USB booting :: FAT with 2048b block size bootable ?

Hi people,

I have a 2GB USB pen drive and I want to make it bootable with dsl.
I am not able to format a spartition with other blocksize than 2048 bytes (even a small partition) and it seems that sylinux doens't like it :

Code Sample

# syslinux /dev/sda1
syslinux: only 512-byte sectors are supported

Does someone know how to solve this ? Is it actualy possible to make such a partition bootable ?

Thank you

syslinux is to blame. it will not work on usb drives
- with a sector size other than 512 byte
- with a partition id other than 0x06 (old fat16)
- with a cluster size greater than 16384 bytes (=> 1 GB size limit)
- with a geometry exceeding 1024 cylinders

But... you can download and compile a more modern version of Syslinux that will work with FAT32 partitions (or you can use Syslinux under windows).

yes - fat32 support was introduced to syslinux 3.00 - but the 1 GB limit and the 1024 cylinder limit are still in effect.

I have a 1GB USB stick that I partitioned in two that works fine with DSL-N and a 512MB USB stick that works fine in one single partition with DSL.

Maybe you could divide your USB stick into several partitions?

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