Airboot no longer works...

[Pete]

Hi All

An interesting evening so far. Thought I would create an ArcaOS 5.0.4 USB Flash Drive install which worked OK; booted fine to the Maintenance Console so I would expect to be able to install from it.

However, on rebooting from the Maintenance Console Airboot threw a wobbly and delivered this message:-

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


Hmmm... does not look good.

I booted from an ArcaOS5.0.1 dvd to the Maintenance Console and from there discovered that there does not seem to be any Airboot docs installed on my ArcaOS 5.0.1 system.

I did locate airboot2.exe in \sys\bin and ran it thinking to delete the Airboot installation and then reinstall. So I then discovered it is a case of using "lvm:newmbr:1" on the command line to remove Airboot.

Before going any further I chkdsk'd drives with no reported problems, no problems at all running dir on any drive.

I had a look at the disks/drives using LVM - which made no complaint about bad partition table(s).

As I have DFSee installed I fired that up - I would like to say no problems reported but there are some lines that have me puzzled:-

At least 4 non-trivial minor warnings were not shown. Use 'part -w:t -t-' for details.

DFSee OS/2   15.0 : Executing: part -w:t -t-
Command timestamp : Monday 2020-05-11 19:29:39
 Pid02=J: warning : Logical partition is marked as startable! (active)
 Pid03=H: warning : Logical partition is marked as startable! (active)
 Pid04=L: warning : Logical partition is marked as startable! (active)
 Pid06=D: warning : Logical partition is marked as startable! (active)


Not sure how they have become marked as startable, H: and L: are boot drives and on the Airboot menu but J: and D: are not - and I do not think logical drives can be marked startable.

Is this what Airboot was moaning about?

Having checked that my ArcaOS5.0.1 installation was Startable I rebooted and had no problem booting my ArcaOS installation.

I tried reinstalling Airboot which worked fine but on reboot delivered the above "- Your system has at least one broken partition table entry ..." After again booting the dvd to Maintenance Console and removing Airboot I can at least boot ArcaOS.

I can only guess that something is wrong with the Airboot configuration as there does not seem to be anything wrong with partitions or filesystems in use.

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

Any "cures" out there?


Regards

Pete

[Roderick Klein]

Simple, boot from the latest ArcaOS DVD you have. Via the management console, start minilvm. Delete airbooot and reinstall. I think that should resolve the issue.

Roderick

[Pete]

Hi Roderick

Why you think that will work I have no idea - I have already established that removing Airboot then reinstalling does not lead to a working system.

However, I have not used miniLVM so I gave it a try. No, that does not work.

Either there is a problem with the drives that is not reported by LVM or DFSee or there is now something wrong with Airtboot which had been working fine for years prior to booting the ArcaOS 5.0.4 USB Flash Drive.

Possibly the non-removable Airboot configuration is the cause; anyone know how to remove that?


Regards

Pete

[Dave Yeo]

Is it possible you've changed the boot order in the BIOS? I think you can use DFSee to replace the MBR which should remove the Airboot configuration.

[Pete]

Hi Dave

You are an accidental genius  ;-)

No, I had not changed the boot order in the BIOS *but* I had enabled USB boot support in order to boot the ArcaoS5.0.4 USB flash drive.

That in turn enabled boot support for my *internal* USB multi card reader and added the device to the boot list.

My guess is that Airboot flipped out when presented with a mass of empty usb drives (4 slot reader, lots of card types supported).

Having turned off usb boot support in the BIOS and reinstalled Airboot all is now working as it should.

Thank you for the BIOS prompt  :-)


No, using either lvm or dfsee to replace mbr does not remove the Airboot configuration, it only removes Airboot code. I was thinking about asking Jan (DFSee) about that problem but no need now  :-)


Regards

Pete

[ivan]

Hi Pete,

You are lucky to get some response from Airboot.  For me, when I tried using it, all I got was a blank screen and I had to use a stop watch to time pressing keys.

In the end I dumped it, re-imaged the HD to ArcaOS only, pulled another PC out of retirement  and added it to the KVM switch and am back in business with a windows (shudder) machine to help sort out the problems friends seem to get into on the dark side.

[Pete]

Hi ivan

I have not seen that problem with Airboot - in fact I have seen only 2 problems with Airboot; 1] Airboot code got trashed after booting Windows7 once and need reinstalling, 2] Airboot and attached empty USB disks (the just resolved problem).

What caused the lack of video output? - fairly modern graphics card without inbuilt support for video mode used?

Guess I ought to report the USB problem - presumably to AN. It may not get fixed but could get added to an FAQ.


Regards

Pete

[ivan]

Hi Pete,

You hit the nail on the head with my case being about graphics.  The unit has an AMD Sempron 3850 APU with built in graphics driving a Samsung S24E650 monitor at 1290x1200.  Reported it to AN but no fix, no hardware like it I suspect.

