[syslinux] isolinux failing on serial console

[Gene Cumm]

On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 7:47 PM, Marc Pascual <marc.m.pascual at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a problem with isolinux failing to boot a kernel whenever I navigate
> and trigger the menu via serial console. My test machine is a DL585 G2,
> with iLO2. Navigating and booting the kernels off of the video console

How are you accessing the serial console?  Directly, via an external
serial console server, or the iLO?  Do you have any serial-related iLO
options enabled like redirecting the standard console to serial?

> works 100% of the time. With the serial connection however, I _sometimes_
> get a "menu.c32: not a COM32R image" error. Sometime it works fine. I

http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Common_Problems#Modules

You shouldn't see it as a result of a serial console however if the
file transfer were corrupted or you somehow lost transfered blocks,
that might be understandable.

What version?  I suspect something in the 4.0x range.

> suspect the serial connection is sending extra characters. I tried running
> wireshark from my local pc, enabled telnet on the iLO2 GUI, and did some
> packet captures. However I don't have an idea of how it looks like when
> there are no extra characters sent, so I'm kind of lost there.
>
> I'm not sure if this is an isolinux problem (specifically, menu.c32) and I
> don't think it is. But I'm going to ask anyway -- is there any way for
> isolinux to ignore extra characters if it is being sent? perhaps via
> isolinux.cfg?

I don't believe so but there are the flow control bits.

> here's my config:
>
> default menu.c32
> serial 0 115200
> # comment out to enable video console
> # console 0

Have you tried to disable the standard console?  Considered leaving
the DEFAULT pointing to your real default option and using the UI
directive?

The rest of your config (aside from wrapping) looks fine.

--
-Gene