PLoP hangs when trying to boot a USB key

[lev]

Hi,

I've installed a Linux distro (openSUSE) on a 8 GB Transcend USB key. It boots OK on a recent laptop (whose BIOS allows booting from USB).

To boot it on an older laptop, I made a PLoP bootmanager floppy. The floppy drive is a USB one. PLoP starts OK. Then I plug my key in the other USB port, and hit Ctrl-Shift-U. PLoP detects the Transcend device. Then I hit enter and I'm taken back to the console screen with a bit more than a linefull of periods, with the blinking cursor, and nothing more happens.

FWIW, here's the partition table cfdisk sees on the USB key:

Code Select Expand

               First       Last
# Type       Sector      Sector   Offset    Length   Filesystem Type (ID) Flag
-- ------- ----------- ----------- ------ ----------- -------------------- ----
1 Primary           0       48194     63       48195 W95 FAT16 (LBA) (0E) Boot
2 Primary       48195     2152709      0     2104515 Linux swap / So (82) None
3 Primary     2152710    15679439      0    13526730 Linux (83)           None

(There are two other views available but I think this one is the most relevant.)

Thanks for your help.

[Elmar]

hi,
can you post the "lspci -v" output of the machine?

regards
elmar

[lev]

can you post the "lspci -v" output of the machine?

Thanks for answering.

The older laptop has no Linux installed. I'll have to boot a rescue system DVD. It might be in a few days, so maybe you could tell me now what kind of info you're after, and other commands to run depending of what lspci will give.

[Elmar]

the dmesg output is also interesting

[michiganbroadband]

Had a question but figured it out.. :-)
Seems I can't delete my comment/post but I can change it to this..
Sorry about that.

[lev]

Had a question but figured it out.. :-)

Got it by email... Nice to see you figured it out, that proves I expressed myself well enough to be understood 

[lev]

I'll have to boot a rescue system DVD. It might be in a few days, so maybe you could tell me now what kind of info you're after, and other commands to run depending of what lspci will give.

My DVD-ROM drive refuses to read the openSUSE install DVD from which I wanted to boot a rescue system. (Booting from CDROM directly via the BIOS menu yields some kind of "bad media" message, and trying to boot via PLoP gives a red "CDROM error".)

Do you know any Linux floppy distro containing lspci? (The few I found up to now only have dmesg.)

[Elmar]

Do you know any Linux floppy distro containing lspci? (The few I found up to now only have dmesg.)

no

are you sure its a dvd drive and not only a cdrom drive?

[lev]

are you sure its a dvd drive and not only a cdrom drive?

It's labeled DVD-ROM. This model: http://www.ultradrives.com/product_info.php/cPath/3_28/products_id/119

[lev]

Well, I found this which is able to probe PCI devices: Hardware Detection Tool, http://hdt-project.org/wiki . Tell me if it's enough or if you really need Linux's lspci.

I had to copy data by hand, so I wrote down only the parts which looked relevant to me, but still I listed all the devices reported by HDT. (blanks mean I didn't copy the given value, it's not necessarily empty)

Code Select Expand

Manufacturer     Class                        Name                              Location  PCI ID                IRQ  Latency
ALi Corporation  Host bridge                  M1644/M1644T Northbridge+Trident  00:00.0   10b9:1644[0000:0000]
ALi Corporation  PCI bridge                   PCI to AGP controller             00:01.0   10b9:5247[0000:0000]
ALi Corporation  USB controller               USB 1.1 controller                00:02.0   10b9:5237[1179:0004]  11   64
ALi Corporation  IDE interface                M5229 IDE                         00:03.0   10b9:5229[1179:0004]
ALi Corporation  Multimedia audio controller                                    etc.                            11
ALi Corporation  ISA bridge                                                               10b9:1533[1179:0004]
ALi Corporation  Bridge                       M7101 pow. man. controller
Intel            Ethernet                                                                                       11
TI               Cardbus bridge
Toshiba          Cardbus bridge
Toshiba          Cardbus bridge
Toshiba          Sys. peripheral              SDtypA controller                                                 11
Trident          VGA compatible controller                                                                      11


[lev]

Any thoughts, Elmar? 

[Elmar]

i released a new version. can you try it.

[lev]

i released a new version. can you try it.

Whoo hoo hoooooooooooooo, that works!
I'm posting this from my USB Linux 
BTW, the version that didn't work was 5.0.4-2 (I think I downloaded it a while ago, but only recently had I time to post here).

Thanks a lot!
Cheers,
L.