>
> I can't boot BLFS 7.4 system (Intel Atom 32-bit) from USB stick on
> some motherboards, but I can do it on the same motherboard type with
> different (old) BIOS version.
>
Yes, the BIOS is one of the final bastions of proprietary
software/firmware, and many are crap with little opportunity to do anything
about it. Have you had a look at Coreboot to see if your motherboard is
supported; if it is you could replace the unpleasant, locked-down BIOS with
something more open. I've also had problems with SSD firmware which, on
one occasion, failed with many I/O errors. I was forced to flash to a
later version.
I boot all my 64-bit Atoms from USB flash drive now as it makes sense to me
to completely remove the boot sequence from the OS, particularly as the
boot partition does not even need to be mounted and becomes redundant after
the boot sequence has completed. I can then clone the flash drive with dd
and use it to boot a different box. I have had problems similar to your
own (all BIOS related) which can be difficult to track down, so I'm not
sure that I can be of any specific help with your particular problem. None
of my Atom boards is supported by Coreboot.
What worked for me in the end is the following: I don't use a initrd and I
partition the flash drive with GPT, format with ext2, and boot to an ext4
partition on an mSATA SSD. I use Syslinux rather than Grub2 as it's
lighter and it's much easier (IMO) to set up. If it's of any help here is
my extlinux.conf:-
/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf
PROMPT 1
TIMEOUT 50
DEFAULT xxx
LABEL xxx
LINUX /boot/vmlinuz-3.12.8-toi
APPEND root=PARTUUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx \
vga=792 acpi_osi=linux acpi_backlight=legacy
hest_disable \
iommu=soft rootfstype=ext4 rootdelay=1
I've read BIOS release notes and found nothing relevant to the problem
> neither seen anything significantly different in BIOS menu.
>
> grub.cfg is simple:
> set default=0
> set timeout=3
> insmod ext2
> set root=(hd0,1)
> menuentry "Default" {
> linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.10.28
> root=UUID=d768c1f0-79c9-45c4-b604-8d0735a71242 rootfstype=ext4 ro
> rootdelay=6
> initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.10.28
> }
>
> On the failed system grub is capable to show boot menu, but while
> selecting it, it fails with message:
> error: failure reading sector 0x57f650 from 'hd0'.
>
> if I drop to grub command prompt from boot menu (without initially
> selecting entry), and do some commands:
> grub> ls
> (hd0) (hd0,msdos1)
> grub> insmod ext2
> grub> ls (hd0,1)/boot
> error: failure reading sector 0x802 from 'hd0'
> grub> ls
> # now ls output is empty line
> grub> date
> error: no such partition.
> grub>
>
> - If I connect the same USB stick to the motherboard with old BIOS, it
> boots ok.
> - I can boot from SATA HDD with exactly the same root fs as USB stick
> (I've copied root partition with cpio and updated UUID value in grub
> and fstab).
> - I can boot from USB stick only if it has FAT32, for example MSDOS
> boot disk or Ubuntu install disk made by Universal-USB-Installer.exe.
>
> I wonder, what else do I need to check in order to get to the bottom
> of this problem?
> Any help would be appreciated.
>
> Regards,
> Alexey
>
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