[syslinux] How to install manually?

[H. Peter Anvin]

On 12/20/16 04:14, piranna--- via Syslinux wrote:
> 
> So my question is: why are needed administrative permissions to
> install SysLinux in a disk image? Is any alternative for that, or
> could it be implemented? If that's not possible, what's doing SysLinux
> on the disk image MBR and/or content so I can be able to replicate it
> with a script?
> 

Again, for FAT the alternative is already implemented via the mtools
implementation.  This is a general problem for manipulating disk images
in Linux.

The reason administrative permissions are needed is that Linux requires
administrative permissions to mount a filesystem.  If the filesystem is
already mounted, *and* syslinux has permissions to read/write the
underlying block device (which may be a loop device) then syslinux
itself doesn't need any privileges.

This might perhaps be possible to accomplish with the guestmount
command, which runs the filesystem driver in a virtual machine and lets
you mount it without admin privileges, using FUSE.  However, syslinux
may very well get confused as to where to find the disk image itself;
that shouldn't be too hard to address, though.

	-hpa