> On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 Didier wrote:
>
> >From: Didier Spaier <didier at slint.fr>
> >To: syslinux at zytor.com
> >Subject: Re: [syslinux] Boot fails in a VMware player VM - syslinux
> > 6.03
> >On 13/11/2014 21:51, Ady wrote:
> >
> > > Realistically, less and less users are using optical media,
> > > especially on newer computers (which are of course UEFI systems).
>
> I strong disagree with this characterization, see below.
>
> Less and less are using *physical* optical media.
>
> >Yes. And if a computer is old enough not to be able to boot off an USB
> >drive, it probably doesn't have an UEFI firmware anyway ;)
>
> Most all the server provisioners in my company do all our server imaging
> remotely. That is, we attach virtual media from our desktop. (Or a jump
> server, if we're imaging from our house -- or a distant geographical
> region).
>
> I know a lot of larger companies are going that way, because you can hire
> provisioners in a low-cost region and they can provision anywhere.
>
> Only one time in the last 6 months I've physically gone to a box and
> provisioned it. (Its remote access controller was misbehaving).
>
> When remotely provisioning, even on the newest models, your choices are:
> virtual CD/DVD, or
> virtual disk (or diskette)
>
> Still today, Redhat & other vendors deliver their boot media on DVD.
> It's convenient -- certainly during initial build development -- to
> virtually attach a disk image (for the syslinux & ks.cfg) and also
virtually
> attach their boot DVD (for the squashfs.img stage 2 bootloader).
>
> Could I develop the UEFI boot images without CD/DVD support?
>
> Certainly. I'm doing that now. Doing my initial development w/ grub2,
> then cutting over to syslinux (to get the pretty menus and screens, plus
> a human-readable config file).
>
> > > This means that investing resources in Syslinux development with
the
> > > specific goal of achieving bootable optical media in UEFI mode is
> > > less "productive" than investing resources to achieve
other
> > > improvements / features. I'm not saying it won't happen -
possibly by
> > > adding some other, more-important features, then booting optical
> > > media in UEFI mode might be also achievable.
> >
> >I can understand that. And fixing the remaining bugs that you've
listed in
> >previous posts, so that Syslinux 6.04 can be released and used by
default
> >by new versions of Linux distributions, is probably more urgent.
> >
> >Best regards,
> >Didier
>
> Agree. But recognize that while most distros deliver their full boot media
> on
> CD/DVD, with only a efidisk.img to get you to this CD/DVD, there will still
> be a ton of users installing at least partially by DVD image.
>
> Spike
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Spike,
FWIW...
I was not ruling against ISO images (in fact, I prefer them). I was
just pointing some objective differences, in the particular context
of what was discussed.
Optical media is being used less than in the past; ISO images aren't.
Regarding the use of HDD images in VMs (or alike), they are usable in
a similar way as ISO images, except that using ISO images for such
purpose is slightly easier (in part because their use and format is
already very spread out / standard).
Regards,
Ady.