Booting Custom ISOs with Syslinux / Memdisk

Last night I needed to run Seagate's diagnostic utility, SeaTools, against an old Maxtor drive so I could verify it as viable for installing a new NAS onto (more on that nightmare of a project in a different post).  Seagate worked against me on this, instead of with me.

They have a version that runs in Windows, but this machine doesn't have Windows.  It has FreeNAS (based on FreeBSD) on another drive, but I preferred not to have that drive hooked up during the testing.

They have a bootable CD image in the form of an ISO, but this machine doesn't have a CD-ROM.  They claim it runs FreeDOS, so I naively figured I could use UNetBootin to throw it on a USB drive and boot from that.  No dice.

To make a long story short, I managed to get it working with a combination of syslinux, memdisk, and vanilla FreeDOS.  But I had a lot of trouble finding the information I need online.  Most of what I found didn't apply to me (search for "boot usb iso linux" and all you get is how to install Linux from USB, not how to boot a custom ISO from USB and create it from Linux), and some of it was misleading (e.g. "you must format it with FAT, erasing the boot sector, but not with mkdosfs" -- wrong).

So here's what I did, and hopefully someone else will find this useful:

1. Download UNetBootin, use it to install FreeDOS onto the USB drive straight from the GUI
2. Install syslinux onto the USB drive
3. Copy the memdisk bootloader onto the USB drive
4. Download the SeaTools ISO and copy it onto the USB drive
5. Create a file called syslinux.cfg with the contents below, and copy it onto the USB drive, replacing the one that UNetBootin put there

DEFAULT SeaTools
LABEL SeaTools
LINUX memdisk
INITRD SeaToolsDOS222ALL.576.ISO
APPEND iso

This gave me a bootable USB drive that went straight into Seagate's custom-boot environment.  I reckon I can use this same trick to boot any DOS-based utility like this.

Here's the command transcript:

$ sudo apt-get install p7zip-full syslinux

$ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/unetbootin/UNetbootin/494/unetbootin-linux-494

$ chmod u+x unetbootin-linux-494

$ sudo ./unetbootin-linux-494

$ sudo syslinux /dev/sdc1

$ sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usb

$ cp /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk /mnt/usb

$ wget http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/seatools/SeaToolsDOS222ALL.576.ISO

$ cp SeaToolsDOS222ALL.576.ISO /mnt/usb

$ cat - > syslinux.cfg

DEFAULT SeaTools
LABEL SeaTools
LINUX memdisk
INITRD SeaToolsDOS222ALL.576.ISO
APPEND iso

^D

$ sudo cp syslinux.cfg /mnt/usb

$ sudo umount /mnt/usb

Ranty McRant, volume 1

It's 7am on a Sunday, I've been up for 2.5 hours, and I'm feeling ranty.  The bintgoddess is very familiar with this situation, and I think (I hope) she finds it adorable; but this is the first time I've allowed my rantifications an outlet into the blog, so it feels a little special somehow.  This will be a little less researched than my other entries, and a little more free-association.  You've been warned.

Today's topic: hardware vendors and their sycophantic adoration of Microsoft Windows.  Yes, I realize I'm a Microsoft shareholder, and you'd think that it would make the most sense for me to support the obligatory installation of Windows on every machine created, since doing so would increase my shareholder value.  But let's face it, they don't need me.

My birthday is coming up, and that seems like a good excuse to replace my aging and case-cracked Toshiba Satellite laptop.  It's a ponderous beast, weighing in at about 75lbs and boasting a clock speed of about 15Mhz.  It's so old that it sports stickers that say, "Designed for Windows XP (Windows Vista Capable)", and "Intel Celeron M inside".  That's really something to be proud of, right there.  Sometimes the power cord gets tangled and I have to unplug it to untangle it.  Depending on how many seconds it takes me to do this, the laptop might stay on, or it might go into what I call Dirt-Hibernation mode.  In this mode, it thinks it's hibernating, but it never comes out (making it more like a dirt-nap).  It's a fun and useful piece of technology, especially for testing the effectiveness of rage management techniques.

I've been considering replacing the (no exaggeration this time) 40GB 5400rpm laptop hard drive with a 100-160GB SSD, figuring that doing so would still give me benefits when I eventually replace the thing.  But SSDs aren't that cheap, either, and I hate the thought of buying more hard drive storage... didn't I just wipe 21 HDs so I could dispose of them? I think I did.  What I really want is a sexy new laptop, something lighter, faster, more powerful, with a holographic screen that projects out to a 40" 3D image that hangs in space and lets me interact with it via telepathy.  Failing that, maybe one of those HP Envy notebooks.

