Syslinux - Sep 2008 - VPD information, macros and syslinux

Hi,

I would be very interested in a possibility to create variables or macros 
within syslinux. One of the things I would like to have is a way to query 
DMI/VPD information, and use that as kernel parameters or to influence eg 
menu's or boot labels (based on system information).

One of those very specific needs is to get the MAC address of the first 
onboard interface (which is available somewhere) from an isolinux boot and 
add it as a ksdevice= boot parameter.

(Yes, corporate policy prohibits DHCP and PXE on production datacenter 
networks.)

I was wondering about 2 things:

  - do we want to extend the current configuration file to include a new
    syntax for the things we want to do.

  - do we want to generate a configuration file from a more general-purpose
    language ?

My preference would go for the second. Imagine we have some sort of lua 
scripting language integrated and we could instead of providing a 
config-file, provide a lua-script that outputs a config-file.

Using a general purpose language allows to test those scripts on a normal 
system. But it also allows to create functions to do more advanced things 
like get DMI/VPD information and use that when generating the boot labels.

In a later stadium we could even allow inline lua-scripts inside the 
config-file (although I don't really see how that would be useful atm).

What do people think ?
-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]

Dag Wieers wrote:
> 
> My preference would go for the second. Imagine we have some sort of lua 
> scripting language integrated and we could instead of providing a 
> config-file, provide a lua-script that outputs a config-file.
> 
> Using a general purpose language allows to test those scripts on a normal 
> system. But it also allows to create functions to do more advanced things 
> like get DMI/VPD information and use that when generating the boot labels.
> 
> In a later stadium we could even allow inline lua-scripts inside the 
> config-file (although I don't really see how that would be useful atm).
> 
> What do people think ?
Well, a lot of work in this area has already been done; we have a number 
of query libraries, and we have a Lua interpreter.  The main thing is 
for someone to spend the time and put them together.

	-hpa