/
NEWS
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NEWS
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Starting with 1.47, changes marked with SYSLINUX, PXELINUX, ISOLINUX
or EXTLINUX apply to that specific program only; other changes apply
to all derivatives.
Changes in 4.05:
* HDT updated, and now supports uploading data to a TFTP
server.
* ISOLINUX: remove the .img file support; it has been broken
on virtually all systems since the beginning, and has been
totally broken since 4.00 at least. Use MEMDISK instead.
* chain.c32: Support chaining ReactOS' FreeLdr (Shao Miller)
* isohybrid: -m option to add support for Mac EFI booting.
* ifmemdsk.c32: Choose boot option based on presence of
MEMDISK.
* Remove bogus distributed mk-lba-img binary.
* The Syslinux project has a new, cool logo by Abi
"ixxvil" Rasheed (doc/logo/*).
Changes in 4.04:
* PXELINUX: Fix handling of unqualified DNS names.
* PXELINUX: Fix timer bug when PXELINUX might be unloaded
(Gene Cumm).
* core/writedec.inc: Fix duplicate declaration and overflow
(Gene Cumm).
* GCC 4.5 fixes.
* sample directory: Fix Makefile include (Gene Cumm).
* ver.com: New universal DOS/COMBOOT application to display
version information (includes DRMK) (Gene Cumm).
* rosh.c32: updated; Using getopt() for internal commands to aid
parsing options; Fix bugs in ls; add warm reboot and echo
(Gene Cumm).
* com32: fix a file descriptor leak.
* gfxboot.c32: handle TEXT..ENDTEXT; error out on no LABELs
found (Sebastian Herbszt).
* Fix booting on non-partitioned devices.
* MBR, isohybrid: Workaround for a BIOS issue on Acer
Travelmate and possibly other machines.
* COM32: Adding ACPI parsing libary
* HDT: Release 0.4.1 to support ACPI parsing,
improved mutli-core/cpu reporting
* LUA: Updating to 5.1.4-2
* SYSLINUX: core/diskstart.inc: Reset DS after checksum in case
it isn't 0 (Gene Cumm).
* win64: Script update for additional mingw compiler names
(Gene Cumm).
* diag: New directory for diagnostic-related tools. Add a
handoff MBR/VBR and geometry display images (Gene Cumm).
* MEMDISK: use "mem=" parameter to mark available memory above
this point as reserved (core already does alignment) (Gene Cumm).
* MEMDISK: Additional disk probe checks and debug output
(Shao Miller, Gene Cumm).
* gpxe: add gpxelinuxk.0, based off of undionly.kpxe + new
script (Gene Cumm).
* isohybrid: install the isohdpfx*.bin/isohdppx*.bin files to
make isohybrid images in one step with GNU xorriso.
* PXELINUX: disable a hack that would make localboot work on
some machines, but break just about as many. Some machines
which worked with "localboot 0" in previous versions may
need "localboot -1" in this one. If you have a machine
which requires "localboot -1", a copy of the dmidecode
or sysdump output would be appreciated.
* Include a set of diagnostics by Gene Cumm.
* Fixes for gcc 4.6 and binutils 2.21.51.
* chain.c32: Allow "uuid" as a synonym to "guid".
* Handle directory names starting with .. for vfat and
iso9660.
* New MENU HIDDENKEY command to provide a one-keystroke way to
activate a boot option from a hidden menu intro screen.
Changes in 4.03:
* Don't hang if no configuration file is found.
* Better support for booting from MBRs which don't pass
handover information.
* EXTLINUX: Try to be smarter about finding the partition
offset.
* chain.c32: support chainloading Dell Real Mode Kernel (Gene
Cumm).
* chain.c32: fix booting in CHS mode.
* rosh.c32 updated (Gene Cumm).
* Fix the -s option to the syslinux/extlinux installer (Arwin
Vosselman).
* isohybrid: fix padding of large images (PJ Pandit).
Changes in 4.02:
* SYSLINUX: correctly handle the case where the -d option is
specified with a non-absolute path, i.e. "syslinux -d
syslinux" instead of "syslinux -d /syslinux".
* ISOLINUX: recognize the directory names /boot/syslinux and
/syslinux, and the filename syslinux.cfg in addition to the
isolinux-specific names. Thus, "syslinux.cfg" is now a
generic name, whereas "isolinux.cfg" or "extlinux.conf" is
specific to different derivative.
* chain.c32: support setting alternate config filename for
stage2 of GRUB Legacy (Gert Hulselmans).
