The issue is triggered by commit:
boot-directdisk: allow specifying custom MBR disk signature
http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/poky/commit/?id=b52d2bb46ed7c893077ccf9e5a83dc7f11c7f61b

Doing a revert of this commit allows Build Appliance to boot correctly.

A fix is in the work.

Designing a fix.

The commit is only supposed to change the 4 bytes from offset 440 which corresponds to the disk signature. I tested by converting existing hdddirect image to vmdk using: qemu-img convert -O vmdk image.hdddirect image.vmdk. Syslinux and kernel seems to boot for my custom image.

GNU Parted creates a disk signature already even without the commit but it's not really unique (based on current time).

You can test changes to image generation by running bitbake -C bootdirectdisk image-recipe which will only regenerate the image file leaving the filesystem and partition data the same.

Could you provide the MBR disk signature hex code that was generated in the image that could not boot so I can check this further?

Hello Jonathan,

The disk signature is a different one every time a new BA image is generated.
And the BA image does not boot under vmWare Player with any of BA images.

Regards,
Cristian

If you run the following:
dd if=/dev/zero of=test.img bs=512 count=1
echo -ne "$(echo 78563412 | fold -w 2 | tac | paste -sd '' | sed 's/\(..\)/\\x&/g')" | dd of=test.img bs=1 seek=440 conv=notrunc
md5sum test.img

Do you get md5sum of 77c7d4f6b9bde10c8ab685979bca7145?

Please provide your build configuration information, host architecture, distribution name/version, version of VMware Player.

MD5 sum is 77c7d4f6b9bde10c8ab685979bca7145.

Poky head is 3dee534f1e25109e0bdb681de0746c336f4b8840.
bitbake build-appliance-image
VmWare Player is 5.0.2 build-1031769 on Linux; latest one available.
Linux host is Ubuntu 12.10 x86-64.

I cannot reproduce the issue with the following configuration.

Build Configuration:
BB_VERSION        = "1.19.1"
BUILD_SYS         = "x86_64-linux"
NATIVELSBSTRING   = "arch-rolling"
TARGET_SYS        = "i586-poky-linux"
MACHINE           = "qemux86"
DISTRO            = "poky"
DISTRO_VERSION    = "1.4+snapshot-20130720"
TUNE_FEATURES     = "m32 i586"
TARGET_FPU        = ""
meta
meta-yocto
meta-yocto-bsp    = "master:94029c477e8bc06088f6dcd98adca49dc94e3feb"

I am using fresh clone of poky 31e6eee860b5f9f4ac9ef0889bcff5648de6e3f9 master branch with http://patchwork.openembedded.org/patch/54067/ applied.

Build Host: Arch Linux x86_64
VMware Player: 5.0.2 build-1031769
VMware Player OS: Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit 6.1.7601, Service Pack 1

Changes in local.conf from default:
BB_NUMBER_THREADS = "8"
PARALLEL_MAKE = "-j 8"
MACHINE = "qemux86"
DL_DIR ?= "${TOPDIR}/../downloads"
SSTATE_DIR ?= "${TOPDIR}/../sstate-cache"
PACKAGE_CLASSES ?= "package_ipk"
IMAGE_FEATURES_append = " package-management"
GCCVERSION = "4.7%"

Using GCC 4.7 due to https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4789

I can reproduce with Ubuntu 12.10 x86-64 and poky master 31e6eee860b5f9f4ac9ef0889bcff5648de6e3f9 using default GCC 4.8.1 toolchain.

I found the issue. The echo command doesn't support -n and -e under dash, so it is echoing the the arguments passed literally:

$ hexdump -Cs 440 -n 112 tmp/deploy/images/build-appliance-image-qemux86.hdddirect
000001b8  2d 6e 65 20 5c 78 32 31  5c 78 37 33 5c 78 61 64  |-ne \x21\x73\xad|
000001c8  5c 78 39 32 0a 00 00 02  42 58 83 03 e0 ff 41 ac  |\x92....BX....A.|
000001d8  00 00 20 f8 50 05 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |.. .P...........|
000001e8  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
000001f8  00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa  eb 58 90 53 59 53 4c 49  |......U..X.SYSLI|
00000208  4e 55 58 00 02 04 01 00  02 00 02 40 ac f8 2b 00  |NUX........@..+.|
00000218  20 00 40 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 80 00 29 67  | .@...........)g|
00000228

Notice "-ne \x21\x73\xad\x92" being written to the image which corrupts the partition table.

Fix submitted for review.

Fixed by http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/poky/commit/?id=1d5d93101e4d4e14d37f75f8a4d2bef0a96b2a4e

This is fixed.