[syslinux] boot... round 2

[Ady]

> On 01.07.2015 12:10, Gene Cumm wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 4:35 AM, poma <pomidorabelisima at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> To remind you once again.
> >> ISOLINUX >= 6.00 built with GCC >= 5.0.0 causes a broken boot.
> >> This relates specifically to the use of the vesamenu.c32,
> >> menu.c32 works without problemos.
> > 
> > isolinux-debug.bin is not for diagnosing issues with *menu.c32.  Let's
> > start over since your problem statement has a bit of confusion.
> > 
> > 1) You never said if you saw tests to get just the core (isolinux.bin
> > and ldlinux.c32) loaded.  Did you try my simple config?
> > 
> > 
> > #syslinux.cfg-begin
> > DEFAULT linux
> > PROMPT 1
> > 
> > LABEL linux
> >   LINUX vmlinuz
> >   APPEND initrd=myinitrd.cgz my-options
> > #syslinux.cfg-end
> > 
> 
> PASSED
> 
> > 
> > 2) If that passes, the core is OK and let's look at loading simple
> > COM32s like ls.c32.  Does ls.c32 work?
> > 
> 
> PASSED
> 
> > 3) If that passes, reading the file system and loading linked
> > libraries are OK.  Next, from a "boot: " prompt with the simple
> > config, execute "menu.c32" or "vesamenu.c32"
> > 
> 
> PASSED -and- PASSED
> 
> Patch, pack and drive!
> syslinux-6.04-pre1
> 
 
This above statement can be (and is) confusing, just as other prior comments in 
this email thread can be misinterpreted too.

In the official Syslinux code, there is no new patch, and there is no 
"syslinux-6.04-pre1" yet (and there are several reasons not to release such thing 
yet, IMHO, but I could understand the reasoning from those that would disagree with 
me).

I am sure more than one of us are thankful for the tests, feedback, reports and 
suggested patches, but at this point I cannot be sure what exactly has been 
failing.

There has been no %100-clear statement identifying which part of Syslinux was 
failing:

_ isolinux.bin (alone)?
_ isolinux-debug.bin (alone)?
_ Is syslinux.sys failing (too)?
_ Is the problem related to (or triggered by) any of the bootloader files of the 
Syslinux family?
_ Is the problem related to (or triggered by) any of the core modules, i.e. 
"ldlinux.*"?
_ Is the problem related to (or triggered by) any of the c32 modules (e.g. 
menu.c32, vesamenu.c32, any c32 in particular, all of them)?
_ Is the problem limited to a certain firmware architecture?
_ Were all the prior combinations tested (including build/host system, BIOS, EFI32, 
EFI64)?
_ Is there a need to patch the Syslinux source code? And in such case, were all the 
combinations tested?


If there is a need to patch the Syslinux source code, an explanation is needed too. 
I think that saying "it doesn't fail in my test system with such and such changes" 
is not enough in this case, especially when some prior patch has been mentioned as 
somewhat related (which is another thing that has not been completely clearly 
exposed).

I do not have the intention to sound rude, so I hope the following comment is not 
misunderstood. This is the Syslinux Mailing List, and the official source code is 
not a (rpm) package from Fedora Rawhide while building some ISO image with an 
auxiliary tool/package. It may result the same for some users / testers, but this 
is not a general rule, nor the way to test Syslinux (otherwise, when some other 
user of some other specific distro reports with some problem or feedback, we might 
be tempted to use the distro's package and build system instead of using upstream 
official Syslinux source code).

In short, I have not understood what *exactly* the origin of the problem was (other 
than being triggered when using gcc v.5+), and what *exactly* "solved" it (or 
seemed to) for one particular tester, under a specific environment with one 
specific test.

TIA,
Ady.
 
> 
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