Syslinux - Sep 2007 - extlinux graphical menu with function keys

Hi all,

I have a question regarding the syslinux menu as used on the Ubuntu,
Sabayon, ... live CD's.
According to the syslinux documentation the function keys can be used
to display a help file, but in the menu of these live distros the
function keys are used to pick the resolution, language and keyboard.

I would like to bind a submenu to these function keys. Is this
possible and how can this be accomplished?
Or if anybody knows a place where this topic is documented, please let
me know.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Bert Verhaeghe wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I have a question regarding the syslinux menu as used on the Ubuntu,
> Sabayon, ... live CD's.
> According to the syslinux documentation the function keys can be used
> to display a help file, but in the menu of these live distros the
> function keys are used to pick the resolution, language and keyboard.
> 
> I would like to bind a submenu to these function keys. Is this
> possible and how can this be accomplished?
> Or if anybody knows a place where this topic is documented, please let
> me know.
> 
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
> 
They use a nonstandard patch to syslinux which I consider unsupportable 
due to just plain awful code.

	-hpa

# Hi all,
#
# I have a question regarding the syslinux menu as used on the Ubuntu,
# Sabayon, ... live CD's.
# According to the syslinux documentation the function keys can be used
# to display a help file, but in the menu of these live distros the
# function keys are used to pick the resolution, language and keyboard.
#
# I would like to bind a submenu to these function keys. Is this
# possible and how can this be accomplished?
# Or if anybody knows a place where this topic is documented, please let
# me know.
#
# Any help would be greatly appreciated.

As it happens, I just finished a (hopefully less crufty) patch
to accomplish exactly what you're after.  It's not quite as
"pretty"
on the screen as SuSE's stuff, but it's much "prettier" code
and
HUGELY easier to use.  (I wasted several hours trying to make SuSE's
stuff work on my live-CD...)

http://www.valleyhold.org/~gordons/syslinux-optmenus.diff

The message I sent about it should be hitting the list archive soon,
and the patch also updates README.menu with the new keywords.

HTH, let me know if this works for you!