[syslinux] Chainloading / Nested PXELINUX

[Gene Cumm]

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 16:03, Warren Turkal <wt at 8x8.com> wrote:

> Part of this is due to the fact that the menu files use absolute paths and
> there isn't a convenient way to change the base path. The other part is that
> ubuntu now use vesamenu.c32 instead of the normal menu, and they don't seem
> to mix well.

With regards to PXELINUX, the only absolute paths have a "::" (ie
"::file.ext", "10.0.0.1::file.ext") or are a URL that can be
interpreted in the current context (always
"tftp://10.0.0.1/pxelinux.0" and additionally running under gPXE/iPXE
"http://10.0.0.1/pxelinux.0").  A path of "/path/file.ext" is only
appended to the current path to generate a fully qualified path
(unlike all other variants in which this is an absolute path).

vesamenu.c32 is menu.c32 enhanced with VESA support (and will still
drop to TUI mode like menu.c32 always does).  What do you mean by
"instead of the normal menu" and "they don't seem to mix well"?

Also, what part of Ubuntu are you using and how are you using it?  I
thought as of 10.10 on all ISOs other than the mini ISOs, they used
ISOLINUX 4.01 and gfxboot.c32 with a display file and certain patches
that I think just got included into 4.03.  10.04 I believe still used
3.63 with the gfxboot assembly patch.

Using most distros with PXELINUX is often a challenge as they expect
local media in some way.  Some distros are completely based on
initrd/initramfs and are very easy to deal with.

-- 
-Gene