geometry.

...which is an important part of the puzzle, and the one that have been 
discussed the most in this thread.

However, please note that "the right thing" regarding partition table IS 
NOT ENOUGH for all BIOSes to recognize the USB stick as a bootable 
device!

makebootfat not only formats with disk geometry that *is* right, but 
also use a handcrafted MBR which has a higher chance of *looking* right 
by various BIOSes - both when looking for USB-FDD, USB-ZIP and USB-HDD.


  - Jonas

-- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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