Syslinux - Mar 2014 - SYSLINUX: Neither prompt nor menu?

Good day,

I was expecting this to be a FAQ but haven't been able to find an 
answer... how would I arrange to, normally, not be presented with either 
prompt or menu when booting, yet be still able to call up prompt/menu 
when needed?

If the right answer is "set PROMPT 0, provide a DEFAULT entry and no UI 
entry" then that doesn't work currently, in the sense that it is then 
impossible to interrupt the boot even when needed: syslinux pays no 
attention to ALT or SHIFT in that case (and responds to CTRL by 
commenting that "this system has only 622K of DOS RAM, whereas this 
version of syslinux needs 9K to boot!" -- which I will assume to be an 
unrelated buglet).

Setting TIMEOUT to 1 with UI={vesa,}menu.c32 gets me a rather annoying 
flash while booting which I wanted to avoid -- but I only noticed not 
being able to now intervene anymore until I actually quite needed to. At 
which point I noticed it definitely enough that I've now regressed to 
LILO...

I'm an Arch Linux user and LILO isn't a supported choice, and I would 
like to return to syslinux. Is ALT/SHIFT not working without a UI 
statement just a bug? If not, can syslinux do what I want?

Regards,
Rene

> Good day,
> 
> I was expecting this to be a FAQ but haven't been able to find an 
> answer... how would I arrange to, normally, not be presented with either 
> prompt or menu when booting, yet be still able to call up prompt/menu 
> when needed?
> 
> If the right answer is "set PROMPT 0, provide a DEFAULT entry and no
UI
> entry" then that doesn't work currently, in the sense that it is
then
> impossible to interrupt the boot even when needed: syslinux pays no 
> attention to ALT or SHIFT in that case (and responds to CTRL by 
> commenting that "this system has only 622K of DOS RAM, whereas this 
> version of syslinux needs 9K to boot!" -- which I will assume to be an
> unrelated buglet).
> 
> Setting TIMEOUT to 1 with UI={vesa,}menu.c32 gets me a rather annoying 
> flash while booting which I wanted to avoid -- but I only noticed not 
> being able to now intervene anymore until I actually quite needed to. At 
> which point I noticed it definitely enough that I've now regressed to 
> LILO...
> 
> I'm an Arch Linux user and LILO isn't a supported choice, and I
would
> like to return to syslinux. Is ALT/SHIFT not working without a UI 
> statement just a bug? If not, can syslinux do what I want?
> 
> Regards,
> Rene
 
Let's separate the issues.

First, in the 5+ versions of Syslinux, the shift/alt keys are indeed 
not working as expected. This is a bug (among several issues related 
to keyboard functionality).

Now, regarding your goal, you should be able to achieve it by using 
the following directives:
_ MENU CLEAR
_ MENU HIDDEN
_ MENU HIDDENKEY
_ UI [vesa]menu.c32
_ PROMPT
_ DEFAULT
_ TIMEOUT
_ ONTIMEOUT

Some of the above directives might be optional for your goal/needs 
(e.g. using a simple menu or a boot prompt when pressing some key), 
and there are some other directives that could be added so to achieve 
better/different looks.

Regarding the "flash" while booting, you could try adding to your 
APPEND line the following:
 vga=current quiet

Regards,
Ady.

On 31-03-14 02:48, Ady wrote:
> First, in the 5+ versions of Syslinux, the shift/alt keys are indeed
> not working as expected. This is a bug (among several issues related
> to keyboard functionality).
Thanks for the reply. I assumed the keys not working would be specific 
to my straight-booting wish, but playing around with the suggestions 
that you provided, I see it's indeed more general.

Given that you confirmed it to be a bug, I'll stick with LILO for now. 
This seems rather vital to have functioning correctly.

Regards,
Rene