Can't get dsl to boot

Forum: USB booting
Topic: Can't get dsl to boot
started by: shinji

Posted by shinji on Oct. 30 2005,21:26

I have been trying to get dsl to boot on my pendrive(s) but have failed quite often. The error is always the same too. It says that it cannot find KNOPPIX and drops at a very limited prompt from which I cannot use my keyboard. The motherboard I am trying to boot from is an Epox EP-9NPA+ Ultra. It supports USB-CD, USB-HDD, and USB-ZIP booting. Please note that I have tried all of those methods with the same end result. Any help on this? Maybe change something in the bios?

Posted by shinji on Oct. 31 2005,00:09

OK. I mostly solved the problem. I updated my bios and now it boots up completely save for one small glitch which I have yet to figure out. It appears to be getting a ghost entry due to where it boots up from... During bootup and shutdown/reboot it gives the error "Invalid device sda1" and prompts me to press enter. I do so and it continues on its merry way. It gives the same error on shutdown. The thing is that there isn't an sda drive. It boots from sdc1 and sdb1 is my firewire drive.

Oh and the bios firmware is dated 10/18 but it was a prior one that probably fixed it. Release notes mention that USB-FD boot option was patched to make it so that a USB/PS2 keyboard would work on bootup but I believe it fixed all the USB boot options

Posted by cbagger01 on Oct. 31 2005,17:45

You need to change your "Backup Device" from "sda1" over to a more appropriate choice like "sdb1" or "sdc1"

Posted by shinji on Nov. 03 2005,11:53

How do I change my backup device?

Oh and I should note that I got it to also boot from one of my USB-ZIP based drives (PNY Attache 512MB) and the message changed to show sda2.

Posted by cbagger01 on Nov. 03 2005,23:19

It should be an option from the DSL main menu, if I remember correctly.

I am not using DSL at the moment.

Posted by usul on Nov. 03 2005,23:34

.

Hiya

I thinnk you see the error you have at the moment because you've "/dev/sda1" set as the backup device instead of just "sda1"

Open the DSLpanel and run Backup/Restore. Your backup device should be sda1. Then click on backup.

Try it out, HTH

.

Posted by shinji on Nov. 06 2005,16:48

sda is a non-mountable device once the system gets up and running. I found out though that sda is created when dsl detects the hub it is connected through. It ends up being a "ghost" device of sorts that points nowhere. The issue disappears when I connect the usb stick to the computer directly.

So here are a couple of observations and it may be different from computer to computer depending on configuration.

1. Booting through a hub may cause sda to appear in the /mnt listing but you cannot mount it. There is no reference to a device being associated with sda in dmesg.

2. Firewire drives are assigned device names before usb devices are. My 200GB Firewire drive got sda where the boot drive got sdb.

And of course my usb based Sandisk Imagemate 12-in-1 flash card drive (read and write) wasn't detected. I was hoping it would of been detected as 4 new drives. One of which I would of used to boot from using a 64MB flash drive I have lying around. I will look into this but it appears to be supported on the 2.6 kernel for other distributions...