[syslinux] Reboot from /bin/bash

[Miller, Shao]

Good day Chris,

I am not aware of the ability to reboot from the GRUB CLI initiated from
your Linux BASH shell.  That's not to say it's not there, but perhaps
you could point towards the resource you learned this from.

Some compilations of Linux _do_ provide support for 'kexec', which will
"reboot" to another kernel and initrd from the running environment, thus
destroying the running environment.  This might be something interesting
to you.

I think what you're really after is modifying the default option in your
extlinux.cfg file.  You can do this with any Linux editor, such as VI or
NANO.

"Shell" might be too generic a term in your e-mail.  Do you mean that
you wish to choose which LABEL option to boot from the boot-loader's
command-line interface (CLI)?  Or do you mean that you are happy to
always boot the default LABEL and then wish to reboot from your Linux
shell (BASH)?  With the former, you want to modify your extlinux.cfg
file.  With the latter, I'd say you need 'kexec'.

You might be interested in PXELINUX, if you wish to control a
workstation's boot via the network.  What you do is set the workstation
to PXE-boot in the BIOS boot order, then have your DHCP server hand out
"pxelinux.0" as the boot file.  Then read up on
Syslinux/doc/pxelinux.txt and enjoy!

- Shao Miller

-----Original Message-----
From: syslinux-bounces at zytor.com [mailto:syslinux-bounces at zytor.com] On
Behalf Of Chris Miller
Sent: Monday, April 06, 2009 10:25
To: 'SYSLINUX Family Discussion'
Subject: [syslinux] Reboot from /bin/bash

Hi Folks,

GRUB claims to provide a feature that I want, but that doesn't really
work.
With GRUB you can presumably run GRUB from the command line of a shell
and
see the menu of boot options that would be presented if you were
actually
booting.  You can select a stanza from the configfile and invoke it
right
then and there causing the machine to reboot as though you had selected
this
option from the GRUB menu during a system boot.  The problem is that
GRUB
doesn't work -- at least I can't get it to work.  Seems simple enough --
you
type, "boot" at the command prompt.  Not much room for error there, but
I
get nothing...

I'd like to be able to do this for a headless machine, so I can, for
example
specify an install.  Under the current discipline, headless machines
will
always boot the default menu stanza, because they don't have the options
to
make choices and that default will be boot a running full distribution
on
the USB rescue kit -- presumably for rescue purposes.

Does EXTLinux have a feature enabling command line invocation from the
shell?  It turn out that this feature is important enough to my strategy
that if it is not available, I may have to work with you guys to develop
it...



Chris.	
  	Fill what's empty, empty what's full and scratch where it
itches.

	Life is a journey, not a destination.	



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