* whichsys.c32: execute specific command, based on Syslinux
bootloader variant (Gert Hulselmans).
* lua.c32: a lot of new bindings added to the "syslinux"
namespace: VESA, PCI, DMI, kernel loading (Marcel Ritter).
* btrfs: print a comprehensive error message if compressed or
encrypted files are encountered (neither is currently
supported.)
* SYSLINUX: mtools installer: honor TMPDIR, error out on disk
full.
* Handle fallbacks from EDD to CHS, to deal with systems which
announce EDD support but don't actually have it.
* SYSLINUX: the mtools, DOS and win32 installers now use the new
command line options.
* PXELINUX: fix the use of IP addresses in TFTP :: or tftp://
host syntax.
* SYSLINUX: experimental Win64 installer (syslinux64.exe).
Changes in 4.01:
* ISOLINUX: fix initialization on systems which don't zero
low memory.
* SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: fix handing of disk read retries in
EDD mode.
* ISOLINUX: change the initialization sequence to avoid
problems with certain (old) BIOSes. Special thanks to
Helmut Hullen for invaluable debugging support.
* ifplop.c32: new module which detects if the PLoP Boot Loader
already has booted a CDROM or USB drive (Gert Hulselmans).
* Correct a severe memory overwrite bug, triggered primarily
when selecting a very long command line in the menu system.
* lua.c32: Lua script interpreter, currently experimental
(Alexey Zaytsev, Marcel Ritter, Geert Stappers).
* PXELINUX: new option IPAPPEND 4 to append the system UUID to
the kernel command line.
* PXELINUX: display BOOTIF and SYSUUID at startup time, and
when Ctrl-N is pressed on the command line.
Changes in 4.00:
* Major code base changes; all filesystem rewritten in C.
This work was done primarily by Liu Aleaxander (Yuanhan Liu).
* EXTLINUX: btrfs and ext4 support. btrfs support was done by
Alek Du of Intel.
* EXTLINUX is no longer a separate derivative; extlinux and
syslinux both install the same loader (ldlinux.sys); for the
Linux-based installers the extlinux binary is used for a
mounted filesystem; the syslinux binary for an unmounted
filesystem.
* When loading a new configuration file with the CONFIG
command, one can now also specify a new current directory
with an APPEND statement.
* Full ADV support for Syslinux, to boot-once and MENU SAVE
works.
* Full support of GPT-partitioned disks, including disks
and/or parititions larger than 2 TiB (if supported by BIOS.)
* The GPT handover protocol adjusted to the current T13
committee draft; see doc/gpt.txt.
* HDT: code cleanup, small bugfixes
* The "linux" syslinux installer (syslinux-nomtools) now has a
command-line syntax closer to the extlinux installer. The
mtools, dos and win32 installers will get this new syntax
eventually, but it is not implemented yet.
* chain.c32: support booting GPT partitions by index, GUID, label.
* chain.c32: support booting the Syslinux partition with "fs".
* chain.c32: implement gpt.txt hand-over protocol.
* chain.c32: support for chainloading Grub stage 2.
* PXELINUX: TFTP URL syntax (tftp://) supported even when not
running gPXE/gpxelinux.
* New ls.c32 module to display the contents of the disk from
the command line, and pwd.c32 to display the current
directory.
* rosh.c32 (read only shell) updated and hopefully usable.
* PXELINUX: Support "localboot -1", just like the other
derivatives.
* gfxboot.com removed in favor of gfxboot.c32.
* New MENU HELP statement to display fullscreen help text as a
result of a menu selection.
* memdiskfind utility that can be used with the phram driver
in the Linux kernel to mount a memdisk.
* ifcpu.c32: Adding usage when no parameters are given,
adding PAE support.
* ifcpu.c32, ifcpu64.c32: handle more than one argument per
target.
* isohybrid: C version which does not require Perl.
* New command MENU IMMEDIATE to permit hotkeys to activate
immediately without needing Enter.
* mdiskchk.com supports a --no-sequential (or -n) option to
suppress the classic all-drive-probing heuristic. Useful
on BIOSes who crash/hang when certain drive numbers are
probed.
* ElTorito.Sys DOS driver now scans drive numbers upwards
instead of downwards, in order to avoid a fairly common
bug on some BIOSes where probing drive 0xFF causes a
failure.
* NASM 2.03 or later required to build. 2.07 or later
recommended.
