[syslinux] SYSLINUX 3.10-pre1 released; multi-file initramfs support

H. Peter Anvin hpa at zytor.com
Thu Jan 6 15:44:07 PST 2005


Hi all,

I have released syslinux-3.10-pre1.  This is definitely not a release 
candidate; I haven't finished putting the bugs in yet never mind taking 
them out (or in manager-speak: it's not feature-complete yet, never mind 
debugged.)

However, I figured it'd be interesting as a technology preview.

The main new things are that I am adding support for dynamic initramfs 
construction.  There are two bits to this:

a) You can specify initrd=file1,file2,file3 and have the files 
concatenated (this is legal for initramfs pieces);

b) A module API which allows a com32 module to actually synthesize the 
initramfs in memory, in pieces, and then pass a list of memory regions 
to a function, which then magically :) turns into an initramfs.  The 
low-level support for this is largely there, but I haven't gotten the 
higher level support library done yet, and it really really needs one :)

Ultimately I hope it to look something like:

   syslinux_boot_kernel(void *kernel, struct movelist *initramfs)

... where struct movelist is basically a linked list of regions that 
form the initramfs.

(For those of you who haven't followed syslinux development lately, note 
that syslinux now has ext[23]fs support.)

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/Testing/

	-hpa




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