Problems when attempting to customize UBCD

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BrianMcK
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Jul 23, 2010 6:58 am

Problems when attempting to customize UBCD

#1 Post by BrianMcK » Fri Jul 23, 2010 10:10 am

For the past few days, I have been attempting to incorporate an .IMZ file into the Ultimate Boot CD directory structure (as per the “Customizing UBCD” set of instructions located on the product website) for the purpose of being able to boot a legacy Ghost 7.0 disk from optical media. In the past I have been able to accomplish this but, for some reason I am have difficulty now.
I am using Towodo Software’s Floppy Image (version 2.4) to create the .IMZ file (which I am led to understand is simply a compressed version of an .IMG that ought to work provided that the “Create compatible IMG files” option is activated within Floppy Image. . .previously Floppy Image was specifically mentioned in the “Customizing UBCD” instructions as a way to create these floppy disk images but for some reason is no longer listed, which is something that I find curious). After creating the floppy image file, I initially was using Ultimate Boot CD version 4.11. Per the website instructions, I imported the .IMZ file into the “Custom” subdirectory and edited the <Custom.cfg> file in the following manner:

MENU INCLUDE /menus/defaults.cfg
LABEL back
MENU LABEL ..
KERNEL menu.c32
APPEND /menus/main.cfg
LABEL AFP-IS Ghost Image
MENU LABEL AFP Ghost Image
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/custom/ghost.IMZ

I then navigated to the <ubcd2iso> section of UBCD’s directory structure and created an .ISO file. When I did this the following messages appeared during the process:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WARNING: creating filesystem that does not conform to ISO-9660
WARNING: creating filesystem with (nonstandard) Joliet extensions but without (standard) Rock Ridge extensions. It is highly recommended to add Rock Ridge.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After burning this .ISO file to a CD-R, I then proceeded to attempt booting to a PC using the disk. Again, this has worked in the past when I have done this after taking an image of a standard 1.44MB floppy disk. However, this time I received the following error messages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
MEMDISK: Image has fractional end sector
MEMDISK: Image seems to have fractional end cylinder
Disk is hard disk 0, 811K, C/H/S = 0/240/61 EDD on
Total Size Needed = 2445 bytes, allocating 3K
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
After performing a web search for these messages I found a thread on this board (viewtopic.php?p=8445) which suggested that the cause of this might possibly be that the floppy (or “diskette”) drive on the PC is disabled within the machine’s BIOS. I checked this and saw that this BIOS setting was enabled (even though there is no physical diskette drive installed). I also confirmed that the physical floppy disk that I used to take the image was booting correctly on a PC that did have a floppy drive and that other Ultimate Boot CD’s that I have created in the past were booting on the PC that I was having trouble with.
After a day of troubleshooting with no luck, I finally decided to download the latest version of Ultimate Boot CD in the hopes that this might work better with the .IMZ file taken from the most recent version of Floppy Image. So, after doing this, I repeated the above process again (with the additional step of having to import an <isolinux> folder containing a <isolinux.bin> file from a previous version of Ultimate Boot CD into the current version’s <Boot> directory. . .<ubcd2iso> would not work unless I did this). This time, I configured <Custon.CFG> in the following manner:

#
# Useful resources for UBCD customization:
#
# - http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.ph ... UX_Project
# - http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/customize.html
#

MENU INCLUDE /ubcd/menus/syslinux/defaults.cfg
UI /boot/syslinux/menu.c32

LABEL Ultimate Boot CD
MENU LABEL ..
COM32 /boot/syslinux/menu.c32
APPEND /ubcd/menus/syslinux/main.cfg

#LABEL -
#MENU LABEL Your own boot image here
#TEXT HELP
# Your help message goes here.
#ENDTEXT
#LINUX /boot/syslinux/memdisk
#INITRD /ubcd/custom/boot.img
#APPEND -

LABEL Custom Applications
MENU LABEL AFP Ghost Image
TEXT HELP
Optiplex GX380.
ENDTEXT
LINUX /boot/syslinux/memdisk
INITRD /ubcd/custom/ghost.imz
APPEND raw

After burning the new .ISO file to a CD-R , I again attempted to boot to the PC. This time, I received an error message stating “No LABEL entries found in configuration file”.

