[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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