[syslinux] [5.10] PXE + dhcp opts 209, 210 and path issues in tftp/http

Ady ady-sf at hotmail.com
Fri Jun 14 02:26:28 PDT 2013


> On Wed, 12 Jun, at 11:43:24AM, Jeffrey Hutzelman wrote:
> > Right, so assuming you switch to the linked-list model, PATH needs to
> > split its argument on colons and add each of the resulting directories
> > to the path.  Then the present problem can be solved by introducing a
> > new directive which does _not_ split its argument.
>  
> Hmm... actually a new directive that allows a more complex path entry
> syntax might be a better idea - something along the lines of,
> 
>   URLPATH http://www.foo.com/bar/ ftp://baz.org/ ::/tftp/ /bin/
> 
> That way, we can completely redefine the syntax as something more
> conducive to urls.
> 
> -- 
> Matt Fleming, Intel Open Source Technology Center
 
And then, at some point, someone would suggest / require / want to 
implement support for white-space characters, encoding, some form of 
Unicode and what not.

Are we (users) now *so* lazy that we can't type in an additional (and 
definitely more clear) line in a simple text (cfg) file?

[URL]PATH http://www.foo.com/bar/
[URL]PATH ftp://baz.org/
[URL]PATH ::/tftp/
[URL]PATH /bin/
[URL]PATH /some new path with spaces and non-English characters
[URL]PATH /path with semicolon, quotation marks, whatever
[URL]PATH /symbols we would not consider now as "frequently used"

Does anyone think it would be more clear to "merge" those lines and 
use only one line with path-separators instead?

IMHO, the solution (or workaround if you want) is: users should be 
limited to use one path per [URL]PATH directive, one per line; no 
path-separator.

IMHO, the path should be parsed as:
"whatever is written after the '[URL]PATH ' directive (after the 
space) until the end of the line (LF and/or CR, in whichever order). 
whatever is therein, that's a (or the) path. Of course I have no idea 
about the inner code to merge these lines; I'm only talking about the 
directive's syntax in the cfg file (aka. "about the user's POV").

I guess it should be simpler to maintain, and users and developers 
would not have to care about what kind of characters are in there (or 
at least less than right now in this email thread).

I just wonder why the possibility of using a path-separator would be 
so important in this case, giving the amount of potential problems 
and the time being invested just for this.

Best Regards,
Ady.



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