[syslinux] More features in Syslinux 2.08

Murali Krishnan Ganapathy
Tue, 25 Nov 2003 16:38:15 -0000

More features in 2.08 which I would like to see

**** A way by which DOS images can find out the command line arguments
sent (and identfy the fact that memdisk is stll around?)

I hope to use such a feature as follows: Instead of hanving multiple DOS
images on my isolinux based CD, I will have only one. Based on the
command line argument I can execute different DOS batch scripts (just
like I do for the linux side now).

**** Another error handling construct as follows. I add the line
"onerror abc" to isolinux.cfg then what should happen is the
following:
If the user type something in the boot prompt which is not a valid
kernel / label name, the label/COMBOOT image abc is executed with the
bad line as its command line argument. The other image then handles the
error as it pleases.

The use for (2) which I am seeing is the following: I have one
particular image (say master) which takes as argument the name of a
network script and executes it after booting into linux. Because of
this, I can add scripts on the network and use it in my ISOLINUX CD by
typing "master image=newscript" at the boot prompt. I would like to
avoid my users having to type all that... Instead all I want them to
type is "newscript". Then ISOLINUX will find that it is a bad label,
and
call my COMBOOT with newscript as the argument. Then in the COMBOOT
code, I will "execute" the image "master image=newscript".
Since the
user does not see all this, he has the feeling that as soon as he drops
a script into a network location, ISOLINUX automagically recognizes that
label as well.

**** Nothing else so far... I am sure I can think of a couple more
things....

- Murali

H. Peter Anvin wrote:

> I just found a rather embarrassing bug in PXELINUX -- and what's worse
> -- I wrote an email about it and killed it off accidentally :-/
>
> It appears PXELINUX doesn't free its internal socket buffers (it has
> 32 of them) when it gets an error reply from the server, including
> "file not found."  This means it will eventually run out of
sockets
> and "go deaf."  This hasn't been caught until now simply
because
> PXELINUX usually uses far less than 32 socket buffers during normal
> execution.
>
> I have released a syslinux-2.08-pre3 which fixes this bug:
>
> ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/Testing/
>
> At the moment, other than the bug fixes plus "timeoutcmd" that
are
> already in 2.08-pre3, there is really only one thing on my list for
> 2.08, which is an API function to "replace bootstrap", which is
> something that would allow a very simple comboot program to implement
> the "local boot harddisk X partition Y" functionality a lot of
people
> have asked for.  The internal functionality already exists in
> syslinux; it's just a matter of exposing it through an API function.
>
> Anyone who has anything else they'd like to see in 2.08, now is the
> time to speak up...
>
>     -hpa
>
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