Thanks Eric and Erich (!) for your replies. My mistake with syslinux was not installing a master boot record on hda and syslinux on hda1 - I was trying to treat the flash card as a floppy without partitions. It worked well after that and will meet my needs just fine.
I did find one interesting thing. My initrd_ide that I have to use to support my CF card is more than 8 letters, so I had to chop it down to initrd_i.lrp. Not a problem, but maybe a rename to inrd-ide.lrp would prevent idiots like me doing this! Or maybe I should have renamed it to initrd.lrp - I just wanted to remind myself which one I was loading while I am still learning. Btw, re syslinux restrictions: My choice of CF was determined by what I read here: http://syslinux.zytor.com/faq.php Quote: SYSLINUX is probably not suitable as a general purpose boot loader. It can only boot Linux from a FAT filesystem, and not, for example, ext2. Since a native Linux implementation will typically use ext2, another boot loader (e.g. LILO) is probably more suitable. In a system which actually contains DOS or Windows, LOADLIN may be simpler to use. SYSLINUX is unsafe to use on any filesystem that extends past cylinder 1024 -/ But the limitation in the error message I saw was 512 byte sectors not clusters, but it confused me when I incorrectly tried to syslinux hda rather than hda1 - I thought it _meant_ clusters, since I have never seen a disk that had anything other than 512 byte sectors. Cheers Steve P.s. I found out that all my strange typos for had hda hda1 etc were flipping Windows Outlook trying to think/spell for me! ---------------------------------- Hello Steve, > I understand that syslinux is the preferred boot loader for Bering > uClibc. I am booting from a compact flash card. > > > At the moment, I am having to 'lilo' the CF card on another PC whenever I > need to make a change to the modules loaded on boot, since I don't have > lilo for Bering uClibc. > > I understand that syslinux only works with FAT16 filesystems and 512 byte > sectors, so I have bought a 32MB compact flash card and have formatted it > in order to comply with this restriction. It has 62288 sectors of 512 > bytes. > AFAIK syslinux doesn't have that restriction, at least not a recent version. > But when I run... > > > syslinux /dev/had > > ... I get > > > /dev/hda: This doesn't look like a FAT filesystem > /dev/had: Sector sizes other than 512 not supported > How exactly did you partioned/format your card? Here is a description on how to create a bootable CF: http://leaf.sourceforge.net/doc/bk02ch11s03.html I'm not sure if you make a typo in this mail but the correct command is: syslinux /dev/hda1 (note the "1") > > Is there a workaround to this so I can still use syslinux, or is there > another boot loader that is available for use with Bering-uClibc ? > > > Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions. > > > Steve > Eric > -----Original Message----- > From: Erich Titl [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: 06 May 2006 14:45 > To: S Done > Cc: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [leaf-user] What boot loader to use on a CF Card ? > > Hi Steve > > S Done wrote: > > I understand that syslinux is the preferred boot loader for > Bering uClibc. > > I am booting from a compact flash card. > > > > At the moment, I am having to 'lilo' the CF card on another > PC whenever I need to make a change to the modules loaded on > boot, since > > I don't have lilo for Bering uClibc. > > I have changed to grub a long time ago, e.g. when I decided to have > flash in all my LEAF machines. I like the seamlessness for adding new > targets. > > cheers > > Erich > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ leaf-user mailing list: [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/leaf-user Support Request -- http://leaf-project.org/
