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Problem installing SBM (Smart Boot Loader)

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Maurice Batey

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Jan 29, 2012, 2:30:12 PM1/29/12
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Am having prtoblems setting up SBM (Smart Boot Loader).

Wantimng to check it out first from floppy, I tried the two different
ways described in the doc's in the Linux Format's DVD copy of SBM:

(1) dd if=/media/cdrom/Essentials/SBM/sbootmgr.dsk of=/dev/fd0

(2) sbminst -t us -d /dev/fd0

In both cases the write went as expected ( "216 records read/written"),
but when I booted from either floppy, it started to read it, but then
the system just locked up with the floppy reader light on. A no-op.
Had to do a power off/on to get the system up again.

Could someone throw some light on installimng SBM, please?

N.B. I'm currently using GAG as bootloader, which happily boots from
floppy.

--
/\/\aurice
(Retired in Surrey, UK) Registered Linux User #487649
Linux Mandriva 2010.2 32-bit PowerPack (i686 kernel)
KDE 4.5.2 Virtualbox 4.0.6 Firefox 9.1 Kmail 1.13.5
(Replace "nomail.afraid" by "bcs" to reply by email)

Gernot Fink

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Jan 29, 2012, 2:50:01 PM1/29/12
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In article <pan.2012.01.29....@nomail.afraid.org>,
Maurice Batey <mau...@nomail.afraid.org> writes:
>
> (1) dd if=/media/cdrom/Essentials/SBM/sbootmgr.dsk of=/dev/fd0

sometime the images on a CD are gziped. Special if they get started with
memdisk.

In this case try gunzip </media/cdrom/Essentials/SBM/sbootmgr.dsk >/dev/fd0

--
MFG Gernot

Maurice Batey

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Jan 29, 2012, 4:12:20 PM1/29/12
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On Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:50:01 +0000, Gernot Fink wrote:

> try gunzip </media/cdrom/Essentials/SBM/sbootmgr.dsk >/dev/fd0

$ gunzip </media/cdrom/Essentials/SBM/sbootmgr.dsk >/dev/fd0

"gzip: stdin: not in gzip format"

Back to the drawing board... :-(

--
/\/\aurice

Aragorn

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Jan 29, 2012, 5:04:15 PM1/29/12
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On Sunday 29 January 2012 20:30, Maurice Batey conveyed the following to
comp.os.linux.setup...

> Am having prtoblems setting up SBM (Smart Boot Loader).
>
> Wantimng to check it out first from floppy, I tried the two different
> ways described in the doc's in the Linux Format's DVD copy of SBM:
>
> (1) dd if=/media/cdrom/Essentials/SBM/sbootmgr.dsk of=/dev/fd0
>
> (2) sbminst -t us -d /dev/fd0
>
> In both cases the write went as expected ( "216 records
> read/written"), but when I booted from either floppy, it started to
> read it, but then the system just locked up with the floppy reader
> light on. A no-op.
> Had to do a power off/on to get the system up again.
>
> Could someone throw some light on installimng SBM, please?
>
> N.B. I'm currently using GAG as bootloader, which happily boots from
> floppy.

The commands you executed are correct - or at least, the first one is; I
cannot speak of the second one by lack of experience with that - but it
would appear to me as if the image you were writing to the floppy drive
was corrupted somehow. It is not unthinkable - given that you've gotten
it off of a DVD which came with a magazine - that they forgot to check
the md5sum when they downloaded it off the 'net.

You wrote the image to the floppy. There's no reason to suspect that
GNU/Linux has failed to do exactly as you told it to. You would have
gotten error messages otherwise. Then you tried booting up from the
floppy, and that's where the system got stuck. By consequence, logic
dictates that it is the image itself - or possibly a bad floppy disk -
that caused the system to hang.

--
= Aragorn =
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Maurice Batey

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Jan 30, 2012, 7:26:55 AM1/30/12
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On Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:04:15 +0100, Aragorn wrote:

> logic dictates that it is the image itself - or possibly a bad
> floppy disk - that caused the system to hang.

Seems logical, so I downloaded sbm.img from Sourceforge and repeated
the write to floppy (tried several floppies):

$ dd if=/home/mab/Download/sbm.img of=/dev/fd0
216+0 records in
216+0 records out
110592 bytes (111 kB) copied, 7.10425 s, 15.6 kB/s

Result: When booting from the floppy the system still freezes after a
couple of 'read' noises (screen stays blank) and it's restart time...

