[syslinux] COMBOOT/COM32 shell and DIR library functions

H. Peter Anvin hpa at zytor.com
Sat Oct 18 11:25:42 PDT 2008


Gene Cumm wrote:
> For several years now, I've been using Syslinux/Isolinux to load boot
> systems and love it.  At times, I've messed up making a config file or
> forgotten the name of a file on the CD (or USB flash drive) and didn't
> want to take the time to load the CD into another machine or boot a
> DOS or Linux OS to search.  The ability to browse the CD/USB drive
> would prove beneficial in these circumstances.
> 
> Has anyone considered building a COMBOOT/COM32 application that
> implements a simple shell (cd, ls/dir, help, and some sort of run/load
> command to boot, maybe cat/echo (already implemented in other apps)),
> just an ls/dir application or the opendir()/readdir()/closedir() C
> library functions?  I realize that these would only be useful for
> SYSLINUX/ISOLINUX/EXTLINUX and not PXELINUX as TFTP does not allow
> listing of directory contents.  I also realize that the implementation
> of these 3 functions would require 3 more functions each for each file
> system type (ie opendir_fat(), opendir_iso() and opendir_ext() called
> by opendir() after determining the FS type).  These would benefit from
> simple functions to determine FS type number and if the FS type allows
> DIR operations (very quick to write as syslinux_derivative_info
> provides the information).
> 

Hello,

It's something I have considered, and probably will get around to doing 
at some point.  It is a relatively major change and relatively low 
priority, however, so I don't know *when* that might happen.

	-hpa




More information about the Syslinux mailing list