Changes in 3.86:
* chain.c32: fix chainloading the MBR of a hard disk (broken
in 3.85).
* mboot.c32: report the boot loader name in the information
structure.
* com32: set argv[0] in a com32 module.
* core: add a workaround for a bug in Xen HVM older than
version 3.3: disable halt on those platforms.
* Fix problems where certain operations in com32 modules would
cause the core to believe the system was idle.
* MEMDISK: fix MBR detection when used with a DOSEMU header or
an offset.
* MEMDISK: generate the mBFT checksum correctly.
Changes in 3.85:
* gPXELINUX: updated to gPXE 1.0.0. gPXELINUX can now do NBP
chainloading, and does not require a second DHCP.
* vesamenu.c32: unbreak the default "grey hole" background.
* We no longer have a built-in default of "linux auto".
Instead, if no DEFAULT or UI statement is found, or the
configuration file is missing entirely, we drop to the boot:
prompt with an error message (if NOESCAPE is set, we stop
with a "boot failed" message; this is also the case for
PXELINUX if the configuration file is not found.)
* chain.c32: support chainloading Grub4DOS; patch by Gert
Hulselmans.
* New tool: sysdump.c32, can be used to produce system
information for debugging via tftp or ymodem (serial port).
* "vga=current" on the Linux command line is now supported.
* chain.c32: support for Windows Recovery Console, via the
"cmldr=" option.
* chain.c32: should now support loading NTLDR from different
type media than loaded from.
* chain.c32: support chainloading to a FAT/NTFS partition with
invalid "hidden sectors" via the "sethidden" option.
* memdisk: fix the mBFT ACPI table.
* vesamenu.c32: if the image is smaller than the screen, tile
it across the whole screen.
* mkdiskimage: -s option for producing a sparse image.
* vesamenu.c32: support arbitrary resolution setting (beyond
BIOS support) on some Intel-based video chipsets. This code
is a modified version of the "915resolution" tool by
Steve Tomljenovic; your mileage might vary.
Changes in 3.84:
* SYSLINUX: make the DOS installer work for MS-DOS 7.x/8.x
(Win9x/ME) again.
* HDT: updated to version 0.3.6 (numerous changes.)
* mboot.c32: now supports video mode setting if requested by
the image.
* MEMDISK: Fix floppy images of PC-DOS.
* MEMDISK: Add support for emulation of CD-ROM images; patch
by Shao Miller.
* MEMDISK: Comply with the Win9x "safe hook" standard,
allowing a protected-mode driver.
* MEMDISK: New "mBFT" ACPI table, by analogy with the iSCSI
iBFT table. This allows detection from a protected-mode
operating system without EDD support.
* 32-bit version of the gfxboot loader (gfxboot.c32), so far
experimental. This will replace gfxboot.com in the future.
* vesamenu.c32: new MENU RESOLUTION directive to set a screen
resolution other than 640x480.
* chain.c32: add support for loading isolinux.bin.
* chain.c32: make sure to always return to text mode.
* eltorito.sys: DOS driver for generic CD-ROMs; by Gary Tong
and Bart Lagerweij.
Changes in 3.83:
* PXELINUX: clear memory before handing over to a chainloaded
NBP. This may help avoid a bug in Windows RIS.
* PXELINUX: fix localboot after NBP chainloading on certain
BIOSes (including ASUS A8N-E, but possibly others.)
* chain.c32: support chainloaded bootloaders on ISOLINUX.
* PXELINUX: allow filenames up to 251 characters.
* MEMDISK: fix problems booting from USB on Thinkpads, and
possibly other machines or hardware combinations.
* isohybrid: fix the -id option.
* HDT: updated to version 0.3.4.
* MEMDISK: the stack size is now configurable, with the stack=
option.
* Simple menu: fix Ctrl-W (word erase) in command-line edit.
* Simple menu: fix crash on some platforms.
* Gfxboot: fixes to the configuration file parsing.
* PXELINUX: add a tool to override specific DHCP options via
values hardcoded in the pxelinux.0 file. These hardcoded
values can be either "before DHCP" (defaults if DHCP do not
provide values), or "after DHCP" (overrides DHCP). The tool
pxelinux-options can be used to set these options. This
feature does not apply to gpxelinux.0; when used with gPXE
this is better handled by modifying the embedded script.
Changes in 3.82:
* isohybrid: fix the -partok logic for loading from a partition.
* ISOLINUX: deal with systems which return from INT 13h with
interrupts disabled.
