[syslinux] More features in Syslinux 2.08

[Murali Krishnan Ganapathy]

More features in 2.08 which I would like to see

**** A way by which DOS images can find out the command line arguments 
sent (and identfy the fact that memdisk is stll around?)

I hope to use such a feature as follows: Instead of hanving multiple DOS 
images on my isolinux based CD, I will have only one. Based on the 
command line argument I can execute different DOS batch scripts (just 
like I do for the linux side now).

**** Another error handling construct as follows. I add the line 
"onerror abc" to isolinux.cfg then what should happen is the following: 
If the user type something in the boot prompt which is not a valid 
kernel / label name, the label/COMBOOT image abc is executed with the 
bad line as its command line argument. The other image then handles the 
error as it pleases.

The use for (2) which I am seeing is the following: I have one 
particular image (say master) which takes as argument the name of a 
network script and executes it after booting into linux. Because of 
this, I can add scripts on the network and use it in my ISOLINUX CD by 
typing "master image=newscript" at the boot prompt. I would like to 
avoid my users having to type all that... Instead all I want them to 
type is "newscript". Then ISOLINUX will find that it is a bad label, and 
call my COMBOOT with newscript as the argument. Then in the COMBOOT 
code, I will "execute" the image "master image=newscript". Since the 
user does not see all this, he has the feeling that as soon as he drops 
a script into a network location, ISOLINUX automagically recognizes that 
label as well.

**** Nothing else so far... I am sure I can think of a couple more 
things....

- Murali

H. Peter Anvin wrote:

> I just found a rather embarrassing bug in PXELINUX -- and what's worse 
> -- I wrote an email about it and killed it off accidentally :-/
>
> It appears PXELINUX doesn't free its internal socket buffers (it has 
> 32 of them) when it gets an error reply from the server, including 
> "file not found."  This means it will eventually run out of sockets 
> and "go deaf."  This hasn't been caught until now simply because 
> PXELINUX usually uses far less than 32 socket buffers during normal 
> execution.
>
> I have released a syslinux-2.08-pre3 which fixes this bug:
>
> ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/Testing/
>
> At the moment, other than the bug fixes plus "timeoutcmd" that are 
> already in 2.08-pre3, there is really only one thing on my list for 
> 2.08, which is an API function to "replace bootstrap", which is 
> something that would allow a very simple comboot program to implement 
> the "local boot harddisk X partition Y" functionality a lot of people 
> have asked for.  The internal functionality already exists in 
> syslinux; it's just a matter of exposing it through an API function.
>
> Anyone who has anything else they'd like to see in 2.08, now is the 
> time to speak up...
>
>     -hpa
>
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