Grub instead of Isolinux?

BigDragon · #1 25th January 2010, 10:52 PM

I'm looking for help getting a Fedora LiveCD to work with Grub instead of Isolinux.

At the moment I am working with livecd-tools using the livecd-fedora-minimal.ks configuration file that comes with them. This spits out a working iso that contains Isolinux. I've tested in virtual machines and on CD-R media without issue. On some other Linux distributions I've been able to easily remove Isolinux and replace it with Grub's stage2_eltorito, copy over some kernel parameters into menu.lst, and use mkisofs to create the new Grub livecd. Unfortunately, my experience with Fedora 11 and 12 has left me with the system "waiting for root to appear" and then dumping the error messages "No root device found" and "Boot has failed, sleeping forever". I don't understand what is going wrong and why Fedora doesn't want to boot when I use Grub's stage2_eltorito instead of Isolinux.

Any ideas or advice would be appreciated. I'm not sure what's going wrong. Maybe I'm missing something? Maybe there's a Fedora behavior or bug I'm not aware of? Thanks in advance! The structure of the CD's and their bootloader configuration files appear below. Please note that I have stripped out the EFI content of the Grub livecd. This has not impacted the ability of other distributions I've tried to load from a livecd so I assumed the same would apply to Fedora.

Grub livecd contents (FedoraLiveCD.iso):

Code:

.:
total 8
drwxrwxr-x. 3 bigdragon bigdragon 4096 2010-01-25 15:54 boot
drwxrwxr-x. 2 bigdragon bigdragon 4096 2010-01-25 15:45 LiveOS

./boot:
total 15064
-rw-rw-r--. 1 bigdragon bigdragon     2048 2010-01-25 15:46 boot.cat
drwxrwxr-x. 2 bigdragon bigdragon     4096 2010-01-25 16:24 grub
-rw-rw-r--. 1 bigdragon bigdragon 11108956 2010-01-25 15:44 initrd0.img
-rw-rw-r--. 1 bigdragon bigdragon   390373 2010-01-25 15:44 splash.jpg
-rw-r--r--. 1 bigdragon bigdragon    17499 2009-12-10 15:50 splash.xpm.gz
-rw-rw-r--. 1 bigdragon bigdragon   158364 2010-01-25 15:44 vesamenu.c32
-rw-rw-r--. 1 bigdragon bigdragon  3730176 2010-01-25 15:44 vmlinuz0

./boot/grub:
total 180
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 bigdragon bigdragon    236 2010-01-25 16:24 menu.lst
-rw-rw-rw-. 1 bigdragon bigdragon    236 2010-01-25 16:24 menu.lst~
-rw-rw-r--. 1 bigdragon bigdragon 173746 2010-01-25 16:25 stage2_eltorito

./LiveOS:
total 221768
-rw-rw-r--. 1 bigdragon bigdragon      4096 2010-01-25 15:45 osmin.img
-rw-rw-r--. 1 bigdragon bigdragon 227082240 2010-01-25 15:46 squashfs.img

Detail of /boot/grub/menu.list

Code:

default=0
timeout=12
splashimage=/boot/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora 12 Live 32-bit
kernel /boot/vmlinuz0 root=live:CDLABEL=FedoraLiveCD rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet rhgb rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD noiswmd
initrd /boot/initrd0.img

Isolinux livecd contents (Fedora-LiveCD.iso):

Code:

.:
total 6
dr-xr-xr-x. 3 bigdragon bigdragon 2048 2010-01-25 15:44 EFI
dr-xr-xr-x. 2 bigdragon bigdragon 2048 2010-01-25 15:44 isolinux
dr-xr-xr-x. 2 bigdragon bigdragon 2048 2010-01-25 15:45 LiveOS

