[syslinux] SysLinux 5.0 - Problems booting via PXE

[Matt Fleming]

On Thu, 2013-01-10 at 16:33 +0100, Schlomo Schapiro wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> nice to hear that 5.01 is coming.
> 
> On 10 January 2013 16:17, Matt Fleming <matt at console-pimps.org> wrote:
> 
> > >    - The HTTP download was the same slow as with 4.05
> >
> 
> Any plans on fixing this issue? Seems to be only on VMware VMs.

Hmm... I thought this issue had already been fixed. Gene, Peter? Any
idea where we finished up with this bug report?

> > >    - The kernel command line was not passed to the system which caused
> > our
> > >    installations to fail (obvious if no install= parameter is given).
> >
> > How many bytes was your kernel command line? If it was >= 256 bytes this
> > bug has now been fixed and will be available in the 5.01 release.
> 
> 
> The append parameter has 221 chars, maybe it got expanded to a bit more
> somehow. I can retest with 5.01
> 
> 
> >
> > >    - The PATH setting did not work which is very inconvenient as I would
> > >    like to put all syslinux components (*.c32, *.0) into /bin so that I
> > can
> > >    switch pxelinux+c32 files with a symlink.
> >
> > What was the PATH string that you used in your config file? What error
> > message did you get when it didn't work?
> >
> 
> PATH /bin
> 
> $tftp_prefix/bin contains all the syslinux stuff. I had to symlink the
> lib*c32 files to $tftp_prefix (which is HTTP based).

Hmm.. the symlink shouldn't have been necessary. I'll try and debug
this.

> >
> > >    - Loading vesamenu.c32 more than once did not work (I was doing this
> > to
> > >    jump to other menus). As a "workaround" I restructured my menu system
> > to
> > >    only do config xxx.txt which luckily also works with 4.05
> >
> > Oh, that's interesting. This use case is currently explicitly forbidden
> > because of the way that the module loading code *used* to work. Because
> > ldlinux.c32 used to be listed as a dependency for those modules that
> > linked against its exported symbols, we had to forbid re-loading
> > executable modules (as opposed to library modules) otherwise everytime a
> > module, such as menu.c32, was loaded, it would reload ldlinux.c32 and
> > drop the user at a prompt!
> >
> 
> I noticed that. I think that it helps to allow repeated loading of
> executable modules as that allows users to chain existing syslinux
> configurationes, e.g. copied from a tool CD.

Right, this is fixed now.

> >
> > Luckily, the module dependency code doesn't work this way anymore, and
> > we no longer need this restriction. I've got a fix for this in my patch
> > queue. It will be in 5.01.
> >
> 
> When should I plan some time to test 5.01?

5.01 should be released by the beginning of next week.

-- 
Matt Fleming, Intel Open Source Technology Center