[PATCH] Workaround for usb boot failure on some mainboards

[Thomas Frauendorfer | Miray Software]

Hi,

On some boards, like the AsRock K7S41GX, Grub fails to boot from 
superfloppy fat32 formated usb sticks.

The reason for the boot failure is that  the bios of the  mentioned 
board  replaces byte 0x24 of the bpb with the value 0x00 when it's read 
through the bios function.
In fat16 this byte contains the Disc unit number, so this causes no real 
harm there.
In fat32 this byte is part of the sectors per FAT information, so by 
modifying this value the bios makes Grub unable to read the fat system.

The attached workaround reads the backup bpb information from the  fat32 
filesystem and uses the sectors per fat information stored there.


--- ../grub2-upstream/grub2-upstream/grub-core/fs/fat.c 2010-09-21 
12:13:17.154835710 +0200
+++ grub2-merge/grub-core/fs/fat.c      2010-09-22 10:23:27.935482451 +0200
@@ -214,6 +214,29 @@ grub_fat_mount (grub_disk_t disk)
                            ? grub_le_to_cpu16 (bpb.sectors_per_fat_16)
                            : grub_le_to_cpu32 
(bpb.version_specific.fat32.sectors_per_fat_32))
                           << data->logical_sector_bits);
+  if (bpb.sectors_per_fat_16)
+    data->sectors_per_fat = grub_le_to_cpu16 (bpb.sectors_per_fat_16) << 
data->logical_sector_bits;
+  else
+    {
+      /* Workaround for buggy BIOSes which replace offset 0x24 in the bpb 
+         with the drive number. This offset is part of sectors_per_fat_32 in
+         the fat32 structure. 
+         We read the backup bpb (if available) and use the value there */
+      struct grub_fat_bpb backup_bpb;
+      grub_uint32_t backup_bpb_address = grub_le_to_cpu16 
(bpb.version_specific.fat32.backup_boot_sector) << data->logical_sector_bits;
+      if (bpb.version_specific.fat32.backup_boot_sector && 
+         (! grub_disk_read (disk,
+                            backup_bpb_address,
+                            0,
+                            sizeof (backup_bpb),
+                            &backup_bpb)))
+       data->sectors_per_fat = grub_le_to_cpu32 
(backup_bpb.version_specific.fat32.sectors_per_fat_32) << 
data->logical_sector_bits;
+
+      if (data->sectors_per_fat == 0)
+       data->sectors_per_fat = grub_le_to_cpu32 
(bpb.version_specific.fat32.sectors_per_fat_32) << data->logical_sector_bits;
+    }
+
+
   if (data->sectors_per_fat == 0)
     goto fail;