So after doing about an hour of research, I flopsied over to the HP Store to configure a notebook just to see what I could expect to pay for the closest (albeit very distant) approximation to awesomeness.  Hoofah, this thing is pricey:

• Long string of i5-Qwhatever-the-hell processor - god, Intel, SERIOUSLY?
• ATI Mobility graphics - my only choice
• 6GB of memory - upgraded from 4GB
• 500GB 7200 HD, because this was the cheapest option and SSD was both $525 (omg) and whiteboxed (so it sucks)
• No office software at all
• Cheapest battery available
• Several lines of "options" which were the only "options" available, including the screen, the DVD drive, the webcam, the wireless card, and (yes seriously) the keyboard.
• Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - cheapest option
• Adobe Suck-It We Own You Shop 8 Premiere

Total price: $1300.

Now, I'm a Linux guy.  I run Ubuntu 64-bit on my desktop machine, and the current doorstop-I-mean-laptop has just had its Ubuntu replaced with Mint this morning.  At the office I run a real-time variant of Red Hat Enterprise, and the file server in the house is running FreeNAS (based on FreeBSD).  Why the HELL would I want Windows 7 on my new laptop?  Is it because I like ad-ware like Norton Trial Edition popping up every few minutes to tell me that since I chose the most vulnerable operating system on the planet, I should pay an expensive subscription to protect it?  Is it because I like bloat-ware like Microsoft Office that lets me do really complicated things like write text for the low-low cost of almost 500 dollars, and several GB of hard drive space, and several hundred MB of memory?  Or is it because I want to respond to the daily Adobe pop-ups telling me I need to upgrade Flash, Streak, and Fondle, because this computer belongs to Adobe, after all?

No thank you.

I build my own desktop PCs so that I can put exactly what I want INTO the machine, and exactly what I want ONTO the machine.  When I boot it up, it does what I tell it.  I'm not naive enough to think that it does ONLY what I tell it - even Ubuntu has marketing-related goals that are not completely in line with my own.  But the "partnering" level is low enough that I view it as an acceptable trade-off.

Let me get this clear in everyone's heads: Linux is like over-the-air PBS.  It's mostly ad-free, although it has a few "brought to you by"s.  It costs nothing to enjoy, but it's considered good form to donate time/money/experience to help others enjoy it too.  And it gives a different, somewhat less accessible, experience from Windows; but for some people that experience is far better than Windows'.  On the other hand, Windows is like Cable.  It costs money, it has lots of options that all cost more money, it has a LOT more commercials than PBS, and the cable goes out a lot more than the transmitting tower fails.  You can find the same level of programming on cable/Windows as on PBS/Linux, but you have to look harder through the gunk.  It's extremely accessible - you can surf for hours without asking yourself a single thought-provoking question - but some people actually like thought-provoking questions.  I don't know any people like that, but I hear they exist.  They probably vote Green Party or something.

Anyway, I prefer Linux, and this is what I install into my home-built desktop machines (unless the bintgoddess requests otherwise, obviously).  But a laptop is tougher to build.  To make it all work together seamlessly, to keep it light, and to keep it from overheating, a lot more engineering goes into it from the hardware integrators.  I can't go buy a bunch of laptop parts from NewEgg and end up with my perfect laptop, so that means I have to go to the car dealership - er, I mean, computer retail channels.  There, I assume the position and start sucking down the "partnering", the "up-sells", and the "value-adds", just like everyone else.  Ugh.

My first action with this laptop would be to wipe the hard drive of all the crap-ware, and to install a nice clean Linux variant (probably Mint, since that's what I'm playing with at the moment).  Of course that means if I ever need service, I'll need to reinstall the Redmond Mothership because, obviously, anyone using Linux must be crazy.  But let's face it - the probability of being able to get laptop hardware serviced WITHOUT losing the contents of the hard drive is about 0.00004% (this is an actual statistical figure based on 15 zillion studies, not an exaggeration).  And barring actual hardware failure, there's very little that an HP-authorized service technician can do (other than screw up my computer) that I can't do just as well.  On second thought, I can screw up the computer about as well as him, too.  You're not skiing hard enough if you don't fall, and you're not really using the computer if it successfully boots every time.

But on a $1300 laptop, WHY am I being forced to get Windows?  I know it isn't free - Microsoft is charging HP a super-low OEM price, and HP is wrapping a profit-generating higher price into the price of my laptop.  Accepting a laptop with this operating system on it feels to me like taking out a $100 bill and setting it on fire.  I don't like that feeling when I'm in a casino, so I play poker, and I don't like it when I'm configuring computer hardware. 

Let's be really clear here: I am being charged money for something that I actively do not want.  I do not want it so actively that I am willing to spend my own time and effort to remove the offending product, assuming risk of loss (via supportability) in the process.  What kind of reasonable consumer would enter into a transaction like this?  What kind of reasonable retailer would EXPECT a consumer to enter into a transaction like this?

Wasn't there a big lawsuit recently about hardware vendors being required to give rebates to consumers that chose not to have Windows pre-installed?

My coffee is running out and my rant is running down.  Let me close with the chat transcript from my Live Chat support session.  It's not that exciting, but I feel like I need to have something other than my own prose in here to liven things up.

