When Booted Comes Up With "Boot Error"

Bug #398241 reported by edh649
70
This bug affects 14 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
dosfstools (Debian)
Fix Released
Unknown
dosfstools (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: usb-creator

I start usb-creator, It opens fine and i use a .iso from my hard drive and onto a Sandisk Cruzer Micro 8 GB. It all loads fine and then when i boot it comes up with "Boot Error" and also when i press enter it comes up with "Root Error". i am using Linux Mint "Gloria".

Thanks in advance,
edh649

Revision history for this message
John S. Gruber (jsjgruber) wrote :

I am having the same problem trying to create a usb stick containing Karmic using usb-creator 0.2.7.

I am using the same Sandisk Cruzer Micro 8 GB device as the original poster. They are widely available here in the U.S. U3 has been turned off. I sucessfully used this very same usb stick before with an older version of usb-creator, but I believe I had to format it myself before I could boot from it--I couldn't use the FAT partition preformatted on the device to boot from. Now reformatting doesn't solve the problem. It is being formatted with a geometry of 62 sectors/track, 248 heads/cylinder, 1019 cylinders, which seems like an odd geometry to me.

From testing so far it appears that the error message is coming from the ldsyslinix boot record in the first sector of the partition which is trying to load the rest of ldsyslinux from a file in the FAT partition. So far I believe the signature test is failing, meaning that the wrong sector is being loaded. On my system it appears the mbr at the first sector of the device is not being read and executed by the BIOS, which itself finds the boot partition as basic partition 1 and loads the boot sector from the first sector of that partition. I don't know whether or not the BIOS points the SI register at the partition entry before transferring control. It seems that the extended BIOS calls are being used in the boot sector (logical sector number rather than CHS addressing).

I have a Toshiba L355D-S7825 laptop with an Insyde BIOS, version 1.70.

Revision history for this message
John S. Gruber (jsjgruber) wrote :

@edh649:

What computer and BIOS are you using? What geometry does the cfdisk program report for the drive (from the text at the top)?

Revision history for this message
edh649 (edh649) wrote :

I have a desktop dell inspiron which from my memory has award BIOS but that's all I can remember. I have had to erase my USB as I only have one spare and have put on puppy Linux which works perfectly although I would still like to be able to run ubuntu, persistently, off a USB stick.

Thanks,
edh649

Revision history for this message
John S. Gruber (jsjgruber) wrote :
Download full text (3.2 KiB)

I was remiss in not thanking you before for submitting your bug report. Thank you for making Ubuntu better.

What version of usb-startup-disk-creator are you using? If you are using a release CD knowing which one
would probably answer the question.

I was able to track down the problem my computer was having creating the "Boot error" message--it was a
problem in the disk formatting performed by the system on the behalf of usb-startup-disk-creator. I recall
from last winter than Sandisk Cruzer's have a problem in how they are formatted from the factory. I reformatted it from Ubuntu (Intrepid, I believe) and was then able to boot from it. Reformatting it from Karmic (or, I believe, Jaunty) would not help.

I don't have enough information to know if the problem I discovered is the same as yours. If you would like to
try my fix you certainly may. You would have to install a new version of the package dosfstools from my PPA
and then reformat your usb-stick. Of course this will erase your puppy linux and anything else on your usb-stick.

Also be very careful to specify the right location for your usb stick--you don't want to wipe out your hard disk.
usb-startup-disk-creator seems to do pretty well leaving my hard disk off the candidate list but I don't know
about yours.

To install the package on the machine you are using usb-startup-disk-creator from, please see:

https://launchpad.net/~jsjgruber/+archive/ppa

and click on the technical details link. I believe you can also navigate from here directly to the package deb
file if you would rather not add my ppa to your list of software sources.

After installing the package you would start the usb-starup-disk-creator program and ask it to format the usb-disk. This should format the drive correctly. Then proceed with the usb-startup-disk-creator program asking it to install the image you want, setting the persistance slider if you want. When done the drive should be bootable if our problems are the same.

Please let me know how you do, or if you have any questions.

==============================

Technical details for you or for others interested.

To boot a usb-hard-disk partition my BIOS requires two DOS boot sector data items to be set in an expected way. The hidden sectors field must be non-zero (and should point to the boot sector within the entire disk). The drive number in the volume info structure should be 0x80 to indicate that the partition is a hard disk (in
addition to the FAT media byte which can signal the same thing). A reference operating system I have on hand set these fields as above but current dosfstools mkdosfs programs set them to zero. There was a period of time when the dosfstools mkdosfs program did set the drive number to 0x80 and set the hidden sectors field to the size of a track, but this setting won't work for unpartitioned devices such as floppy drives and the code to set these fields was dropped when the floppy problem was noticed. See debian problem reports #303442 and #489292.

