[syslinux] vesamenu back to text before booting

[Gene Cumm]

On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 11:27 AM, Thorsten Glaser <t.glaser at tarent.de> wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Dec 2014, Gene Cumm wrote:
>
>> Ady has an excellent point.  Try the following instead:
>>
>>   LABEL test
>>     MENU LABEL test
>>     COM32 pxechn.c32
>>     APPEND pxebsd.0
>
> Thanks, that works! How do I use that in the generic case?
> The “pxebsd.0” file can be called as…
>
> – PXE loader
> – COMBOOT (16-bit)
> – DOS .COM
> – Multiboot (although it switches back to 16-bit mode immediately)
> – from its own bootsector, if installed on disc (blocklist)
>
> Normally I’d chain into it as COMBOOT, but that no longer
> works (this used to work for both ISOLINUX and PXELINUX,
> and the other two, although I rarely tested them).
> Now I’ve got a working method for PXELINUX, but that leaves
> the others still?

Without rewriting the MirOS boot loader as a COM32 module,
reimplementing the COMBOOT system (which would likely have to be
mostly in C and be BIOS-only) or making the MirOS kernel act like
either an MBOOT kernel or a Linux kernel (for their boot protocols),
your closest generic alternative is chain.c32.  chain.c32 is capable
of loading things like ntldr.sys and msdos.sys.  See also
doc/chain.c32.  Written as a PXE NBP, there's nothing else that can
load it.

Thinking from a sustainability standpoint, writing your own COM32 (or
perhaps extending chain.c32) or making the kernel act like an MBOOT or
Linux kernel seem the better approaches.

-- 
-Gene