11/07/2010 04:56:09AM	Session Started with Agent (Rachel P.)
11/07/2010 04:56:09AM	Mark: "Configuring an Envy 14 notebook"
11/07/2010 04:56:15AM	Agent (Rachel P.): "Thank you for contacting the HP Home and Home Office Store Chat. My name is Rachel."
11/07/2010 04:56:20AM	Mark: "Hi Rachel."
11/07/2010 04:56:37AM	Agent (Rachel P.): "I'm sorry. Can you please elaborate on your question so that I may better assist you?"
11/07/2010 04:56:38AM	Mark: "I'm planning to replace Windows with Linux on this machine. Is there any way I can avoid buying Windows?"
11/07/2010 04:57:32AM	Agent (Rachel P.): "I understand that you want to take out the Windows 7 from the configuration on the HP Envy 14 notebook, right?"
11/07/2010 04:57:41AM	Mark: "right"
11/07/2010 04:57:49AM	Mark: "I intend to install Linux."
11/07/2010 04:58:02AM	Agent (Rachel P.): "I am sorry, Mark, but there is no option for you to take out the OS."
11/07/2010 04:58:23AM	Mark: "OK, thanks. I will look at other companys' notebook options, then."
11/07/2010 04:58:46AM	Agent (Rachel P.): "Do you have any other questions that I can help you with? I want to make sure that I have completely addressed your concern today and are satisfied with my service."
11/07/2010 04:59:10AM	Mark: "Well since I am no longer buying an HP notebook, I can't imagine what you could help me further with."
11/07/2010 04:59:20AM	Agent (Rachel P.): "Since you don't need any further assistance, would it be okay if I close this chat?"
11/07/2010 04:59:26AM	Mark: "yes, have a nice day"
11/07/2010 04:59:28AM	Agent (Rachel P.): "Thank you once again for using HP Home & Home Office Store Chat. Please sign up for our award-winning e-newsletter which features the latest products and promotions for our store. Visit our website at: www.hpshopping.com/newsletter"
11/07/2010 04:59:29AM	Session Ended

Hard Drive Exhumations

I have a lot of hard drives lying around, because no matter what happens to the other parts from a decommissioned computer, the hard drive always gets stored.  There's too much sensitive data on there for me to let anyone else get their hands on it, and for many years I have been stashing hard drives in the basement with the intention of "one day" zeroing out all the sectors and disposing of them... somehow.

Today I decided to take an inventory, and it was an interesting-but-dusty trip through the last 13 years of building and destroying the computers that live in this house.  I have no fewer than 19 decommissioned hard drives that I know of.  Here are a few of the more dramatic highlights:

• There are two 250GB Western Digitals that I pulled out of the LaCie BigDisk external USB drive enclosure after it died.  I bought those back in the halcyon days of Mad Dog Software as a backup solution, because I could fit the contents of all the computers in my house on just one of them.  The intention was to get two of those enclosures and keep one off-site.  That fizzled, but it did give me an excuse to write a trickle-transfer utility to run on Linux and send backup files to Dan's house for storage.  That was my first serious Linux project.
• There are three 60GB Maxtors of which I have no guess the purpose... but one of them has a post-it note that reads "noisy" in Diane's handwriting.  I can only imagine how all this came about.
• There are four 60GB IBM Deskstars dating back from the dead-drive catastrophe of 2001 (or was it 2000? not sure now).  I decided to build the Mother of All Machines, so I bought four of these hot-running high-failure-rate data bombs and put them in RAID 0+1.  Maximum PC rated them Kick-Ass at the time, so they seemed like the best choice.  Little did I know I had just purchased drives that would be the subject of a class-action lawsuit a few years later.  The thing about RAID 0+1 is that, in theory, it has the speed of RAID 0 (striping) with the data safety of RAID 1 (mirroring).  But in practice, it isn't that fast and it isn't that safe.  Especially when you have two drives fail simultaneously, like I did.  The four I have now include two warranty replacement drives, so I think they all work.
• Last spring I built my grandmother a new PC from leftover parts I had lying around, replacing one that was refusing to boot.  I took the dead hardware with the plan of figuring out what the problem was, but didn't even crack the case until today.  Inside I found three hard drives.  They proved to be resistant to my charms and I was in a hurry because I was expecting a phone call.  Can't wait to get back to them and see what sort of complicated storage scheme was dreamed up on those.
• Buried deeply in the random-hardware boxes and covered in dust, I found a 6GB (yes, six gigabytes) Western Digital from 1998, and a circa-1997 Fujitsu that gave no size nor cylinder information whatsoever.  Wow.

Sitting here next to my desk is a fully functional Windows PC of fairly recent vintage that has no keyboard, monitor, or mouse - just power and network.  I know I had a reason for not moving this thing down to the basement, but I couldn't say what that reason was.  In any case, I'll use that machine to clean these hard drives one at a time over the next million years or so, all so that I can safely dispose of them.  I may dual-boot it to Linux first, just for fun, I don't know.

Diane suggested I look at FreeCycle as a way to give away stuff to people who want it... I can't wait to see who wants a 10GB IBM OEM hard drive from 1998.