[syslinux] extlinux 6.03 serial console not responding to input

[Andrew J. Schorr]

On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 12:34:29PM +0300, Ady via Syslinux wrote:
> The problem is that 'SERIAL foobar' is being converted/interpreted as 
> 'SERIAL 0', not as erroneous syntax.

Agreed.  My question is whether the syslinux framework provides any way
to flag errors in the configuration file.  The existing parsing code
does not appear to make any attempt to detect or flag errors.  Otherwise,
this atoi bug could have been caught much more easily -- there should have
been a syntax error thrown by the parsing code.

> _Perhaps_ the debug.c32 module might be of some help here? I don't 
> really know.
> 
> Usually, first the debug.c32 command is executed, and then the normal 
> boot entry. Since we are currently trying to debug the SERIAL directive 
> and console response themselves (rather than a specific boot entry), 
> then the debug.c32 module and some other simple c32 module (e.g. 
> pwd.c32, test*.c32, hello.c32) might be enough.
> 
> Then the resulting output could be collected in a log file.
> 
>  
> http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Development/Debugging#Syslinux_Dy
> namic_Debugger 

Thanks, but I'm not talking about debugging.  I'm talking about some way for
syslinux to tell the user when there's a syntax error in the configuration
file.

Anyway, I think my last patch should fix the immediate problem of not
parsing a valid serial configuration correctly.

Regards,
Andy