* Do not invoke the idle handler during large file loads.
* Simple menu: make ONTIMEOUT work with MENU HIDDEN.
* PXELINUX: handle TFTP servers which have extra NULs at the
end of an OACK packet.
Changes in 3.81:
* Shuffler: fix bug in real-mode entry. This affected a
number of modules, probably in relatively unimportant ways,
but it completely broke linux.c32.
* Improved performance.
* Attempt to halt the processor while idle. This can cause
bad reponsiveness when using a serial console especially for
automated input; if that ends up being a problem, use the
new "NOHALT 1" configuration command.
* linux.c32 now suppresses all messages if the "quiet" flag is
specified.
* isohybrid: add a variety of options, and a help message.
* ISOLINUX: fix booting in hybrid mode when CBIOS is used.
This unfortunately means that the isohybrid handoff protocol
has changed, so the isohybrid utility must version-match
isolinux.bin.
* Drop support for ACPI 3 extended memory flags.
* Menu system: don't set the autocr flag on the serial
console.
* altmbr: fix handling of logical partitions.
* altmbr: cap at 439 bytes so the partition select byte isn't
part of the file.
Changes in 3.80:
* New shuffler mechanism and API.
* Rewritten mboot.c32 module.
* The syslinux_boot_linux() function has been simplified.
* Don't hang trying to boot a "menu quit" label from the CLI.
* Fix problem with boot-once "sticking" on some BIOSes.
* isohybrid: fix problem with images over 2 GB in size.
* APM poweroff module (poweroff.com) by Sebastian Herbszt.
* ISOLINUX: fix the handling of large directories. Bug found
and fixed by Steffen Winterfeldt.
Changes in 3.75:
* PXELINUX: fix the "keeppxe" option, which was broken in
3.74.
* MEMDISK: correct the extraction of geometry information from
the MBR of a hard disk image, again broken in 3.74.
* extlinux(1) man page from Brian Pellin.
* Simple menu: MENU SAVE is now controllable on a menu-by-menu
or entry-by-entry basis.
* gPXELINUX: fix interrupt-disabling bug.
* HDT: fix lockup on machines with certain PCI configurations.
Changes in 3.74:
* New UI directive, which allows a more natural way to specify
a menu system (or not.) With the UI directive specifying
the menu system, the DEFAULT directive can be used to select
the default entry inside the menus.
* kbdmap.c32: new module to load a new keyboard map
dynamically.
* isohybrid: workaround bug in some versions of binutils.
* Fix issue with the placement of the initrd on some machines.
* ifcpu64: fix handling of less than three arguments.
* Fix bug in the shuffle library when dealing with a very
large number of fragments.
* Documentation fixes by Vicente Jimenez Aguilar.
* gPXE updated to version 0.9.7.
* hdt.c32: Hardware Detection Tool, an interactive hardware
analyzer module by Erwan Velu.
* MEMDISK: enable automatic determination of the disk geometry
for a large floppy disk image if (and only if) it is
formatted with a FAT filesystem.
* SYSLINUX: fix the handling of .bss files on FAT12/16.
* Suppress the Loading ... message if "quiet" is specified on
the kernel command line.
* Fix the use of "CONSOLE 0" with menu.c32.
* Allow COM32 modules to be aware of all memory even in the
presence of a memory hole. The "linux.c32" module can be
used to load a kernel (or memdisk) plus large initrd on
such a system.
* MBR: produce alternate MBR variants which force the drive
number to hd0 (_f variants), or force the drive number to
hd0 if the Ctrl key is pressed (_c variants.) Furthermore,
add an MBR variant (altmbr*.bin) which ignores the active
flag and instead boots the partition number specified in the
byte at offset 439 decimal.
* Add IPAPPEND strings to com32 modules, especially needed for
linux.c32.
* New MENU SAVE directive which saves the latest menu
selection until the next boot. Currently only implemented for
EXTLINUX.
* gfxboot.com: *experimental* interface module to Steffen
Winterfeldt's "gfxboot" graphical front end
(http://gfxboot.sourceforge.net/). Module by Sebastian Herbszt.
Changes in 3.73:
* Upgrade gPXE to release version 0.9.5.
* Fix a number of build errors on various platforms.
* Handle systems with E820 "extended attributes" per ACPI 3.
Someone "cleverly" decided to change the E820 spec in a
backwards-incompatible manner!
* MEMDISK: default to "safeint".
* Adopt the moniker "The Syslinux Project", standard proper
noun capitalization, to refer to the project as a whole.
Thus, reserve the all-caps "SYSLINUX" to refer to the FAT
loader.
* mboot.c32: add "-solaris" option to pass DHCP information to
the Solaris kernel; required for automatic Solaris boot
without using Solaris' pxeboot program.
* config.c32: trivial COM32 module to restart Syslinux with
another configuration file from the command line (equivalent
to the CONFIG command in the configuratin file.)
Changes in 3.72:
* Include the pxechain.com module from Jeffery Hutzelman at
Carnegie Mellon University. This allows chaining another
PXE boot program while changing the DHCP packet passed to
it.
* Reorganize the Makefile system.
* Major PCI core cleanups and other source cleanup.
* gPXE code updated.
* Try to avoid memory-snooping attacks on passwords. Note
that if someone has root on the box, they generally don't
need to compromise the boot loader...
* ISOLINUX: fix crash when given a zero-length file.
* sdi.c32: support gzipped SDI images.
* ISOLINUX: support generating images which can be either
a CD-ROM or a hard disk (USB disk, etc.) See
doc/isolinux.txt for more information.
* Remote gdb support for COM32 modules; patch from Stefan
Hajnoczi.
* Support beeps in F-key help in the simple menu system.
* Tab display of labels, based on a patch from Sebastian
Herbszt. Can be disabled with the NOCOMPLETE configuration
command.
* "menu default" can now be specified after "menu begin", to
indicate that a specific submenu should be the default entry.
Changes in 3.71:
* Workaround for a VESA BIOS which tries to make DOS system
calls(!!)
* Simple menu: fix navigation around disabled entries
(or at least try to...)
* EXTLINUX: proper error message when confused about mount
point.
* MEMDISK: be smarter about incompletely disabled floppies in
the BIOS and about being the only floppy.
* Optionally allow initrd to be specified on a separate line
rather than as part of the "append" line. This is not
recommended, but apparently makes life easier for some
tools.
* SYSLINUX: if no config file is present, set the current
directory to the root directory (Sebastian Herbszt).
* chain.c32: option "hide" to support hiding and unhiding of
primary partitions on the boot drive with DOS, Win, or OS/2
partition types (01, 04, 06, 07, 0b, 0c, 0e).
* Unbreak the KBDMAP command (broken in 3.70).
* EXTLINUX: fix the handling of the ADV when using CBIOS.
* ifcpu64.c32: simple COM32 module to select a 32- or 64-bit
kernel (and optionally 32-bit kernels with or without PAE.)
Eventually we want a scripting language for this
kind of stuff; a Lua module is under development.
* Fix parsing of the SERIAL command without a baud rate
specified.
* chain.c32: error out when try to boot an unbootable
partition.
* SYSLINUX: when building the Win32 installer, search for
MinGW under a large number of possible names.
Changes in 3.70:
* PXELINUX: Support enhanced capabilities when running on top
of gPXE (http://www.etherboot.org/). In particular, support
URL-style syntax for filenames, and any protocol that gPXE
supports (except, currently, iSCSI and AoE.) This feature
is currently highly experimental.
* Substantial infrastructure changes to support files whose
length aren't known at open time (typically network
connections.) Please note that the semantics of some of the
comboot APIs have changed slightly; please see doc/comboot.txt.
* PXELINUX: We no longer require a TFTP server which supports
the tsize option for all transfers.
* PXELINUX: Integrate with the gPXE source base; unified image
now included as "gpxelinux.0".
* The source tree has been restructured; files that were
previously in the root have moved into the core, dos, gpxe,
and utils directories.
* "make install", "make netinstall", and "make extbootinstall"
have been updated massively. "make install-all" now installs
all three.
* Change default dir for auxiliary files from
/usr/lib/syslinux to /usr/share/syslinux.
* SYSLINUX: VFAT long filename support.
* MEMDISK: Any image less than 4096K (4 MB) is treated as a
floppy disk. The geometry-guessing code will recognize all
common extended formats, but it is still possible some very
exotic formats need geometry specification. Large floppies
and very small harddisks still need explicit specification.
* chain.c32: option "swap" to support swapping of BIOS drive
numbers. This is necessary to boot certain operating systems
(DOS, Windows) from a secondary drive.
* chain.c32: option "file=" to support loading a boot file from
the SYSLINUX filesystem instead of loading the boot sector
from the drive.
* chain.c32: option "seg=" to control the load location.
