News-3.74

From Syslinux Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Syslinux 3.74 was released on 2009Apr09.


Summary: this is a major release. It adds new com32 modules (kbdmap.c32, rosh.c32, cmd.c32 and hdt.c32) and fixes bugs in the shuffler API. Some libraries have been improved (new directory API, DMI, CPUID, memdisk) as well as documentation. gPXE has been bumped to 0.9.7.


New features

UI mode

The configuration files' syntax supports a new UI directive to specify a menu system. The DEFAULT directive can be used to select the default entry inside the menu.

Prior to that release, the syntax was:

  DEFAULT menu.c32

Now, you can do:

  UI menu.c32
  DEFAULT Linux

In the previous example, if Linux points into a submenu, that menu becomes the start menu; in other words, this directive has the same effect as both MENU DEFAULT and MENU START.

For backwards compatibility with earlier versions of Syslinux, this use of the DEFAULT directive is ignored unless the configuration file also contains a UI directive.

Commit


kbdmap.c32

New module: kbdmap.c32

This new module can be used to dynamically load a new keyboard map.

Syntax:

   kbdmap.c32 <key_map>

Commit


rosh.c32 (ROSH - Read-Only Shell)

New module: rosh.c32 (ROSH - Read-Only Shell)

ROSH is designed to make exploring the contents of the [SYS/EXT/ISO]LINUX filesystem possible from the Syslinux environment. Primarily, it is geared towards the disk-based variants, as TFTP (used by PXELINUX) currently does not have any standardized method for retrieving a directory listing.

The internal commands currently implemented include help, man, ls, dir, more, cd, pwd, run, quit and exit.

Commit

More information can be found on the wiki: rosh.c32.


cmd.c32

New module: cmd.c32 (simple command module)

A simple cmd.c32 COM32 module, which only invokes a CLI command. This is mostly useful when running on an alternate CLI, e.g. on top of the native gPXE COMBOOT interface.

Commit


hdt.c32 (Hardware Detection Tool)

New module: hdt.c32 (Hardware Detection Tool)

HDT (stands for Hardware Detection Tool) is a COM32 module designed to display low-level information for any x86 compatible system.

HDT can inspect multiple subsystems: CPU (via cpuid), PCI, DMI (Memory modules, BIOS, Motherboard, IPMI base board, Chassis, Batteries, CPU), Disks (work-in-progress), Syslinux itself, Linux Kernel modules needed, PXE environment, VESA modes.

Commit

More information is available on the wiki: Hdt (Hardware Detection Tool)


New API: Directory functions

COMBOOT API extended with calls for directory functions.

Syntax:

   INT 22h AX=001Fh ; getcwd()
   INT 22h AX=0020h ; opendir()
   INT 22h AX=0021h ; readdir()
   INT 22h AX=0022h ; closedir()

Note: getcwd() is compatible with all variants of Syslinux, whereas the other calls are currently only implemented for SYSLINUX (FAT). They will return failure if used with another variant.

Commit


Quiet mode

Suppress the Loading... prompt if quiet is specified on the command line.

Commit


Improvements

CPUID updates

The DMI code has been updated to detect the most recent CPUs.

Commit

PCI updates

The PCI library now reports PCI devices categories (e.g. IDE interface, Ethernet controller, ...). The resulting strings can be found in the pci.ids file.

Commit

It can also report kernel modules needed for each device.

Commit

Memdisk updates

If a large floppy ("superfloppy") image is formatted with a FAT filesystem, MEMDISK can now use the headers in the FAT image to derive the geometry.

Commit

Alternate MBR

Produce alternate MBR variants which force the drive number to hd0 (_f variants), or force the drive number to hd0 if the Ctrl key is pressed (_c variants.). Furthermore, add an MBR variant (altmbr*.bin) which ignores the active flag and instead boots the partition number specified in the byte at offset 439 decimal.


Bug fixes

isohybrid

Workaround bug in some versions of binutils.

ifcpu64.c32

Fix handling of less than three arguments.

Shuffler fixes

Fix bug in the shuffle library when dealing with a very large number of fragments.

Memory hole management

Make memory beyond the core HighMem available to malloc.

Prior to that release, if we found a memory hole, we simply don't use the memory beyond that point. This makes it possible for COM32 modules to use such memory -- use linux.c32 to load a kernel and initrd into this memory.

After this, we should be able to add relocation support to allow loading when the memory at 1 MB is unavailable.

Commit

Misc.

  • SYSLINUX: fix the handling of .bss files on FAT12/16.
  • Fix the use of CONSOLE 0 with menu.c32.


Credits

The Syslinux project thanks contributors that made this new release possible: H. Peter Anvin, Gene Cumm, Vincente Jimenez Aguilar, Sebastian Herbszt, Michael Brown, Shao Miller, Gert Hulselmans, Pierre-Alexandre Meyer, Erwan Velu and all pre-release testers.