I ended up implementing the "totaltimeout" command per discussion on the SYSLINUX mailing list, and adjusted the timeout of the menu system accordingly. The necessary restructuring really wasn't too painful with judicious use of longjmp() and subroutines -- basically poor man's exception handling. Thus, I have released 3.11-pre11; barring no objections or problems I will release this as 3.11 on Friday, September 2. ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/Testing/ -hpa