[syslinux] Problems compiling syslinux on Debian 10

[Tom Lisjac Owner]

Thanks very much for these two suggestions... the rpm's were easy to work with on Debian using alien -g <therpm>.


Unfortunately I can't find the origin of the broken, unpatched 6.04-pre1 tarballs in these rpm's on any syslinux project site. Both the Fedora and Rocky rpm's contained a syslinux-6.04-pre1.tar.xz at 5283272 bytes. The tar.gz's from various syslinux development sites all weigh in at 10533974 where re-compressing with xz -e9 only shaved a megabyte.


So basically there's zero traceability of the distro's 6.04-pre1 source back to the syslinux project... not with a sig, hash or even by the size of the tarball. Mind boggling that I can cleanly compile gigabytes of signed sources to build a trusted Linux stack, then trip over this still widely used but sadly orphaned component that could have flexibly and efficiently booted it.


Using grub2 is not an option, so back to the drawing board to see if I can come up with an alternative approach. If I had the time and spoke C as a first language, I would fork this project, audit and release a signed source bundle to save anyone else the hassle I've been through with it.


Many thanks to everyone who responded... I would have spent a lot more time flailing around without the pieces of the puzzle you all provided. :)


Best regards,


-Tom 

On Tue, 25 Oct, 2022 at 1:02 PM, Gregory Bartholomew via Syslinux <syslinux at syslinux.org> wrote:
 

To: syslinux
It looks like Fedora is still maintaining a small patch set to get 6.04 to
compile on Fedora Linux.

https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/syslinux/tree/rawhide

On Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 1:38 PM William R. Somsky via Syslinux <
syslinux at syslinux.org<mailto:syslinux at syslinux.org>> wrote:

>
> The patches I used were from the Rocky Linux 8 source rpm,
> syslinux-6.04-5.el8.src.rpm (forget the exact url to fetch)
>
> - WRSomsky
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 12:38:43PM -0400, Dave Henderson wrote:
> > Are those patches available for download William?  I would like to
> acquire all
> > the patches I can for syslinux.  Our OS (XiniX) uses it too and would
> like to
> > continue using it as long as possible.
> >
> >
> > Is anyone else aware of patches for syslinux that I can obtain (aside
> from
> > the one from Debian that Tom linked to)?
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Dave
> >
> >
> >
> > On 10/20/22 16:15, William R. Somsky via Syslinux wrote:
> > > We're running on Rocky Linux 8, so I'm not sure if it is applicable,
> but
> > > we use syslinux w/ lua scripts on our installation USB-keys and needed
> to
> > > tweak around a bug in the lua interpreter (output on the screen
> fails/is
> > > invisible).  I was successfully able to compile syslinux from the
> Rocky 8
> > > source rpm which is based on syslinux 6.05-pre1 plus a few patches.
> > >
> > > -WRSomsky
> > >
> > >
> > > On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 08:00:39AM +0000, Didier Spaier via Syslinux
> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Le 20/10/2022 à 01:38, Tom Lisjac a écrit :
> > > > > Hi Tom,
> > > > >
> > > > > why not use or re-build the package shipped in Debian 10?
> > > > >
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://packages.debian.org/buster/syslinux__;!!K-Hz7m0Vt54!jUYGmJNSgQ_V6iKFbktpNSIB5ic1zMyEYh3ygOKfw3hyozOzvEDs03_LSU4SKCjwAgnK_Ti1mKhr7BE59Q$
> > > > >
> > > > > Cheers,
> > > > > Didier
> > > > > --
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks for the suggestion, Didier. Tried their tarball and got a
> different type of error for 6.04:
> > > > >
> > > > > ld -m elf_i386  -T
> /home/dev/syslinux/syslinux-6.04~git20190206.bf6db5b4/mbr/i386/mbr.ld -e
> _start -o mbr.elf mbr.o
> > > > > objcopy -O binary mbr.elf mbr.bin
> > > > > perl /home/dev/syslinux/syslinux-6.04~git20190206.bf6db5b4/mbr/
> checksize.pl<http://checksize.pl> mbr.bin
> > > > > mbr.bin: too big (452 > 440)
> > > > > make[3]: ***
> [/home/dev/syslinux/syslinux-6.04~git20190206.bf6db5b4/mbr/Makefile:42:
> mbr.bin] Error 1
> > > > > make[2]: ***
> [/home/dev/syslinux/syslinux-6.04~git20190206.bf6db5b4/Makefile:288: mbr]
> Error 2
> > > > > make[1]: ***
> [/home/dev/syslinux/syslinux-6.04~git20190206.bf6db5b4/Makefile:257: bios]
> Error 2
> > > > > make: *** [Makefile:102: all] Error 2
> > > > >
> > > > > None of the errors I've seen look like dependency or toolchain
> issues. At this point it would help to know the best place to find GA
> releases and if someone can point to a recent version and build environment
> that will successfully compile it.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks,
> > > > >
> > > > > -Tom
> > > > Did you apply the patches in this archive:
> > > >
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/main/s/syslinux/syslinux_6.04*git20190206.bf6db5b4*dfsg1-1.debian.tar.xz__;fis!!K-Hz7m0Vt54!jUYGmJNSgQ_V6iKFbktpNSIB5ic1zMyEYh3ygOKfw3hyozOzvEDs03_LSU4SKCjwAgnK_Ti1mKho9ViNhA$
> > > > ?
> > > > If not, please do it.
> > > > If yes I suggest that you file a bug on the Debian bug tracker.
> > > >
> > > > Sorry I can't help you beyond that, not running Debian (and havin
> switched to
> > > > GRUB2 for Legacy and EFI booting long ago in Slint,
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://slint.fr__;!!K-Hz7m0Vt54!jUYGmJNSgQ_V6iKFbktpNSIB5ic1zMyEYh3ygOKfw3hyozOzvEDs03_LSU4SKCjwAgnK_Ti1mKh3nhipxw$
> ).
> > > >
> > > > Cheers,
> > > > Didier
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Syslinux mailing list
> > > > Submissions to Syslinux at syslinux.org<mailto:Syslinux at syslinux.org>
> > > > Unsubscribe or set options at:
> > > >
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.syslinux.org/syslinux__;!!K-Hz7m0Vt54!jUYGmJNSgQ_V6iKFbktpNSIB5ic1zMyEYh3ygOKfw3hyozOzvEDs03_LSU4SKCjwAgnK_Ti1mKiqBvQHLA$
>
> --
> Dr. William R. Somsky                                      somsky at uw.edu<mailto:somsky at uw.edu>
> Department of Physics, Box 351560                   B217 Phys-Astro Bldg
> Univ. of Washington, Seattle WA 98195-1560                  206-616-2954
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