Airboot fails when *internal* usb mutli card reader is accidentally added to BIOS Boot Options

[losepete]

Not sure if this is related to ticket #31

I created an ArcaOS5.0.4 install usb flash drive, rebooted and set BIOS to support USB boot (enabled Legacy USB), booted the usb flash drive to the Maintenance Console (simply to test booting from usb flash drive works), made no system changes, clicked Shutdown and rebooted.

On reboot from hard disk the Airboot Menu (Airboot v1.1.1) failed to appear instead displaying this message:-

Scanning...

• Your system has at least one broken partition table entry or your hard drive contains bad sectors. System halted.(HDD2)

Initially I wondered if booting the USB flash drive had caused some sort of partition table mixup.

After booting from an ArcaOS5.0.1 dvd to a Maintenance Console and running DFSee I was sure that there were no bad partition tables or bad sectors as DFSee reported no problems.

I did open a discussion on os2world.com - see ​https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php?topic=2447 - and 1 answer prompted me to check through the BIOS again.

I then discovered that enabling USB boot support in the BIOS had automatically added my *internal* usb multi card reader to the Boot List.

I removed that device from the Boot List, Saved and Exited BIOS, boot continued with the Airboot Menu appearing.

I can only deduce that Airboot is not capable of recognising *empty* usb multi card reader drives (slots) and either ignoring them or displaying a more appropriate message eg:-

Airboot has detected empty USB drives. Please reset BIOS to remove the USB device(s) from the BIOS Boot List options.

[Ben Rietbroek]

Hi Pete,

Yes, it is related to #31 and also #32 and attached USB devices in general
together with BIOS USB mass storage support.

On reboot from hard disk the Airboot Menu (Airboot v1.1.1) failed to appear instead displaying
this message:-

Are you sure the version read v1.1.1 ?
It is _not_ a release version and it is not supported.
The last release is v1.1.4 which you can obtain here:
​https://github.com/rousseaux/netlabs.air-boot/releases

It has some fixes for removable media but some issues still remain.
Please try it and post your findings on this ticket.
Do not forget to first remove sticks/cards with valuable data

Supporting (usb) removable media is a bit of a pita because the
code-space is very limited, bioses have various degrees of usb
mass-storage support, boot-config etc. together with updating the
internal partition-table on reboots.

From your os2world forum post:

The problem is: How to get rid of the existing Airboot configuration?

Writing a new MBR is all that it takes to get rid of AiR-BOOT, as later
mentioned in the thread. This information is also in the manual:
​https://rousseaux.github.io/netlabs.air-boot/pdf/AirBoot-v1.1.4-manual.pdf
at page 23 "Removing AiR-BOOT".

I can only deduce that Airboot is not capable of recognising *empty* usb multi card reader
drives (slots) and either ignoring them or displaying a more appropriate message eg:-

That indeed seems to be the case.
(And v1.1.4 probably does not solve that)

It is not clear to me how much desire there is for these issues to be addressed,
so for now I am working on other projects.

Regards,

Ben.