XFCE-13.37 Stick Boot

[Atip]

Lilo is available on my system and is what I use only.

Are you sure you have the lilo binary/package installed and it's in your PATH? What's the output of "which 'lilo'" on that system?

I uploaded RESULTS.txt to uploadbud.com

Now try to download the file yourself. Did you manage to? A link to the file would be nice.
Anyway, if we get it working with lilo, which it probably does, we don't need that anymore.

I am sorry, I have never uploaded anything and I am giving-up on it. I am either too stupid or
too old or possibly both. I have tried several sites and they seem mostly interested in luring
me into ads instead of telling in an easy way how to upload. I must have spent one day uselessly.

There is one possibilty to send the RESULTS.txt to your e-mail address as an attachment.

I have added /sbin where lilo resides to the path. Run install-on-USB.sh again and I still
cannot boot from the stick. I have as well a new boot_info_script from this new setting.

Hellau

[Shador]

I am sorry, I have never uploaded anything and I am giving-up on it. I am either too stupid or
too old or possibly both. I have tried several sites and they seem mostly interested in luring
me into ads instead of telling in an easy way how to upload. I must have spent one day uselessly.

There is one possibilty to send the RESULTS.txt to your e-mail address as an attachment.

Ok, sorry, for your effort.

1. Open the RESULTS.txt in a text-editor like mousepad or geany (default should be fine)
2. Click somewhere in the text and press Ctrl-A to select all of the text
3. Copy the text with Ctrl-C
4. Open this site in your browser: http://pastie.org/
5. Click somewhere in the big textfield and press Ctrl-V to paste the text
6. Finally press the Paste button in the bottom right of the big textfield
7. You're redirected to the site that contains your upload. Select the address in the address bar of your browser and post it here.

I have added /sbin where lilo resides to the path. Run install-on-USB.sh again and I still
cannot boot from the stick. I have as well a new boot_info_script from this new setting.

Don't do that. The problem is you're running install-on-USB.sh and boot_info_script NOT as root. You need to become root before running those commands by entering "su", which will prompt for your root password.
Please become root with su. If you successfully acquired root privileges this is indicated by a shell prompt similar to this:

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root[shador]#

The '#' sign indicates your root. From that shell run

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which lilo

and copy and paste the output of that command to your post.

[Atip]

Thanks!
Now that was easy. Took me just may be 2 minutes. I always saw that big window to paste in
and coud not figure that it will be the entire text and not only the file name. Anyhow here it is:
http://pastebin.com/ZWKhbk0z

I am not a total computer ignorant, except in certain cases like this upload. Naturally I did
everything as root and added for this purpose /sbin temporarily to the PATH in order that lilo could be
found.

Narro, denn ie bi a Schwoab.

[Shador]

Hm, this is weird. The installation of lilo in the MBR of /dev/sdc and the one of syslinux in /dev/sdc1 seem alright. The configuration file is also in the right place and the same goes for the content. So you should be getting an error message about boot/grub2-linux.img missing or actually it should boot.
So the only thing I can still imagine is that you're actually booting from /dev/sdb and NOT /dev/sdc. Actually, that would fit quite well, as the installation on /dev/sdb1 seems to be lacking a syslinux.cfg, which would make syslinux try to boot the default linux image. That in turn matches the error message you're getting.

Try to make sure you're really booting from the USB and possibly try the USB on another machine.

[Atip]

Hm, this is weird. The installation of lilo in the MBR of /dev/sdc and the one of syslinux in /dev/sdc1 seem alright. The configuration file is also in the right place and the same goes for the content. So you should be getting an error message about boot/grub2-linux.img missing or actually it should boot.
So the only thing I can still imagine is that you're actually booting from /dev/sdb and NOT /dev/sdc. Actually, that would fit quite well, as the installation on /dev/sdb1 seems to be lacking a syslinux.cfg, which would make syslinux try to boot the default linux image. That in turn matches the error message you're getting.

Try to make sure you're really booting from the USB and possibly try the USB on another machine.

Well on booting it says that it is looking for the USB.

Now I put the Salix-Live-XFCE-13.37 on a stick using the HP-2133 Netbook of my good woman.
On first try it booted from the stick on that machine.
Took the same stick to my PC desktop and it would not boot, looking for that linux.
May be my old MB is not up to modern times.

[Shador]

Hm, is sdb maybe also an USB disk? For some reason it keeps booting that one. Either it's doing that straightaway or it's trying to boot the USB stick sdc first, fails and falls back to booting sdb.

[Atip]

On booting it says:

"Searching for Boot Record from USP RMD-FDD.....OK"

After that Syslinux 3.35 .....Peter Alvin or something like that.
Then it stops at boot: since it cannot find linux.