* chain.c32: option "ntldr=" as a shorthand for "seg=0x2000
file="; use this to load one of WinNT's loaders:
chain.c32 hd0 1 ntldr=/MiniNT/setupldr.bin
Note that the file needs to be in the SYSLINUX filesystem.
* chain.32: options "freedos=" and "msdos="/"pcdos=" as
shorthands for "seg=0x60 file=" and "seg=0x70 file="
respectively; use this to load FreeDOS's kernel.sys, MS-DOS's
io.sys or PC-DOS's ibmbio.sys.
* Change to the A20 algorithm which *MIGHT* help systems that
have systems which freeze when Syslinux is used with USB
keyboards. Note that this has been hard do verify, so I
would greatly appreciate feedback on it.
* Complex menu system: unbreak menus which has unnamed
submenus, like complex.c.
* Fix newline on the serial port for some com32 modules.
* chain.c32: support "boot" as the drive specification,
indicating the drive from which it was booted
(for syslinux/extlinux).
* SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: support "localboot" with the same feature
set as ISOLINUX.
* Add an experimental MBR for GPT partition tables.
* Use $(CC) when determining compile flags.
* chain.c32: fix booting from logical partitions (Sergey
Vlasov.)
Changes in 3.63:
* Fix errors in the PCI and DMI detection modules (Erwan Velu,
Sebastian Herbszt).
* Fix host dependencies and other issues in the build system.
* PXELINUX: Allow class E addresses as unicast.
* sdi.c32: module to load Microsoft System Deployment Images.
For additional information, please see:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms838543.aspx
* EXTLINUX: Correct reading directories with deleted entries.
* Shuffle library: correct the handling of certain geometries
(an upward move with source material blocking the move); as
required by sdi.c32 but theoretically possible for other
formats as well.
* Add "make netinstall" to install /tftpboot.
* Fix some documentation files that didn't get moved/renamed.
Changes in 3.62:
* Clean up garbage after "aborted." message.
* Clean up memdump.com filenames.
* Support SHA256 and SHA512 encrypted passwords.
* The shuffle library now can generate chained descriptors,
thus allowing pretty much arbitrarily complex memory maps.
* Handle command lines up to 2047 characters, the current
Linux kernel limit.
* vesamenu: support systems without linear framebuffer support
(sigh, what is this, 1993?) and 15-bit RGB modes.
* Move the label storage (for the command-line interface) to
high memory, removing the size limit and freeing up 64K of
low memory.
* Get rid of 4096-entry limit in the simple menu system.
* New hierarchial submenu support: see MENU BEGIN, MENU END,
MENU GOTO in doc/menu.txt.
* MENU QUIT allows creating a menu entry for returning to the
command line.
* ISOLINUX: Work around bug in certain Adaptec BIOSes,
patch by Bruce Robson.
* pngtopnm dependency removed from samples/ directory.
* Text documentation files (in doc/) renamed *.doc -> *.txt.
Changes in 3.61:
* EXTLINUX: fix crash when accessing an empty file.
* elf.c32: If a PHDR segment is present, load it.
* Fix SHA-1 and MD5 passwords.
* ISOLINUX: fix booting when mastered without
mkisofs -boot-info-table (broken since 3.50, sigh...)
* Handle BIOSes which emit multiple contiguous valid
memory regions in the e820 map.
Changes in 3.60:
* Support for "auxilliary data vector", a small amount of
writable storage. Currently only supported for EXTLINUX,
but the infrastructure is there for the other derivatives,
assuming a suitable storage location can be found.
* EXTLINUX: boot-once support (--once, --clear-once, and
--reset-adv).
* A command is now required to the EXTLINUX installer, i.e. at
least one of --install, --update, --once, --clear-once, or
--reset-adv.
Changes in 3.55:
* PXELINUX: as per RFC 5071, PXELINUX no longer requires the
use of the magic cookie option (208) for unencapsulated
options. Currently it does not require it for
vendor-encapsulated options (vendor-option-space) either,
but that MAY be reverted in the future if it causes
problems.
* Documentation text files moved to a common "doc" directory;
man pages from the Debian project added to the "man"
directory.
* Correct bug with self-overlapping memory areas when using
the shuffle interface.
Changes in 3.54:
* Add "menu separator", "menu indent", "menu disabled"
(see README.menu).
* vesamenu: fix handing of VESA modes with noncontiguous
memory buffers. In particular, Qemu/KVM sets up such a mode
when Cirrus Logic emulation is enabled (which is the
default.)
