[syslinux] pxelinux menu questions

[Murali Krishnan Ganapathy]

The menu subdirectory in syslinux distribution comes with two sample 
menu's. The "simple" example is just
a bunch of menu options (and submenus). The "complex" example has radio 
buttons, user authentication, user help
and other stuff as well.

- Murali

Nazo wrote:

>Speaking of the advanced menu, is there any chance there is a sample
>menu out there for us to look at?  I've been meaning to get around to
>figuring out how to do this, but, it's a little confusing for me.  I'm
>only a mediocre coder to be honest, and this is a bit much for me to
>hop straight into (and I doubt I'm the only one.)
>
>On 11/4/05, Murali Krishnan Ganapathy <gmurali at cs.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>  
>
>>The simple menu (found in com32/modules) reads your config file and
>>displays its contents for user selection. For that reason the config
>>file allows you to "Configure" the menu using certain keywords. The
>>advanced menu on the other hand currently does not read the config file
>>and hence the menu contents need to be hard coded into program before
>>compiling it.
>>
>>So if you use the advanced menu, and put that as the default entry in
>>your config file, it is not necessary to put the user choices there.
>>However, it will be a good idea to do it anyway. It gives you the
>>possibility of switching menu systems and more importantly, allows you
>>to type something in the boot prompt directly in case any/both the menu
>>systems are giving you problems.
>>
>>Hope this answers your question.
>>
>>- Murali
>>
>>Grant Gossett wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Hello all,
>>>
>>>I have a few questions about the menuing system that I haven't been able
>>>to find in the archives (it would be nice if they were available in a
>>>searchable form other than having to click on a month-by month basis and
>>>read through them - if they are searchable I would love to find a way to
>>>do this but it hasn't jumped out at me).
>>>
>>>My first question is : What is menu.c32? I see some posts of
>>>/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default in the archived threads that have simple
>>>menus and use this as the "default" entry in pxelinux.cfg/default, yet I
>>>see no label in the rest of the file named menu.c32 (I'm thinking this is
>>>not right). For example:
>>>
>>>DEFAULT menu.c32
>>>
>>>LABEL whatever
>>>KERNEL memdisk
>>>APPEND somedosbootdisk.img
>>>
>>>
>>>I realize menu.c32 is a program (com32 style?) that is found in syslinux
>>>3.11 under com32/modules. The question is what does it do and why should I
>>>use it? Is placing it as the default in a simple menu (as I've described
>>>above and feel is wrong) the correct way to use it? I am interested in
>>>displaying a menu of choices to users (e.g. dos ghost boot disk, linux
>>>kickstart installs, win 98 SE boot disks, etc) so that they either can
>>>select an option with enter or know what possible options exist. Using the
>>>simple menu with "prompt 1" I get what I would consider a normal LILO-like
>>>boot loader prompt:
>>>
>>>boot:
>>>
>>>However, I cannot get a list of options (labels) to display and expecting
>>>users to remember to answer "win98se_bootdisk" isn't really going to work
>>>:). This is probably a job for the advanced menus (unless my assumption
>>>that menu.c32 + a simple menu is actually for this purpose (i.e. it shows
>>>menu labels that are listed in /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default) and I don't
>>>know how to use it correctly).
>>>
>>>Let's say that I am stuck with creating an advanced (compiled com32) menu
>>>because my above assumption about menu.c32 is incorrect. So I would make
>>>the com32 menu file according to the documentation and my menu needs (no
>>>problems there). This leads me to my next question:
>>>
>>>Do I replace the entire simple menu with just one option (say for instance
>>>a label that has the newly made com32 menu as its kernel and also make
>>>that label the default)? For example:
>>>
>>>DEFAULT myfancypants
>>>
>>>LABEL myfancypants
>>>KERNEL myfancynewmenu.c32
>>>
>>>
>>>thanks a bunch for any help clearing this up for me.
>>>
>>>Grant
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
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>>    
>>
>
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