Now in RESULT.txt there is a section:

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sdb1: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       vfat
    Boot sector type:  SYSLINUX 4.02 debian-20101014 ...........>eq.r>.......W0.....0...~.k...~...f
    Boot sector info:   Syslinux looks at sector 472 of /dev/sdb1 for its    
                       second stage. SYSLINUX is installed in the  directory.
                       No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
    Operating System:  Windows 98
    Boot files:        /ldlinux.sys /IO.SYS /MSDOS.SYS /COMMAND.COM

What is that debian doing there? I think a left over from KNOPPIX. Could that be a problem
and how to get rid of it.

[Atip]

I reports this is just for the record. I put TinyCorePlus linux on a flash stick and I am able
to boot with it w/o any problem on the same PC Desktop which will not boot with a stick and
Salix on it. If someone needs some more information let me know and what kind.

[Shador]

Sorry, I seem to have lost this issue.

As I said, the problem is that you're not actually booting Salix nor Salix' syslinux. How do I know this? You're getting this:

After that Syslinux 3.35 .....Peter Alvin or something like that.

But actually Salix live ships with syslinux 3.84, I just checked the package and the version string I'm receiving myself.

There's hardly anything I could do here. Salix' bootloader never gets loaded so there's nothing it can do. Either something goes wrong during installation, but that's not indicated by your output, or some 3rd party, i.e. not us, is messing up.

Regarding why the installation is allright:

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=> Lilo is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdc.

sdc1: __________________________________________________________________________
 
    File system:       vfat
    Boot sector type:  SYSLINUX 3.84 3.84
    Boot sector info:   Syslinux looks at sector 2720800 of /dev/sdc1 for its
                       second stage. No errors found in the Boot Parameter
                       Block.
    Operating System:  
    Boot files:        /boot/grub/grub.cfg /syslinux.cfg /ldlinux.sys

/dev/sdc1    *             56     7,975,295     7,975,240   c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

============================== sdc1/syslinux.cfg: ==============================
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DEFAULT grub2
PROMPT 0
NOESCAPE 1
TOTALTIMEOUT 1
ONTIMEOUT grub2
LABEL grub2
  SAY Chainloading to grub2...
  LINUX boot/grub2-linux.img
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So we get:

• Lilo MBR loader, which loads the active partition, is installed in the MBR
• sdc1 is marked active
• sdc1 contains Salix' syslinux and as it's active too it gets loaded by lilo mbr
• Salix' syslinux configuration is allright on sdc1

So by this examination you should get at least to Salix' syslinux, which you don't. This indicates that the mbr loader on /dev/sdc does not get loaded as it should because the chain afterwards is intact (at least up to syslinux).

I reports this is just for the record. I put TinyCorePlus linux on a flash stick and I am able
to boot with it w/o any problem on the same PC Desktop which will not boot with a stick and
Salix on it. If someone needs some more information let me know and what kind.

Yes, something's going wrong on your machine and I can't tell what like this. Maybe your partition table on the USB stick is causing the troubles:

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/dev/sdc1    *             56     7,975,295     7,975,240   c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Usually this should not be 56, but 63. Then it would be aligned to sectors although this is usually not a requirement with linux. But maybe your BIOS is choking?
If you don't mind you could recreate the partition table, which would destroy all data on it:

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dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=512 count=256

Be sure to unmount the stick before running this and check very carefully whether of= specifies the right device. Otherwise this causes data loss.

After running that command remove the stick, plug it back in and fire up gparted. Create a MSDOS partition table and a FAT32 partition.

Finally install Salix Live again on the stick as outlined.

[Atip]

I followed the instructions and booting still fails. However, it says now Syslinux 3.84.......

I compared the print output of fdisk for TinyCore which boots and Salix which does not boot. Results:

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Salix

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1p1   ?  3223366781  3470046704   123339962   78  Unknown
/dev/sdc1p2   ?   432871117  1208554935   387841909+  10  OPUS
/dev/sdc1p3   ?  1869562563  3788792630   959615034   8b  Unknown
/dev/sdc1p4   ?  3762290688  3770613779     4161546    a  OS/2 Boot Manager

TC
     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1p1   ?  3224498923  3657370039   216435558+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdc1p2   ?  3272020941   930513678   976730017   16  Hidden FAT16
/dev/sdc1p3   ?           0           0           0   6f  Unknown
/dev/sdc1p4        50200576   974536369   462167897    0  Empty

Salix fresh
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1p1   *        2048     7975239     3986596    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Salix fresh is stick raw before loading.

I will buy another flash drive and will see if there is a difference.