John Rouillard
2009-Mar-24 01:17 UTC
[syslinux] menu.c32 changes the key binding in tera term confusing user
Hi all: Well it looks like my declaration of having a working menu system was a tad premature. If I enter any of the submenu's using the enter key on my keyboard, it selects (and runs) the first item on the submenu. If I type ^j instead, it enters the menu and I can scroll through the options. If I type ^M, it acts like I hit the enter key and runs the first menu item. Now in my terminal emulator, enter is set to send CR+LF. If I set it to just send a CR while I am still at the boot: prompt, it is changed to CR+LF when the menu (after typing menu.c32) is displayed. If I change it after the menu is displayed, it seems to stay at CR (and enter works as expected just changing to the submenu). If I type hdt from the boot: prompt, the setting for enter is again changed to CR+LF even though I only see: [ bunch of blank lines ] Hardware Detection Tool 0.2.5 by Erwan Velu CPU: Detecting DISKS: Detecting DMI: Detecting Table ... MENU: Kernel menu done (0 items) MENU: Summary menu done (12 items) MENU: Syslinux menu done (5 items) MENU: VESA menu done (2 items) MENU: About menu done (6 items) Starting Menu (27 menus) and no graphics (they are displyed on the VGA monitor) on the serial console. So it looks like ^M or enter end up sending two characters (which makes sense as the CR shifts to the submenu, and the LF selects the menu item), but I am not sure why tera term is resetting it's terminal/new-line configuration when the menu or hdt is displayed. The enter is remapped to CR+LF even if I set default to "menu.c32" and bypass the boot prompt. In addition to that issue, holding down the up/down arrow keys to move through 5 or 6 menu items seems to result in an esc being passed to the menu system. This jumps out of the submenu or menu system. My serial settings are: 38400,8,1,n on a directly connected serial port. If this is a timing issue (where the multiple characters generated by an arrow key don't arrive fast enough) I could see this being a problem on a remote serial console where network transmision delays may space out the bytes of the arrows. Using ^n and ^p work ok however. Also one additional nit, if the menu title is too long (> 55 characters or so) there doesn't appear to be any way to see the whole line. A mention of this limitation in doc/menu.txt (or some way to display the whole line) would be useful. So I have workarounds for the problems, but it would be nice to remove the surpises. Thanks for a great tool. -- -- rouilj John Rouillard System Administrator Renesys Corporation 603-244-9084 (cell) 603-643-9300 x 111