Failing to boot FD64 9.00 Alpha [CLOSED]

[tatemono]

I burned the ISO image of FD64 9.00 Alpha to a USB flash drive. Then I tried to boot my legacy-BIOS-enabled PC, whose memory size is 4 GB, from that flash drive. After selecting "Fatdog64 without savefile" from boot menu, I got "Not enough memory to load specified image" error message on the screen several seconds later.

By the way, My PC does boot up successfully with FD64 9.00 "broken" version dated 2023-July-07, whose ISO image is available in https://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/broken/900tip/ .

[step]

Hi and tanks for testing.
Verify the integrity of the downloaded ISO: calculate its MD5 checksum and compare it against the checksum file found in the download page. If checksums don't match re-download and burn the ISO again.
Otherwise your computer BIOS might not be able to access enough RAM to load the "humongous initrd", in which case you could prepare and try to boot with a smaller initd.
This FAQ http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/fa ... nitrd.html explains the humongous initrd. About half-way in the page you should find four numbered options to make it smaller. Apart from option 2, each of the other options should help in your case. I would suggest to pick option 4. You will need a working Fatdog to carry out this task; versions 813, 814 and the "broken" 900 should all work.
Let us know about your progress.

[jamesbond]

In addition to what step said:
1. Try booting with option "For machines with slow BIOS or bootloaders" (that's the last menu entry in your screenshot).
2. You can download http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/broken ... temono.iso and try to boot normally. This one has the more recent isolinux, which may or may not solve your problem.

Please report back on which one works for you.

We have been using the older isolinux because it shows progress while it is loading (printing the dots), while the new one just show three dots and then goes silent until the system boots, so it's not very nice.

[Jinx]

I found a problem using the Puppy UEFI tool to burn FD64 900 to a USB stick. The tool makes the minimum partition size of 512 MB which is too small. Changing the size to 5120 MB in the script fixed it. It's hard to buy a quality USB stick below 32 GB.

[jamesbond]

Puppy UEFI tool

Which Puppy UEFI tool?

[rcrsn51]

ISObooter now has better tools for handling Fatdog and its large initrd.

[Jinx]

Puppy UEFI tool

Which Puppy UEFI tool?

The same failure for Fatdog UEFI Installer. I start with a USB drive set for GPT but otherwise unformatted. In the UEFI installer:

1. Select the correct drive.
2. Choose Make a new partition.
3. Choose ISO file
4. Select the Fatdog64 900 ISO file
5. Continue after warning

Result is "Installation Failed"

In /usr/sbin/fatdog-uefi-installer.sh change the line:

REQUIRED SIZE = 512

to

REQUIRED SIZE = 5120

Then the installation will complete.

[jamesbond]

Fixed for next release, thanks. Upped the size to 1GB.

[tatemono]

In addition to what step said:
1. Try booting with option "For machines with slow BIOS or bootloaders" (that's the last menu entry in your screenshot).
2. You can download http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/broken ... temono.iso and try to boot normally. This one has the more recent isolinux, which may or may not solve your problem.

Please report back on which one works for you.

We have been using the older isolinux because it shows progress while it is loading (printing the dots), while the new one just show three dots and then goes silent until the system boots, so it's not very nice.

Both methods work for me. I prefer the 2nd one.

@jamesbond : Thank you.

[jamesbond]

Thanks for testing @tatemono. I will remove that ISO and on our next build, we will use the updated syslinux.