Your problem should be fixed as it is much more serious.  I never had that problem at work even on the test machine (Asus M4A78LT-M LE Motherboard, 4 hard disks, 2 with operating systems (OS/2 v4.52 with a maintenance part plus ArcaOS when I retired, Linux Mint and Win7) all selected and booted using the old IBM boot manager with 'boot from USB enabled in the bios.  That machine is down in the garage gathering dust but I am loath to throw it out, it gave excellent service over the years and still has data on it that might be needed.

If BootManager can do it why not AirBoot?

[Pete]

Hi ivan

The problem is more a case of Airboot needs to be able to recognise and ignore the "empty" usb drives of Internal, always attached, card readers - although recognise and then display a message that the usb device needs to be removed from the BIOS boot list would be useful. Sure would have saved me from spending a bit of time trying to figure out why Airboot complained about partition tables/sectors and DFSee did not.

Not sure how the iBM Boot Manager copes with that situation as I never tried it...

Not sure what can be done about the lack of Airboot video output - unless the hardware has a video mode that Airboot could be coded to use. There must be a usable video mode if IBM BM works on that hardware. Guess the normal problem of quantity of developers/cost/benefit to everyone/time applies.


Regards

Pete

[Dave Yeo]

Hi Pete, I recently had a weird issue with AirBoot. I rearranged my drives so my SSD was on port 0, the only SATA 3 port here. Afterwards I changed the boot order in Bios so port 2, a 1TB HD with AirBoot installed, was first in boot order.
Everything was fine until I tried to install/upgrade ArcaOS and then only one partition showed up in the partition list during install. Boot to the hard drive, everything looks fine. Boot to the USB stick and only one drive and partition visible. Eventually I fixed by installing AirBoot on the SSD and everything went back to normal.
It's the reason I brought up the BIOS.

[Tom]

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

Any "cures" out there?

Use DFSee to wipe the complete first track of that disk, not just the first sector. That will get rid of the Airboot configuration.

[Tom]

You are lucky to get some response from Airboot.  For me, when I tried using it, all I got was a blank screen and I had to use a stop watch to time pressing keys.

This sounds like a problem with the video mode that has been discussed before in this forum:

https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,2013.msg20735.html#msg20735

The suggestion by Rich might help to check.

[Pete]

Hi Tom

Thanks for the DFSee advice, luckily it is no longer needed - but worth remembering  :-)


Regards

Pete

[lss73912]

I've been checking about this Airboot issue with "empty USB drives" as well, as I'm also encountering this which prevented the system from booting using Airboot.

I'm using the 1.1.4 release version. With legacy USB enabled and the card reader (that comes with my chassis) picked up by BIOS, it'll halt with a "Scanning...LOAD ERROR!". I'm able to work it around by configuring the card reader (which is a mass storage device) as a CDROM device in the BIOS of my motherboard (ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z), so Airboot would not pick it up and would not halt there.

From what I know, card readers may present themselves in two ways: Mass storage device, or card reader device. The former is more common on desktops while the latter is more common on laptops.

Card readers that present themselves as mass storage devices can be booted from BIOS, and would be "empty" if no cards are installed (which causes the LOAD ERROR).

Card readers that present themselves simply as card reader devices cannot be recognized by or booted from BIOS, thus they would not cause the LOAD ERROR.

On the other hand, I don't think there's a straightforward way in BIOS to "remove" empty USB devices from boot list, as long as the USB controller the devices in question reside can be picked up by BIOS. The ways I know are:
1. Physically detach the card readers from the system.
2. Disable legacy USB support (which you can't if you use USB keyboard and mouse, as doing so disables them as well).
3. Attach the card reader to a PCI or PCIe USB expansion card (which the BIOS may not immediately pick up) instead of onboard headers.

Airboot needs to be able to properly ignore "empty USB drives" (card readers) instead of halting the system. This was never a problem for BIOSes themselves: The presence of empty card readers that present themselves as mass storage devices hardly ever caused boot issues from my experience.

EDIT: After some detailed testing, setting Mass Storage Device to CDROM is not a panacea. For my motherboard, the configuration is stored by the logical order of the USB devices, so if I plug a USB stick and that stick is placed logically ahead of the card reader, it'll become the one to be treated as CDROM instead of the card reader, which breaks its ability to boot as well as triggering the LOAD ERROR again. In the end, if I want to boot from USB I'll always need to make sure things are correct in BIOS, and clean up afterwards to avoid any boot issue that I might not immediately be able to figure out why.

EDIT 2: The issue might be board-specific. I replaced the previous motherboard as it's reported to have issues and with the new board the issue started to go away by itself (although sometimes it can still happen). It's possible that some BIOSes handled INT13h better that it might be able to avoid causing LOAD ERROR for some reasons.