[syslinux] testing out 6.03 network booting...

[Andrew Rae]

> Although you have not compiled them yourself, there is a chance that
> HPA used (intentionally or not) different (debug) settings to build
> different pre-release versions.
>
> I could think of another possibility; when building with different
> (additional debug) settings, some "extra" checks would be
> additionally used, making the boot process slightly slower (which
> could, in some potential case, trigger the PXELINUX timeout interval,
> thus rebooting).

the earlier versions keep retrying to download the ldlinux files... it's not a slow process, looks to me like something thinks it failed to download, so keeps retrying.
the later release (pre17) also doesn't hit the reboot timeout or anything - it just fails with 'boot unsuccessful' once trying subfolders etc.
only in some of the more recent pre- versions does it start looking through other subfolders on its own accord.

> I don't know whether using a different file name extension for
> syslinux.efi (as you did) could also make the boot process slower.
> While changing the file name of UEFI boot loaders is allowed, I don't
> know whether there is any influence in the boot process (e.g.
> searching for expected files in additional paths, taking more time
> too).

up until now, renaming has not caused me any issues - the renamed syslinux.efi files seem to check the same folder for the relevant ldlinux file - so no delay there.
all the remaining files are in a subfolder, defined using PATH - so it looks in the correct folder straight away.

I did try using just one version (read as: BIOS \ EFI32 \ EFI64) at a time in the base folder with no renaming - and i got the same results.

> BTW, according to the script you mentioned in the other email (in
> this same email thread), you _might_ be missing some c32 files (e.g.
> libgpl.c32, libmenu.c32 - which are required for hdt.c32 - and
> possibly others).

Cheers Ady - i'd not got round to setting up/testing hdt.c32, was leaving it a little longer before trying it. I've updated my script and will bear that in mind.

Andrew