[grub] Experiencing difficulties to access USB key files

[Arbiel (gmx)]

Hi

I have written a grub file for booting from PCs which do not provide a
"from USB key" booting.

The USB keys to be used are supposed to be msdos compatible (not GPT),
grub has to have been installed in their first sectors as usual, and the
USB keys are supposed to contain a grub configuration file (a
traditional grub.cfg file) and an additional file of which the relative
path (the result of grub-mkrelpath) is unique in the configuration.

My grub file searches for the unique relative path to set the target
device where the to-be-configfiled file lies and I "configfile" it. I've
released my file to a community forum. I instructed the potential users
to source my file in their booting grub.cfg file. It works for several
members of the forum, who are happy with it.

However, it does not work for a user. We have investigated the situation
and got some results :
1) his USB key is seen by grub as a floppy disk ; the ls command lists
it as (fd1) ; so I suppressed --no-floppy from the search command
parameters. To no avail.
2) as I was not sure of the contains of the original grub.cfg file (the
one which sources my file), I added a "insmod fat" command, as the
partition of the key is FAT32. Still to no avail.
3) supposing the BIOS was lacking USB drivers, I inserted five
additional modules : usb, ahci, ehci, ohci and uhci. No avail.

I am now short of any additional idea to make it work.

Thanks to any of you who will provide me with advice.

Arbiel

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature