[syslinux] syslinux: Please provide -m and -a options on Linux

Jeff Sadowski jeff.sadowski at gmail.com
Fri Sep 3 21:21:49 PDT 2010


On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 5:38 PM, H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
> On 09/01/2010 02:27 PM, Daniel Baumann wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> this is a forward from the debian bug tracking system,
>> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=595170:
>>
>> "syslinux for Windows provides the options -m (write an MBR) and -a (make
>> partition active).  These options make it easy to provide instructions
>> for Windows users to make a bootable USB drive: just run "syslinux -m
>> -a" on the drive, then drop some files on the drive including a
>> syslinux.cfg.  However, those same instructions won't work on Linux,
>> because syslinux for Linux doesn't provide the -m or -a options.  As a
>> result, instructions for making bootable USB drives need to have extra
>> steps for Linux users, to write an MBR and to make sure the partition
>> has the bootable flag set.
>>
>> Please consider adding support for the -m and -a options.
>>
>> (Also, if they don't already, please consider making the -m and -a
>> options check for a valid partition table first to avoid mangling
>> "superfloppy" partitionless USB drives.)"
>>
>> it would be nice if you could add said functionality.
>>
>
> Yes, it would.  It is very complex, however, because of the flexibility that
> Linux provides.
>
>        -hpa
>
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>

couldn't tis just be done with a couple system calls? using a simple
dd to copy the mbr.bin and parted to set the active partition.
Requiring other installed programs to do special tasks isn't asking
much. Most distros have parted and I don't know of a system without
dd.




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