The problem can be confirmed as occuring or as gone by simply formatting a bootable partition and then installing syslinux on it. A Boot error will either occur here or, if successful, a sysl...

Read more...

Revision history for this message
John S. Gruber (jsjgruber) wrote :

Please also see LP #293489 which, I believe, is a duplicate of Debian report #489292 which was the
reason for reversing the bootcode patch.

Changed in usb-creator (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)
Changed in dosfstools (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)
Changed in usb-creator (Ubuntu):
assignee: John S. Gruber (jsjgruber) → nobody
Revision history for this message
John S. Gruber (jsjgruber) wrote :

Attempting to submit the problem upstream, along with a patch.

Changed in dosfstools (Ubuntu):
status: New → In Progress
Changed in dosfstools (Ubuntu):
assignee: John S. Gruber (jsjgruber) → nobody
Revision history for this message
John S. Gruber (jsjgruber) wrote :

Bug report and patch submitted upstream to Debian.

Changed in dosfstools (Ubuntu):
status: In Progress → New
Evan (ev)
Changed in usb-creator (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → High
Changed in dosfstools (Debian):
status: Unknown → New
Revision history for this message
komputes (komputes) wrote :

I can confirm this issue. I was using the 9.10 32-bit Alternate CD image when it happened. Using the Desktop CD image does not cause this issue for me.

Changed in usb-creator (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
status: Confirmed → New
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Andrew Sam (mailandrewsam) wrote :

I've been getting this error for nearly two days now, even after installing the dosfstools (lucid) from your ppa. I've tried formatting the disk in ubuntu, windows, destroying the partitions using diskpart in windows and then recreating them. The funny thing is that my laptop is able to recognize my thumb drive and boot in to it, but it's my core 2 duo pc that's killing me.

Is there something you can do to help me on this?

Revision history for this message
Andrew Sam (mailandrewsam) wrote :

sorry I forgot to mention, that I'm using Transend 4 gb drive. I've also tried using unetbootin. I tried using the dd command to install the iso on my disk. but nothing seemingly works on my pc. I've even tried installing maverick meerkat and creating a startup disk from that.

the only thing my pc seems to accept from the same disk though is opensuse 11.3 and fedora, copied using the dd command as mentioned in their websites. is there something that I need to do here. let me know if you need more information.

Revision history for this message
Andrew Sam (mailandrewsam) wrote :

 the iso image is 3-Aug daily live kubuntu i386 build

Revision history for this message
John S. Gruber (jsjgruber) wrote :

Thanks for commenting, Andrew.

I assume you are getting the message "Boot Error", and nothing else, when you try to boot from the usb stick after you have used usb-creator to format and copy the kubuntu image.

What model computer is being problematic? What BIOS does it use?

Some models have BIOS's that only boot sticks that are in USB-ZIP format. Might you have one of those?

Can you list the geometry of that your system thinks the stick has by using cfdisk? Don't go any further with it--the top line should list the geometry.

Revision history for this message
pinzia (pinzia) wrote :
Bryce Harrington (bryce)
Changed in usb-creator (Ubuntu):
status: Confirmed → Triaged
Revision history for this message
ankhi (ankhi) wrote :

I used the updated package from John's PPA on Ubuntu 9.04 and it resolved the issue for me.

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in dosfstools (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in dosfstools (Debian):
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in dosfstools (Debian):
status: Confirmed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Colin Watson (cjwatson) wrote :

Fixed in trusty by this upstream commit:

commit 3621b30
Author: John S Gruber <email address hidden>
Date: Fri Jul 19 06:40:21 2013 +0200

    Add options and make dos boot sector more compatible with reference system (Closes: #552673).

    Unless overridden by the user sets the DOS boot sector's
    hidden-sectors field to match the start of a hard disk's
    partition.

    Initialize DOS boot sector drive_number according to FAT media type
    Addresses LP: #398241 and Debian #552673

    Adds options to override the DOS boot sector device_number and
    the FAT media type.

    Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann <email address hidden>

Changed in dosfstools (Ubuntu):
status: Confirmed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Mathew Hodson (mhodson) wrote :

It seems this was fixed in dosfstools and that a change wasn't needed for usb-creator.

Changed in dosfstools (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Medium
no longer affects: usb-creator (Ubuntu)
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