Problems with edd

Problems with edd

[Keith Roberts]

Hi all. I have a problem with trying to boot from a Fedora 9 
installation CD-R. It works on another machine, so the disk 
is OK. I guess if anyone knows the answer then it will be 
found here on the kernel developers list.

When trying to boot from a CD-R installation disk, on my 
Advent 6415 laptop I get the following:

Welcome to Fedora 9! [the installer splash screen]

  I then click on either:

  Install or upgrade an existing system
  [or]
  Install or upgrade an existing system (text mode)

  [both give me the same following error]

  Loading vmlinuz........................................... 
..............

  Loading initrd.img........................................ 
.................
  ...............ready.
  Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)... ok
  vmlinuz: attempted DOS system call
  boot:

  If I hit return now, the machine goes back to the 'Welcome 
to Fedora 9!' splash screen.

I have edited the kernel parameters at the spalsh screen and 
tried:

edd=skipmbr edd=off

All that does is not display the line:
  Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)... ok

The installation still hangs at the boot: prompt.

Has anyone come across the behaviour before please?

Is there any way I can get my laptop to boot from this 
media, maybe by passing some undocumented kernel parameters?

Kind Regards,

Keith Roberts

Re: Problems with edd

[devzero]

>Hi all. I have a problem with trying to boot from a Fedora 9 
>installation CD-R. It works on another machine, so the disk 
>is OK. I guess if anyone knows the answer then it will be 
>found here on the kernel developers list.
>
>When trying to boot from a CD-R installation disk, on my 
>Advent 6415 laptop I get the following:
>
>Welcome to Fedora 9! [the installer splash screen]
>
>  I then click on either:
>
>  Install or upgrade an existing system
>  [or]
>  Install or upgrade an existing system (text mode)
>
>  [both give me the same following error]
>
> Loading vmlinuz........................................... 
>..............
>
>  Loading initrd.img........................................ 
>.................
>  ...............ready.
>  Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)... ok
>  vmlinuz: attempted DOS system call
>  boot:
>
>  If I hit return now, the machine goes back to the 'Welcome 
>to Fedora 9!' splash screen.
>
>I have edited the kernel parameters at the spalsh screen and 
>tried:
>
>edd=skipmbr edd=off
>
>All that does is not display the line:
>  Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)... ok

as you can see "ok" , then this is no edd problem
it would have been an edd problem if you could only see
the message before "ok".

>The installation still hangs at the boot: prompt.
>
>Has anyone come across the behaviour before please?
>

no, but i`m sure that this is not related to edd.

not sure if this is fedora specific, but it seems so - see for example:

http://blogs.gnome.org/diegoe/2008/04/10/vesamenuc32-attempted-dos-system-call/

maybe some issue with the vesa bios probe for getting video mode information or switching to appropriate mode.

cc`ing hpa - maybe he as a clue.....

>Is there any way I can get my laptop to boot from this 
>media, maybe by passing some undocumented kernel parameters?

see that link. try booting with "linux" or "linux0".

i think it`s good to report to the fedora people - maybe the have added stuff which doesn`t work reliable...

>Kind Regards,
>Keith Roberts

regards
roland

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Re: Problems with edd

[H. Peter Anvin]

devzero@web.de wrote:
> 
> no, but i`m sure that this is not related to edd.
> 
> not sure if this is fedora specific, but it seems so - see for example:
> 
> http://blogs.gnome.org/diegoe/2008/04/10/vesamenuc32-attempted-dos-system-call/
> 
> maybe some issue with the vesa bios probe for getting video mode information or switching to appropriate mode.
> 
> cc`ing hpa - maybe he as a clue.....
> 

This message usually means your vesamenu.c32 is out of sync with the 
underlying Syslinux version.

If that is not an issue, there is virtually no information in that blog 
(lovely to use a blog instead of filing a proper bug report) that one 
can hang a hat on.

	-hpa

Re: Problems with edd

[H. Peter Anvin]

devzero@web.de wrote:
>> Hi all. I have a problem with trying to boot from a Fedora 9 
>> installation CD-R. It works on another machine, so the disk 
>> is OK. I guess if anyone knows the answer then it will be 
>> found here on the kernel developers list.
>>
>> When trying to boot from a CD-R installation disk, on my 
>> Advent 6415 laptop I get the following:
>>
>> Welcome to Fedora 9! [the installer splash screen]
>>
>>  I then click on either:
>>
>>  Install or upgrade an existing system
>>  [or]
>>  Install or upgrade an existing system (text mode)
>>
>>  [both give me the same following error]
>>
>> Loading vmlinuz........................................... 
>> ..............
>>
>>  Loading initrd.img........................................ 
>> .................
>>  ...............ready.
>>  Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)... ok
>>  vmlinuz: attempted DOS system call
>>  boot:

This message means something has invoked an interrupt in the range 0x20 
to 0x3f, which it should never have done, since that's in the operating 
system range.

Given the complaint about vesamenu further down the page, I'm assuming 
the VESA BIOS is invoking a DOS interrupt(!!!!)... although it's very 
hard to say for sure.

It might be possible to track down by augmenting syslinux to print the 
CS:IP of the supposed DOS system call; if this is the VESA BIOS, it 
would be in the range C000:xxxx.

This probably would be a useful hack anyway, so I'll just implement it.

