Customizing UBCD: Including Startup-Disk

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thegermantank
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2010 3:24 am

Customizing UBCD: Including Startup-Disk

#1 Post by thegermantank » Tue Apr 06, 2010 3:35 am

Hello,

I am trying to include a Startup Disk into the UBCD.
Working with UBCD Version 4.1.1 in Windows XP SP2 my c:\ubcd\custom\custom.cfg looks like this:

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MENU INCLUDE /menus/defaults.cfg
LABEL back
	MENU LABEL ..
	KERNEL menu.c32
	APPEND /menus/main.cfg

LABEL startdisk
	MENU LABEL Own Startdisk
	KERNEL memdisk
	APPEND initrd=/images/startdisk.img

LABEL bootimg
	MENU LABEL Your own boot image here
	KERNEL memdisk
	APPEND initrd=/custom/boot.img
Although, I am not getting this to work properly. I am always getting the same error message:
Loading memdisk....
Could not find ramdisk image: /images/startdisk.img
Of course the image-file actually exists in the specified place.
What am I doing wrong? Does memdisk expect an igz-format (How do I create this?) Or is there an another problem?

EDIT:

I created the image file using "floppy image". Its size is slightly bigger than 1,474,560 bytes. (Victor Chew mentioned in viewtopic.php?t=204&highlight=igz that this is important. But how do I get fit my img file to exactly this size?

In advance: Many thanks for your time and effort!

thegermantank
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2010 3:24 am

#2 Post by thegermantank » Tue Apr 06, 2010 4:24 am

Ok,

I solved one my problems:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/customize.html describes how to use "floppy image" to get an img that has the size of 1,474,560 bytes.

Can I just rename this from .img -> .igz?

Icecube
Posts: 1278
Joined: Fri Jan 11, 2008 2:52 pm
Contact:

#3 Post by Icecube » Tue Apr 06, 2010 8:55 am

Does memdisk expect an igz-format (How do I create this?)
No.
igz = a gzipped floppy image (a renamed img.gz file)
You can create a gzipped floppy image (or other file) with 7-zip.
But if your normal floppy image doesn't work, gzipping won't magically fix it.
Can I just rename this from .img -> .igz?
Yes, you can but it won't solve your problem. MEMDISK doesn't care about the filename (you could name the file qfjpe too, if you want.
Loading memdisk....
Could not find ramdisk image: /images/startdisk.img
Of course the image-file actually exists in the specified place.
No, your file image doesn't exist on the iso with that name (or not (open the iso with 7-zip and look in the images directory.
On UBCD411, you are restricted to use filenames that comply with the 8+3 character limit (8 characters for the filename without extension, 3 characters for the extension).
Your startdisk.img file has 9+3 characters, which causes that the file isn't found. If you did rebuild the ISO with the ubcd2iso script, you will see that MKISOFS tells you that it will use another name for the /images/startdisk.img file.
Choose another (shorter) name for the file (e.g.: startdsk.img).

Or you can change the ubcd2iso.bat script:

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%~p0\mkisofs.exe -N -J -joliet-long -D -V "UBCD40" -o "%2" -b "isolinux/isolinux.bin" -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table .
To (used in UBCD50 versions):

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"%~p0\mkisofs.exe" -iso-level 4 -l -R -J -joliet-long -D -V  "UBCD411" -o "%2%" -b "isolinux/isolinux.bin" -c "isolinux/boot.catalog" -hide "isolinux/boot.catalog" -hide-joliet "isolinux/boot.catalog" -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table .
The '-l' option will generate long filenames, which allows ISOLINUX to use them (can only read iso9660 filenames, not Joliet or Rockridge filenames).

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  -l, -full-iso9660-filenames Allow full 31 character filenames for ISO9660 names
If you change this script, you don't need to restrict your filenames to the 8+3 limit.
Download Ultimate Boot CD v5.0: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
Use Parted Magic for handling all partitioning task: http://partedmagic.com/

thegermantank
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2010 3:24 am

#4 Post by thegermantank » Tue Apr 06, 2010 11:11 pm

Thank you for your great help.

Trying to include Startup-Disks has now been successful. The mistake was that I did not use 8+3 Characters for the name of the files. (Where do you know that from? Where could I have found it? I did not find this information in the memdisk docu http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/MEMDISK).

I now have been creating different Startup-Disks and the ones that should work, work. So far, so good.
What confused me, was that when I created a simple MSDOS-Startupdisk (by right Mouseclick on a:/ -> format -> create MSDOS StartupDisk) and made an image file with rawread (my floppy format trail version expired) that ubcd would try to start this image but got stuck at:
Loading boot sector... booting...
Shouldn't it have to boot this very simple structure? (Three files: config.sys, autoexec.bat, io.sys)

By the way, the reason why I did not get the error message that my file name is too long, is that I did not build an iso-file with ubcd2iso. I use ubcd2usb which seems to have no problem with longer file names.

Icecube
Posts: 1278
Joined: Fri Jan 11, 2008 2:52 pm
Contact:

#5 Post by Icecube » Wed Apr 07, 2010 10:17 am

thegermantank wrote:Trying to include Startup-Disks has now been successful. The mistake was that I did not use 8+3 Characters for the name of the files. (Where do you know that from? Where could I have found it? I did not find this information in the memdisk docu http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/MEMDISK).
The 8+3 character thing is not a MEMDISK related problem, but a bootloader (ISOLINUX/SYSLINUX/...) related problem. ISOLINUX/SYSLINUX/... loads MEMDISK and the floppy image to memory, so only the bootmanager needs to be able to read the files (MEMDISK.does not).

The 8+3 character limit info can be found at:
http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.ph ... t_building
thegermantank wrote: What confused me, was that when I created a simple MSDOS-Startupdisk (by right Mouseclick on a:/ -> format -> create MSDOS StartupDisk) and made an image file with rawread (my floppy format trail version expired) that ubcd would try to start this image but got stuck at:
Loading boot sector... booting...
Shouldn't it have to boot this very simple structure? (Three files: config.sys, autoexec.bat, io.sys)
Update MEMDISK to a newer version and try this:
http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.ph ... safeint.29
thegermantank wrote: By the way, the reason why I did not get the error message that my file name is too long, is that I did not build an iso-file with ubcd2iso. I use ubcd2usb which seems to have no problem with longer file names.
Long filename support for FAT filesystems is only supported since SYSLINUX 3.70:
http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/Changelog

So if you install a newer SYSLINUX version (v3.86) and update all COM32 modules (.c32 files) you won't have any problem with the 8+3 character limit on FAT partitions.
Download Ultimate Boot CD v5.0: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
Use Parted Magic for handling all partitioning task: http://partedmagic.com/

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