I have been growing increasingly frustrated with this as, for the past two days, I have been trying to solve this mystery as opposed to getting work done. I cannot understand why I am suddenly getting problems relating to fractional end sectors/cylinders when I am using the same type/sized media that I have used in the past (the only thing that I can think of is that for some reason Floppy Image in it’s current version is no longer supported or that something about XP Service Pack 3 is causing a problem). I also have no idea as to which configuration file (if not <custom.cfg>) is missing labels and causing the newer version of Ultimate Boot CD to crap out. I know that there is an answer out there somewhere but need the wisdom of experts to help me get to it. As such, any insight would be appreciated.

kcarney
Posts: 52
Joined: Tue Nov 24, 2009 9:22 am

Re: Problems when attempting to customize UBCD

#2 Post by kcarney » Fri Jul 23, 2010 10:42 am

First, try IMG file instead of the compressed IMZ. Then try changing this;

Code: Select all

LABEL AFP-IS Ghost Image
MENU LABEL AFP Ghost Image
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/custom/ghost.IMZ
to this;

Code: Select all

LABEL AFP-IS Ghost Image
MENU LABEL AFP Ghost Image
KERNEL memdisk
INITRD /custom/ghost.IMG
leave off the append raw

BrianMcK
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Jul 23, 2010 6:58 am

Re: Problems when attempting to customize UBCD

#3 Post by BrianMcK » Mon Jul 26, 2010 4:26 am

kcarney wrote:First, try IMG file instead of the compressed IMZ. Then try changing this;

Code: Select all

LABEL AFP-IS Ghost Image
MENU LABEL AFP Ghost Image
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/custom/ghost.IMZ
to this;

Code: Select all

LABEL AFP-IS Ghost Image
MENU LABEL AFP Ghost Image
KERNEL memdisk
INITRD /custom/ghost.IMG
leave off the append raw
Is there a free utility that I can use to do this? Floppy Image seems to default to the .IMZ format
Last edited by BrianMcK on Mon Jul 26, 2010 11:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

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

Re: Problems when attempting to customize UBCD

#4 Post by Icecube » Mon Jul 26, 2010 5:22 am

Whcih version of UBCD50X are you using?
After burning the new .ISO file to a CD-R , I again attempted to boot to the PC. This time, I received an error message stating “No LABEL entries found in configuration file”.
Don't replace isolinux.bin with an older version. ISOLINUX (isolinux.bin) and SYSLINUX (ldlinux.sys) always need c32 modules from the same Syslinux version. Mixing different versions of Syslinux files won't work (reliable or not at all). Newer versions support new features, which are used in the syslinux configuration files of UBCD50X.

Which version of Windows are you using?
You can Virtual Floppy Drive to create a virtual floppy drive (which will be written to a file which you can use with UBCD) and create the Ghost floppy on this drive:
http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html
Or ImDisk:
http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html#ImDisk
Download Ultimate Boot CD v5.0: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
Use Parted Magic for handling all partitioning task: http://partedmagic.com/

kcarney
Posts: 52
Joined: Tue Nov 24, 2009 9:22 am

Re: Problems when attempting to customize UBCD

#5 Post by kcarney » Mon Jul 26, 2010 8:14 am

BrianMcK wrote:
Is there a free utility that I can use to do this? Floppy Image seems to default to the .IMZ forman
Change the default to IMA then manually rename the file to IMG, I use winimage also

BrianMcK
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Jul 23, 2010 6:58 am

Re: Problems when attempting to customize UBCD

#6 Post by BrianMcK » Mon Jul 26, 2010 11:24 am

All is well. I used rawread to create an .IMG file and it worked this time.

The funny thing is, when I checked, another disk that I customized in the past used an .IMZ. Can't explain why that disk reads the .IMZ while all my attempts last week with the .IMZ format failed.

kcarney
Posts: 52
Joined: Tue Nov 24, 2009 9:22 am

Re: Problems when attempting to customize UBCD

#7 Post by kcarney » Mon Jul 26, 2010 12:18 pm

IMZ is a compressed image file, while IMA/IMG are not. You can use winimage in the future just keep in mind IMG only.

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