I also downloaded the SBM btmgr RPM (btmgr-3.7-1.I386.rpm) and
installed that, which produced a 'theme' file directory in /usr/share,
btmgr 'desktop' files, and a mass of HTML files in /usr/share/doc.
The docs talk about compiling SBM, customising 'themes' - a whole
labyrith of contorted procedures to follow. No sign of a floppy image
file.
What a difference from GAG and PLOP!

I'm almost ready to abandon SBM. Has anyone here had success?
Is there a convenent way of getting it in use?!

--
/\/\aurice

Maurice Batey

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Jan 30, 2012, 7:31:18 AM1/30/12
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On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:26:55 +0000, I wrote:

> When booting from the floppy the system still freezes after a
> couple of 'read' noises (screen stays blank) and it's restart time...

P.S. GAG continues to happily boot from floppy...

The Natural Philosopher

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Jan 30, 2012, 8:43:43 AM1/30/12
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is there a reason why you are using a floppy? I have found that CD/DVD
images are very reliable and most people have a drive somewhere they can
cobble into a system for the purposes of?

When that has failed for me in the past I have even managed to network
boot..debian onto a laptop that only had a CD..drive...

David Brown

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Jan 30, 2012, 8:47:04 AM1/30/12
to
On 29/01/2012 20:30, Maurice Batey wrote:
> Am having prtoblems setting up SBM (Smart Boot Loader).
>
> Wantimng to check it out first from floppy, I tried the two different
> ways described in the doc's in the Linux Format's DVD copy of SBM:
>
> (1) dd if=/media/cdrom/Essentials/SBM/sbootmgr.dsk of=/dev/fd0
>
> (2) sbminst -t us -d /dev/fd0
>
> In both cases the write went as expected ( "216 records read/written"),
> but when I booted from either floppy, it started to read it, but then
> the system just locked up with the floppy reader light on. A no-op.
> Had to do a power off/on to get the system up again.
>
> Could someone throw some light on installimng SBM, please?
>
> N.B. I'm currently using GAG as bootloader, which happily boots from
> floppy.
>

I was looking for a boot manager myself yesterday (I wanted two
independent Linux installations on the same disk, each with their own
grub). I looked at GAG and SBM, as well as XOSL (which I used many
years ago), before finding Plop Boot Manager:

<http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html>

Booting from CD and HD worked fine, as did installation to HD. I
presume installation to floppy will work fine too, though I haven't
tried it.

Maurice Batey

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Jan 30, 2012, 10:37:57 AM1/30/12
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On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:43:43 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> is there a reason why you are using a floppy?

Yes. I found that - on this new PC - GAG will not write the chosen
setup (checked out on floppy first) to the MBR - so that I can boot
from hard drive.
(It's code tries to write to device x'80' but can't find it on this
PC (no problem on previous).
That may be because there is no 'SATA 0' slot in this PC, and I
notice that the PLOP bootloader also aims at x'80', but also has an
option to write to x'81'. (Problem with PLOP is it can't handle a
Logical partition number > 4.))

Yes, I can boot from CD's, but don't want to do that on a regular basis.

Gernot Fink

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Jan 30, 2012, 10:40:01 AM1/30/12
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In article <pan.2012.01.30...@nomail.afraid.org>,
Maurice Batey <mau...@nomail.afraid.org> writes:
> On Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:04:15 +0100, Aragorn wrote:
>
> Result: When booting from the floppy the system still freezes after a
> couple of 'read' noises (screen stays blank) and it's restart time...
>
> What a difference from GAG and PLOP!

Back from drawing board :-)

plop is able to boot from CD or USB even if the BIOS dont support this.

tried you "badblocks -s /dev/fd0" ?

--
MFG Gernot

Michael Black

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Jan 30, 2012, 10:47:24 AM1/30/12
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I've used it, because my computer can't boot from the DVDROM drive, or
something like that. I had no problem. It's been a while so I can't
remember any details. But, what I did find is one had to be patient.
Once the smart boot manager boots, it shows a menu, so you select what you
want to boot from. And initially I didn't think it was working, since it
needed the drive to be up to speed before it could work. If you selected
the DVD drive before it was up to speed, it wouldn't work, and there was
no message saying "waiting for drive to come up to speed". No message, so
until I was familiar with what was supposed to happen, it seemed like I
was doing something wrong or the program didnt' work.

Sadly, you don't seem to be up to that point yet, and it's been too long
since I last used it to be of help. I had no problem installing it to
floppy, though I can't remember details.

Even a decade ago the Linux documentation would warn about floppies, so
make sure you have a good one to start.