	-hpa

Re: Problems with edd

[H. Peter Anvin]

devzero@web.de wrote:
>>
>> Loading vmlinuz........................................... 
>> ..............
>>
>>  Loading initrd.img........................................ 
>> .................
>>  ...............ready.
>>  Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)... ok
>>  vmlinuz: attempted DOS system call
>>  boot:
>>
>>  If I hit return now, the machine goes back to the 'Welcome 
>> to Fedora 9!' splash screen.
>>

I have put in syslinux 3.70-pre16 code to print the source of this 
message.  You may want to try to grab isolinux from this release and 
update your CD image to get some useful debugging info out of this.

	-hpa

Re: Problems with edd

[Keith Roberts]

Thanks for the helpfull repies.

Please can you CC me or email directly regarding this 
subject, as I'm moving to the Fedora rawhide developrs list 
with this one now.

I will post the solution once it has been found to LKML.

Kind Regards

Keith Roberts.

Re: Problems with edd

[Keith Roberts]

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> To: devzero@web.de
> From: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
> Subject: Re: Problems with edd
> 
> devzero@web.de wrote:
>>> 
>>> Loading vmlinuz........................................... 
>>> ..............
>>>
>>>  Loading initrd.img........................................ 
>>> .................
>>>  ...............ready.
>>>  Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)... ok
>>>  vmlinuz: attempted DOS system call
>>>  boot:
>>>
>>>  If I hit return now, the machine goes back to the 'Welcome to Fedora 
>>> 9!' splash screen.
>>> 
>
> I have put in syslinux 3.70-pre16 code to print the source of this 
> message.  You may want to try to grab isolinux from this release and 
> update your CD image to get some useful debugging info out of this.
>
> 	-hpa

Not being a kernel guru, I'm not sure how to do that hpa?

Where do I get isolinux from please?

how do I update my CD image?

I'm willing to give this a try if it will sort out the 
problem.

Please CC me as I'm off the list now. Can't seem to get back 
on again either.

Kind Regards,

Keith

Re: Problems with edd

[H. Peter Anvin]

Keith Roberts wrote:
>>
>> I have put in syslinux 3.70-pre16 code to print the source of this 
>> message.  You may want to try to grab isolinux from this release and 
>> update your CD image to get some useful debugging info out of this.
>>
>>     -hpa
> 
> Not being a kernel guru, I'm not sure how to do that hpa?
> 
> Where do I get isolinux from please?
> 

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/Testing/syslinux-3.70-pre16.tar.bz2

> how do I update my CD image?

You will need to run mkisofs with the same options used to generate the 
image.

In a pinch, if you can point me to the original ISO I could try to 
doctor it.

> I'm willing to give this a try if it will sort out the problem.

That would be useful.  This is potentially a previously unreported BIOS 
issue which might have a straightforward workaround, so I'm eager to get 
the data.

	-hpa

Re: Problems with edd

[Keith Roberts]

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

> To: Keith Roberts <keith@karsites.net>
> From: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
> Subject: Re: Problems with edd
> 
> Keith Roberts wrote:
>>> 
>>> I have put in syslinux 3.70-pre16 code to print the source of this 
>>> message.  You may want to try to grab isolinux from this release and 
>>> update your CD image to get some useful debugging info out of this.
>>>
>>>     -hpa
>> 
>> Not being a kernel guru, I'm not sure how to do that hpa?
>> 
>> Where do I get isolinux from please?
>> 
>
> ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/Testing/syslinux-3.70-pre16.tar.bz2
>
>> how do I update my CD image?
>
> You will need to run mkisofs with the same options used to generate the 
> image.

OK - thankyou for that, hpa

> In a pinch, if you can point me to the original ISO I could try to doctor 
> it.

I originally got mine from:

http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/fedora/linux/releases/9/Fedora/i386/iso/Fedora-9-i386-netinst.iso

The sha1sum is:

3b1df20ece05d64c34dd9c64400975b74eded0f2  Fedora-9-i386-netinst.iso

I have also put it on my website, just in case it gets 
updated on the mirrors:

http://www.karsites.net/fedora/9/Fedora-9-i386-netinst.iso

obviously same sha1sum ;)

The Fedora guys are following this thread now. I have put 
the link to your patch on my Fedora bug report:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=450678

I have never built an iso file before, but I'll read up on 
it. My plan was to copy the files from the F9 net-installer 
CD to my hard drive, update them with your patch, and then 
re-make the iso file and burn that back to CD-R. Would that 
work?

>> I'm willing to give this a try if it will sort out the problem.
>
> That would be useful.  This is potentially a previously unreported BIOS 
> issue which might have a straightforward workaround, so I'm eager to get 
> the data.
>
> 	-hpa

Regards

Keith

Re: Problems with edd

[H. Peter Anvin]

Keith Roberts wrote:
> 
> The Fedora guys are following this thread now. I have put the link to 
> your patch on my Fedora bug report:
> 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=450678
> 
> I have never built an iso file before, but I'll read up on it. My plan 
> was to copy the files from the F9 net-installer CD to my hard drive, 
> update them with your patch, and then re-make the iso file and burn that 
> back to CD-R. Would that work?
> 

Yes, that should work, assuming the iso file is generated with the same 
mkisofs options as the original image.

	-hpa