[syslinux] Boot time arguments

ganapathy murali krishnan gmurali at cs.uchicago.edu
Tue Feb 11 12:28:12 PST 2003


Couple of questions:

Question 1
--------------
I am using isolinux to create bootable CDs. I am having the following 
problems with boot time arguments.
In my isolinux.cfg I have a section like

label prep
      kernel gmklinux
      append root=/dev/ram0 initrd=rootfs.img image=fdisk mountcd=no \
                  network=dhcp logfile=/dev/tty4 utils=utils 
baseurl=http://sysconf/gui

If I type "prep mountcd=yes" at the boot prompt. The boot time arguments 
I supply does not seem to
take effect. Once I boot into the kernel, inspection of /proc/1/environ 
reveals "mountcd=no". I am not using
any global appends. On the other hand, if I type "gmklinux 
root=/dev/ram0 ... mountcd=no ... mountcd=yes..."
on the command line and once I boot into the kernel, /proc/1/environ has 
both the mountcd options, but
the second one overrides the first (echo $mountcd returns yes).

Is this a bug in isolinux?

Question 2
--------------
This is more of a confirmation of what I understood from the 
documentation regarding appends

Suppose an isolinux.cfg file has the following in it

append GLOBALOPTS

label opt1
    kernel k1
    append LOPT1

label opt2
    kernel k2
    append -
    append LOPT2

Then if I type "opt1 ABC", then the actual command line passed to k1 is 
"GLOBALOPTS LOPT1 ABC"
and if I type "opt2 DEF" then the actual command line passed to k2 is 
"LOPT2 DEF". right?

- Murali




More information about the Syslinux mailing list