Michael

Maurice Batey

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Jan 30, 2012, 12:27:54 PM1/30/12
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On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:47:24 -0500, Michael Black wrote:

> Once the smart boot manager boots, it shows a menu, so you select what you
> want to boot from. And initially I didn't think it was working, since it
> needed the drive to be up to speed before it could work.

No sign of any menu (just a blank screen), and I would not be trying
to boot a DVD/CD drive.

Maurice Batey

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Jan 30, 2012, 12:32:04 PM1/30/12
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On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:40:01 +0000, Gernot Fink wrote:

> plop is able to boot from CD or USB even if the BIOS dont support
> this.

Not trying to boot into a CD/CD drive. Aim is to boot one of several
Linux installions on hard drive (having GRUB in their Root superblock).

> tried you "badblocks -s /dev/fd0" ?

Have tried several floppies.
On one of them I have now been able to install Extipl and boot
from it into Mandriva on 2nd drive.
But Extipl cannot handle Logical partitions, so no use to me.
Also, its interface is not one I would want to use on a regular basis.

Maurice Batey

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Jan 30, 2012, 1:26:17 PM1/30/12
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On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:32:04 +0000, I wrote:

> Extipl cannot handle Logical partitions,

Not true!

Although it only shows Primary partition and Extended partition, if you
select Extended it shows all the Logical partitions and one can boot
any of them that have e.g. GRUB in the superblock.

So I now have Extipl in the MBR as a backup in case the floppy drive
goes u/s and I can't use the nicer GAG interface.

Maurice Batey

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Jan 30, 2012, 2:05:49 PM1/30/12
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On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:26:17 +0000, I wrote:

> now have Extipl in the MBR

Although Extipl is simple to install for booting(e.g. as Root: "extipl
install /dev/sda") - having installed Extipl e.g. via Mandriva's
MCC/Software - one needs to remember when booting that as soon as
"extipl" appears on the screen one needs to hit the Shift key (to get
into the menu), otherwise it will boot the default system.

Bob Martin

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Jan 31, 2012, 2:43:32 AM1/31/12
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GAG comes with full source - can you patch "install.asm"?

David Brown

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Jan 31, 2012, 3:03:34 AM1/31/12
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On 30/01/2012 18:32, Maurice Batey wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:40:01 +0000, Gernot Fink wrote:
>
>> plop is able to boot from CD or USB even if the BIOS dont support
>> this.
>
> Not trying to boot into a CD/CD drive. Aim is to boot one of several
> Linux installions on hard drive (having GRUB in their Root superblock).
>

Have you /looked/ at Plop?

<http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html>

You can install it on the harddisk MBR.

Just one thing to note (I say this, because it took me a while to figure
it out myself). In the downloaded zip file, there are two iso images
that can be burned to CD (and similarly for floppy images). The first
is to run Plop from the CD, and the one in the "install" directory is
for installing it on the harddisk.

Maurice Batey

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Jan 31, 2012, 12:13:49 PM1/31/12
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On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:03:34 +0100, David Brown wrote:

> Have you /looked/ at Plop?

Yes, indeed - and got it working on floppy.

But it can't handle Logical partition numbers > 4, so no good to me.

Maurice Batey

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Jan 31, 2012, 12:17:41 PM1/31/12
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On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 07:43:32 +0000, Bob Martin wrote:

> GAG comes with full source - can you patch "install.asm"?

I'm not into editing other's code (let alone compiling!) so stayed
with GAG on floppy, as there was no response from the author.

However, someone has suggested a way in which /dev/sda might be made to
appear as device '80' without screwing anything else up, so am pursuing
that solution.

David Brown

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Feb 1, 2012, 3:16:56 AM2/1/12
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On 31/01/2012 18:13, Maurice Batey wrote:
> On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:03:34 +0100, David Brown wrote:
>
>> Have you /looked/ at Plop?
>
> Yes, indeed - and got it working on floppy.
>
> But it can't handle Logical partition numbers> 4, so no good to me.
>

Yes, that seems to be an annoying limitation of Plop, which otherwise
seems very nice.

Maurice Batey

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Feb 1, 2012, 7:14:35 AM2/1/12
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On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:37:57 +0000, Maurice Batey wrote:

> GAG will not write the chosen
> setup (checked out on floppy first) to the MBR - so that I can boot
> from hard drive.
> (It's code tries to write to device x'80' but can't find it on this
> PC (no problem on previous).

Seems I can get round that by installing GAG directly to MBR from
Linux (which knows the boot drive as /dev/sda).

Only thing is I would lose all the setup on the floppy.
Still, that's not a big deal - just a nuisance.
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