[syslinux] Problem with PXE, menu, and ipappend

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com> said:
> Chris Adams wrote:
> >I have been using PXELINUX with the "ipappend 2" option for a long time.
> >To make things a little more user friendly, I decided to set up menus
> >(text menus with menu.c32), but they wouldn't work (blank screen and
> >corrupted menu flashes by when you hit a key).
> >
> >I went through all kinds of combinations of options, and finally found
> >that commenting out the "ipappend 2" line fixed all the problems.  It
> >would appear there is some corruption when combining the menus and that
> >option.
> >
> >This is with syslinux 3.75 (from Fedora 11).
> 
> The blank screen happened in that version when the menu file was blank.

This is happening with menu settings in the "default" config (no extra
files).

> It's hard to know exactly what broke without seeing the full configuration.

Included below.  Uncomment "ipappend 2" and it fails, comment it out and
it works.

> Also note that the current version is 3.82.

I tried with the pre-built pxelinux.0 and menu.c32 from 3.82 and I get
the same behavior.

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.


ui menu.c32
timeout 100
#ipappend 2

menu title Select a network boot option
menu rows 15
menu tabmsgrow -5
menu cmdlinerow -3
menu timeoutrow -2
menu helpmsgrow -4

label disk
	menu label Boot from ^local drive
	menu default
	localboot 0xffff

label -1
	menu label Install Fedora 11 or upgrade an existing Fedora system
	menu disable
label f11_32
	menu label i386 (^32 bit)
	menu indent 2
	kernel f11/i386/vmlinuz
	append initrd=f11/i386/initrd.img ip=dhcp keymap=us ksdevice=bootif lang=en_US.UTF-8 noipv6 repo=nfs:omirror:/pub/fedora/linux/releases/11/Fedora/i386/os
	text help
	Add options "xdriver=vesa nomodeset" if you have video problems
	endtext
label f11_64
	menu label x86_64 (^64 bit)
	menu indent 2
	kernel f11/x86_64/vmlinuz
	append initrd=f11/x86_64/initrd.img ip=dhcp keymap=us ksdevice=bootif lang=en_US.UTF-8 noipv6 repo=nfs:omirror:/pub/fedora/linux/releases/11/Fedora/x86_64/os
	text help
	Add options "xdriver=vesa nomodeset" if you have video problems
	endtext
label f11_32_rescue
	menu label ^Rescue mode
	menu indent 2
	kernel f11/i386/vmlinuz
	append initrd=f11/i386/initrd.img ip=dhcp keymap=us ksdevice=bootif lang=en_US.UTF-8 noipv6 repo=nfs:omirror:/pub/fedora/linux/releases/11/Fedora/i386/os rescue

menu separator
label dos
	menu label Boot a FreeDOS ^1.44MB floppy image
	kernel memdisk
	append initrd=b1440.img.gz
label dos28
	menu label Boot a FreeDOS ^2.88MB floppy image
	kernel memdisk
	append initrd=b2880.img.gz

label memtest
	menu label Run a ^memory test (normal video output)
	kernel memtest
	append -
label memtest_serial
	menu label Run a memory test (^serial port output at 115200)
	kernel memtest
	append console=ttyS0,115200