[syslinux] isolinux 2.01 bug with Compaq and Promise BIOS

[Patrick J. Volkerding]

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Patrick J. Volkerding wrote:
> >
> > It's not quite as big an issue now that there's isolinux, but for a long
> > time the Slackware installer was a single 1.44MB floppy.  So, you start to
> > worry about running out of space.  Notice how much size gets tacked on
> > adding mtools:
> >
> > -rwxr-xr-x    1 root     bin         16280 Feb  3  2002 /usr/bin/syslinux
> > -rwxr-xr-x    1 root     bin        139740 Apr 30  2002 /usr/bin/mtools
> >
> > Of course, I'm sure you're aware of this.  I'd rather not have to add
> > mtools to our installer image (which is still under 2.88MB compressed),
> > but if I have to it's not that big a deal.  There's also the option of
> > installing a newer version of syslinux to the hard drive but keeping the
> > self-contained one in the installer.  I tend to approach syslinux upgrades
> > cautiously when things seem to be working, though...  I suppose that's
> > another reason.  :-)
> >
>
> You don't need /usr/bin/syslinux on the installer disk, though.

If syslinux and mtools packages were installed to the hard drive, that's
true enough -- we can use them from there.  However, we'd rather not make
that requirement just so that people can generate a bootdisk at the end of
the installation.  What I'm planning to do now is include a new syslinux
package in Slackware that (along with mtools) gets installed to the hard
drive, and the installer will look for them to use.  If these packages
weren't installed, the old self-contained syslinux binary (2.01) on the
installer disk will be used as a backup plan.

Take care,

Pat