Created attachment 385782 [details] emerge info for aboot on my system The alpha install CD images won't boot for me. This was most recently the 9/6/2014 ISO. It complains that block 0 is not a valid boot block. Ultimately, I created a test image to boot from CD, but use my existing kernels and mount the existing root filesystems from hard drives. I used a Debian lenny installation to mark a copy of my test image with their isomarkboot program. It works. Then I used the Gentoo isomarkboot program on an identical copy. Again, block 0 is not a valid boot block. It seems suspicious that the Gentoo version reports: ...bootlx is at offset 71680 and is 0 bytes long. The Debian version had a non-zero length, I believe. I don't know what version of aboot Debian used. It looks like Gentoo's is personally modified a bit anyway. FWIW, my alpha is a PWS500a. My SCSI cd started making noise, so I'm using an IDE optical drive. I don't think that's the problem.
I can reproduce too, I'm looking into it. aboot hasn't changed in years in Gentoo. So maybe it has something to do with something that changed with cdrtools.
Well, maybe it could be something that modified isomarkboot's behaviour. This is the info I have: The machine that builds the cds had aboot rebuilt in August 2013, and you said in the mailing list that you have a cd dated 5/5/2013 that boots. So I guess that after that August 2013 rebuild there hasn't been any working cd. Last rebuild of aboot before 2013 was in 2010. I have a machine that it was last updated in March 2013. But, aboot wasn't rebuilt since december 2011. Using isomarkboot in there doesn't fix the ISO. So I understand its something external to aboot, something in the system is breaking isomarkboot? Here's the output of isomarkboot in Gentoo: isomarkboot blah2.iso /boot/bootlx iso: Max size:80556 Log zone size:2048 iso: First datazone:28 Root inode number 57344 /sbin/isomarkboot: /boot/bootlx is at offset 144809984 and is 0 bytes long Here's the output of isomarkboot from Debian *IN A GENTOO SYSTEM* ( http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian-ports//pool-alpha/main/a/aboot/aboot_1.0~pre20040408-4_alpha.deb ) ./usr/bin/isomarkboot blah2.iso /boot/bootlx iso: Max size:80556 Log zone size:2048 iso: First datazone:28 Root inode number 57344 ./usr/bin/isomarkboot: /boot/bootlx is at offset 144809984 and is 80896 bytes long You mentioned that using genisofs -alpha-boot /boot/bootlx instead of mkisofs and then isomarkboot like we're doing right now fixes it. Could be an option...
We've gotten confirmation in bug 671820 that the CD boots.
