[syslinux] extlinux 3.20-pre8 notes

[Jim Cromie]

hi Peter, everyone,

I recently installed extlinux on my CF drive.
after a few botches, it works, with menu.c32 too.
Heres a few notes/observations:

- menuing seems pretty sensitive to presence of tabs in extlinux.conf,
unlike with pxelinux.cfg/default,  Is this an oversight,
or something Im misremembering ?

- extlinux doesnt have the timeout after menu-choice.
if I dont choose, it times out and picks the 1st LABEL,
but if I choose another and dont hit return, it just sits there.

- what does this mean ?
EXT2-fs error (device hda1): ext2_free_blocks: bit already cleared for
block 430629
EXT2-fs error (device hda1): ext2_free_blocks: bit already cleared for
block 430630
EXT2-fs error (device hda1): ext2_free_blocks: bit already cleared for
block 430631
EXT2-fs error (device hda1): ext2_free_blocks: bit already cleared for
block 430632
A few hrs later, I dont remember the circumstances,
but I think it was while running linux, having just run 'extlinux -i ..'


- rerunning extlinux -i or -U have both installed an apparently old copy 
of extlinux.sys into the directory above where I specified - this is in
addition to an uptodate copy in the right directory.  I deleted it after 
the install, and it reappeared after the update ?!?!


cd ~/syslinux/syslinux-3.20-pre8/extlinux
#  ./extlinux -U /mnt/flash/boot/extlinux
/mnt/flash/boot/extlinux is device /dev/hda1

soekris:/mnt/flash/boot# ll extlinux
total 20
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1789 May  5 08:42 extlinux.conf
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 9740 May  5 09:03 extlinux.sys
soekris:/mnt/flash/boot# ll extlinux.sys
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 9320 May 28  2005 extlinux.sys



FYI, heres what the current boot process looks like,
it goes to PXE 1st cuz I set the bios that way.


comBIOS ver. 1.28  20050529  Copyright (C) 2000-2005 Soekris Engineering.

net4801

0128 Mbyte Memory                        CPU Geode 266 Mhz

Pri Mas  SanDisk SDCFB-512               LBA 993-16-63  500 Mbyte

   Seconds to automatic boot.   Press Ctrl-P for entering Monitor.

NSC DP83815/DP83816 Fast Ethernet UNDI, v1.03
Copyright (C) 2002, 2003 National Semiconductor Corporation
All rights reserved.

Pre-boot eXecution Environment  PXE-2.0 (build 082)
Copyright (C) 1997-2000  Intel Corporation

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting MacPhyter PXE ROM.

EXTLINUX 3.20 3.20-pre8 EBIOS Copyright (C) 1994-2005 H. Peter Anvin

EXTLINUX 3.20 3.20-pre8  Copyright (C) 1994-2005 H. Peter Anvin
Unknown keyword in extlinux.conf.
Unknown keyword in extlinux.conf.
.
No LABEL entries found in configuration file!
                                             boot:
.
No LABEL entries found in configuration file!
                                             boot:
.



Ive fixed the reported problem, but a line-number would be handy, if
possible/easy.
(its the dot after ^g in the following stanza)

LABEL 17rc1-mm1-hrt-clksrc
  MENU LABEL    ^g.  hrt-clksrc
  KERNEL        /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-rc1-mm1-hrt-clksrc-sk
  APPEND        console=ttyS0,115200n81 root=/dev/hda1


have a nice day
jimc