* Support for calling real mode functions using far calls,
with argument on the stack. This was implemented to support
the BIOS BBS specification, but subsequent experiments show
that the at least one of the most common BIOS cores, Award,
passes the presence check but doesn't actually implement the
functionality.
Changes in 3.53:
* Fix bugs related to the $PnP BIOS functionality on some
platforms.
* PXELINUX: Fix the "naked" version of :: (suppress prefix.)
* elf.c32: better error messages.
* Faster operation under Intel VT virtualization.
* PXELINUX: Fix DHCP bootfile option.
* mkdiskimage: Support more than 1024 cylinders.
* (Hopefully) fix installer on non-x86 platforms.
* Fix shuffle_and_boot_rm, used by linux.c32.
* Fix shuffle_and_boot_pm on 386/486.
* ISOLINUX (at least): fix bss memory overwrite hang.
* MBR: Fix booting from logical partitions.
* Code cleanups.
Changes in 3.52:
* Handle capitalized F-key commands in the menu system.
* Fix padding error when loading multiple ramdisks.
* Workaround for VMware crashing when trying to print a
message during early kernel boot (does not seem to work,
consider deleting.)
* chain.c32: add the ability to search for a specific MBR
signature at runtime.
* Fall back to the server identity option if the siaddr field
in the DHCP header isn't set. This seems to match the
behaviour of most PXE stacks.
* mkdiskimage: give the generated disk image an MBR signature.
* MEMDISK: Fix failures on some BIOSes.
* Simple menu system: new "MENU HIDDEN" option to not display
the menu unless the user presses a key.
* Simple menu system: support MD5-encrypted passwords (modern
Unix standard style, with "$1$" prefixes.)
* pcitest.c32: now functions as a full "lspci". Thanks to
Erwan Velu for this work.
* MEMDISK: Make EDD actually work.
* ISOLINUX: Fix for certain broken CD-ROM BIOSes which
randomly corrupted register FS.
* Simple menu system: fix memory overwrite bug that caused
some systems to lock up or behave weirdly.
* Fix building on 64-bit systems without a 32-bit libc installed.
Changes in 3.51:
* EXTLINUX: Fix failure to find the configuration file.
Changes in 3.50:
* New keywords allow the type of file to be specified in the
configuration file.
* It is now supported to load a different configuration file
with the CONFIG keyword.
* Fix API call 0x0019 (Read Disk.)
* MENU AUTOBOOT, MENU TABMSG, MENU PASSPROMPT allows
internationalization of menu messages.
* A new feature, TEXT HELP, allows the administrator to set
a multi-line help message for individual selections.
* Fix API call 0x0012 (Cleanup, shuffle and boot.)
* New API call "Cleanup, shuffle and boot to flat protected mode"
* New API call "Cleanup, shuffle and boot to real mode",
similar to API call 0x0012 but allows arbitrary register setting.
* Introduce a library interface for loading arbitrary binary
formats with relatively easily understood code. See
the elf.c32 module for an example on how to use it.
* New module "elf.c32", to load a protected-mode ELF kernel.
* MBR (old and new): Fix bug in CHS mode when LBA >
65535*sectors.
* vesamenu: fix decoding of palettized PNG images.
* Update the Linux kernel boot protocol.
* PXELINUX: Press Ctrl-N at the boot prompt to read out the
network info.
* Instead of the (non-existent) MAC, use the client identifier
for networks like Infiniband and Firewire/1394.
* Add a new INCLUDE command to the core syslinux parser.
* Allow binding help text to F11 and F12.
* F-key help now available in the simple menu system.
* Disabled the polling for ARP during idle. It is simply too
slow on some (broken!) PXE stacks.
* PXELINUX: also try to fetch the config file based on UUID.
* SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: New RAID mode (-r) which calls the BIOS
to load the next device (typically the next drive) on boot
failure.
Changes in 3.36:
* MEMDISK: Disable EDD by default on floppy disks. EDD can be
enabled with the "edd" option and disabled with "noedd".
This (hopefully) should make Ghost work again.
* SYSLINUX: "unix" installer now uses Linux ioctls instead of
using libfat.
* New MBR which can boot from logical partitions.
* SYSLINUX: Fix bug in detecting special extensions which was
introduced in 3.35 :(
* PXELINUX: Unbreak chainbooting FreeBSD (and possibly others.)
Changes in 3.35:
* MEMDISK: New "safeint" mode.
* MEMDISK: Be more compliant with the PnP BIOS spec.
