[syslinux] Is Syslinux the right means for my purpose?

Bernhard Holzmayer Holzmayer.Bernhard at foerstergroup.de
Wed Jul 6 23:41:46 PDT 2005


Hello group.

While investigating around my topic, I came across syslinux.
On a first glance, I guess it could solve my problem perfectly.
But before I dig deeply into the details, those experienced fellows of you,
please have a short look over my problem and tell me, if I'm on the right 
track...

This is my task:
I have a SanDisk (Flash) with a usual DOS (16bit) partition on it.
vxWorks is booted from it in the usual manner: MBR starts bootrom.sys, 
which then launches vxWorks itself.

Now we want to put two similar partitions on that disk. 
One shall serve as the fallback in case that updating the other failed.
Therefore I need a possibility to boot the new one after flashing it, 
and if it fails, the other again.

During boot, the boot loader (maybe syslinux) shall read a flag from file 
system (existence or content of a certain file) and then, depending on the 
read result decide, from which partition to boot.

This whole flag/file thingy is done to have a fallback solution if an updated
image doesn't work (update failures).

Since partitions are DOS/FAT and the boot process is quite straight-forward,
I guess that this can easily be done with syslinux.

Am I right?
Did anyone try this with vxWorks already?

Any helpful response appreciated!
Bernhard




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