./EFI:
total 2
dr-xr-xr-x. 2 bigdragon bigdragon 2048 2010-01-25 15:44 boot

./EFI/boot:
total 15490
-r--r--r--. 3 bigdragon bigdragon      389 2010-01-25 15:44 boot.conf
-r-xr-xr-x. 2 bigdragon bigdragon   218348 2010-01-25 15:44 boot.efi
-r--r--r--. 3 bigdragon bigdragon      389 2010-01-25 15:44 bootia32.conf
-r-xr-xr-x. 2 bigdragon bigdragon   218348 2010-01-25 15:44 bootia32.efi
-r--r--r--. 3 bigdragon bigdragon      389 2010-01-25 15:44 grub.conf
-r--r--r--. 2 bigdragon bigdragon 11108956 2010-01-25 15:44 initrd0.img
-r--r--r--. 2 bigdragon bigdragon    14336 2010-01-25 15:44 isolinux.bin
-r--r--r--. 2 bigdragon bigdragon      951 2010-01-25 15:44 isolinux.cfg
-r--r--r--. 2 bigdragon bigdragon   390373 2010-01-25 15:44 splash.jpg
-r--r--r--. 1 bigdragon bigdragon    17488 2010-01-25 15:44 splash.xpm.gz
-r--r--r--. 2 bigdragon bigdragon   158364 2010-01-25 15:44 vesamenu.c32
-r--r--r--. 2 bigdragon bigdragon  3730176 2010-01-25 15:44 vmlinuz0

./isolinux:
total 15046
-r--r--r--. 1 bigdragon bigdragon     2048 2010-01-25 15:46 boot.cat
-r--r--r--. 2 bigdragon bigdragon 11108956 2010-01-25 15:44 initrd0.img
-r--r--r--. 2 bigdragon bigdragon    14336 2010-01-25 15:44 isolinux.bin
-r--r--r--. 2 bigdragon bigdragon      951 2010-01-25 15:44 isolinux.cfg
-r--r--r--. 2 bigdragon bigdragon   390373 2010-01-25 15:44 splash.jpg
-r--r--r--. 2 bigdragon bigdragon   158364 2010-01-25 15:44 vesamenu.c32
-r--r--r--. 2 bigdragon bigdragon  3730176 2010-01-25 15:44 vmlinuz0

./LiveOS:
total 221764
-r-xr-xr-x. 1 bigdragon bigdragon      4096 2010-01-25 15:45 osmin.img
-r-xr-xr-x. 1 bigdragon bigdragon 227082240 2010-01-25 15:46 squashfs.img

Detail of /isolinux/isolinux.cfg

Code:

default vesamenu.c32
timeout 100

menu background splash.jpg
menu title Welcome to Fedora-LiveCD!
menu color border 0 #ffffffff #00000000
menu color sel 7 #ffffffff #ff000000
menu color title 0 #ffffffff #00000000
menu color tabmsg 0 #ffffffff #00000000
menu color unsel 0 #ffffffff #00000000
menu color hotsel 0 #ff000000 #ffffffff
menu color hotkey 7 #ffffffff #ff000000
menu color timeout_msg 0 #ffffffff #00000000
menu color timeout 0 #ffffffff #00000000
menu color cmdline 0 #ffffffff #00000000
menu hidden
menu hiddenrow 5
label linux0
  menu label Boot
  kernel vmlinuz0
  append initrd=initrd0.img root=live:CDLABEL=Fedora-LiveCD rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet  rhgb rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD noiswmd 
menu default
label check0
  menu label Verify and Boot
  kernel vmlinuz0
  append initrd=initrd0.img root=live:CDLABEL=Fedora-LiveCD rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet  rhgb check
label local
  menu label Boot from local drive
  localboot 0xffff

JEO · #2 26th January 2010, 12:07 AM

I noticed you removed the hyphen in root=live

DLABEL=Fedora-LiveCD, since it can't find the root that might be the problem. Maybe that name exists elsewhere (like in the initrd maybe) and should not be changed.

BigDragon · #3 26th January 2010, 04:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JEO

I noticed you removed the hyphen in root=live

DLABEL=Fedora-LiveCD, since it can't find the root that might be the problem. Maybe that name exists elsewhere (like in the initrd maybe) and should not be changed.

Yes, I didn't think it would be an issue. I did try with both labels and then went ahead and created 2 new iso's of the same livecd. One has the hyphen and the other does not. I also tried some other things such as setting the label to livecd-fedora-minimal. None of this has had any effect. The same error appears each time.

EDIT:

I like it when there's a simple solution, but I feel so dumb for overlooking it. JEO, you were right. I had the label set wrong. The one I pulled from the Isolinux config file was not the one I should have been using. It turns out setting the label to CDROM allows Fedora to boot from Grub instead of Isolinux. Thanks!