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Old 02-14-2005, 05:25 PM   #1
rosslaird
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Registered: Jul 2003
Location: Vancouver
Posts: 76

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syslinux error


I received help in this forum on how to get my usb flash drive partitioned correctly so that I could install damnsmalllinux on it. But I'm still stuck -- at the very last stage, which involves putting syslinux on the usb disk. When I run "syslinux /dev/sda" I get this:

/dev/sda: This doesn't look like a FAT filesystem
/dev/sda: Sector sizes other than 512 not supported

However, fdisk -l reports this:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 63 506016 6 FAT16

and parted reports this:

Minor Start End Type Filesystem Flags
1 0.031 494.187 primary fat16 boot

So at least two software packages agree that the system is indeed a fat system (and the check module of parted checks the partition as OK).

I can't find any help by Googling for the syslinux error, nor on the syslinux website.
I remember seeing somewhere that you can install the syslinux files by direct copying, and I can copy files to the disk directly.

Any suggestions?
 
Old 03-26-2005, 05:21 AM   #2
kalleanka
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Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Mallorca, Spain
Distribution: xubuntu
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I got the same problem!
 
Old 01-24-2006, 02:28 PM   #3
howlingwolf487
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Registered: Jan 2006
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Plug in your USB drive, but don't mount it.
Then, in Linux terminal, try this:

mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sda1

*you can specify whichever device or partition you want (sdb1, sdb2, etc.)*

That will format it in FAT32, then go from where you were before. I assume that changing the "32" to a "16" would change it to FAT16...not sure, though.
 
  


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