[syslinux] Syslinux 5.00-pre1 preview release

[Paulo Alcantara]

Hi,

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 04:22, H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have released a technology preview version of the elflink branch as
> sylinux-5.00-pre1.  It is basically functional but definitely has a fair
> share of rough edges.  Nevertheless it would be great if people would be
> willing to test it out and let us know what works and doesn't work...
>
>        -hpa

I've been testing PXELINUX with Syslinux 5.00-pre1 (elflink branch) and I found
some issues with PXELINUX.

First of all, it's not hanging on the parsing of the MAC address file, instead
it's hanging on the second call of load_env32() (in core/pxelinux.asm), as it
shouldn't be called twice. So I made a patch that removes the second call of
load_env32() and then it did print out the message
"Hello, World! (from hello.c)" from hello() function (in core/ui.inc).

The pxe_open_config() function is never called, so the "BOOTIF=" message will
never be printed out.

There's a comment in core/pxelinux.asm:

"Now we have the config file open.  Parse the config file and
 run the user interface."

After this comment core/pxelinux.asm includes the ui.inc but not with the
config file open.

Another comment about the config file in core/ui.inc:

"This file should be entered with the config file open (for getc)"

And it wasn't open yet!

The first "%if 1" will be entered in and the following code will be executed:

%if 1
on_error:
no_config_file:
enter_command:
auto_boot:
load_kernel:
kernel_good_saved:
kernel_corrupt:
		pm_call hello

At this point we have that hello-world message printed on the screen.

These lines of code in core/ui.inc were added in commit 58ddf0, so I'm guessing
those lines were added to work around or test somethig when implementing other
stuffs on the elflink branch.

Later when I get home, I'll try to figure out what's happening in core/ui.inc
and then I'll report any results.

-- 
-Paulo