* MEMDISK: Turn on EDD support by default.
* MEMDISK: Try to work on some machines on which it would not
work when there was no floppy drive in the system.
* Simple menu system: fix serial console support (broken in
3.30).
* SYSLINUX: Support subdirectories. Like ISOLINUX, the
"current directory" is the directory in which syslinux.cfg
is found; this is searched for in the sequence
/boot/syslinux, /syslinux, /. As a side benefit, label names
like "linux-2.6.18" and "linux-2.6.19" are now supported.
To install ldlinux.sys in a subdirectory, pass the -d
directory option to the SYSLINUX installer.
This work was sponsored by slax.org (thanks, Tomas!)
* New API call: read disk.
* Invoke ONERROR on initrd load failure.
Changes in 3.31:
* The simple menu system (menu.c32 and vesamenu.c32) now
support loading more than one configuration file at a time,
using MENU INCLUDE or by specifying multiple filenames.
* The MENU COLOR statement can now control the shadowing mode.
Changes in 3.30:
* libcom32 extended to support graphics mode and graphical console.
* vesamenu.c32, new graphical version of the Simple
Menu System, see README.menu.
* New com32 modules by Erwan Velu do selection based on CPUID
or PCI devices present.
* RPM spec: add syslinux-tftpboot module; move syslinux by
default to the /usr/share/syslinux directory.
* RPM spec: extlinux is now a separate package.
Changes in 3.20:
* EXTLINUX: New options --install (-i) and --update (-U), to
make it clear if a boot loader should be installed or
updated. For now, defaults to --install for compatibility;
a future version will require one of these options.
* New library functions to load and place files in memory.
* mboot.c32 bug fixes.
* Remove 8 MB kernel size restriction.
* Add "klibc" target for building unix/syslinux and
extlinux/extlinux with klcc (klibc-1.4.27 or later.)
* PXELINUX: Fail (and eventually reboot) if no configuration
file was found.
* COM32 module by Erwan Velu to make decisions based on DMI
info.
* Fix issue where going back and forth between menus a lot
would cause a hang.
* ISOLINUX: Fix bug which made "cd boot sectors" not work.
Changes in 3.11:
* MEMDISK: Fix bug by which accessing the real floppy disk
as B: in MS-DOS was broken.
* Simple menu system: allow tweaking of the screen layout.
* Simple menu system: better command-line editing, correctly
handle command lines above 256 characters.
* PXELINUX: revert memory allocation change that caused
problems on some network cards.
* MEMDISK: Try work around a bug on some BIOSes when no
physical floppy disk is present in the system.
* Enable the 16550A FIFOs, if present, when doing serial
console.
* New "totaltimeout" command establishes a timeout without
regard for any user input.
* Simple menu system: timeout behaviour now more in line with
user expectations.
* Simple menu system: "ontimeout" should now work correctly.
Changes in 3.10:
* gcc 4.0.1 compilation fixes.
* Add support for querying the PCI BIOS in libcom32
(used by ethersel et al.)
* Fix PCI handing (ethersel etc) on several old chipsets (and
VMWare.)
* Try to deal with systems with broken EBIOS.
* New API call to do "localboot".
* New API call to query features.
* New API call to run kernel image, a lower-level call than
"run command". See comboot.doc.
* Fix for bug in EBIOS code discovered by Arwin Vosselman.
* NOESCAPE security fix.
* Comments are now recognized even without a space following #.
* Fix incorrect handling of mixes of entries with and without
MENU PASSWD.
* The idle API call now harmlessly returns failure if it is a
no-op. That way the caller can decide whether or not to
bother invoking it again.
* Temporarily disable the idle API call on PXELINUX, due to
some platforms on which the idle API call seems to hang; this
problem has not yet been debugged.
* MEMDISK: the handling of DOSEMU-headered images was broken;
fix it.
* EXTLINUX: symlinks are now supported.
* Simple menu system: N and P now work correctly as hotkeys.
* MEMDISK: more BIOS bug workarounds.
Changes in 3.09:
* gcc4 compilation fix.
* <BEL> (Ctrl-G) in message files now causes a beep.
* Reduce the command line to 511 characters; 1023 caused
memory overflows.
Changes in 3.08:
* SYSLINUX: Fix performance regression (-s mode always
enabled.)
* Add API function for idle loop.
* libutil: Add do_idle() function for idle loop, make
get_key() use it.
* libutil: Add SHA-1 and base64 functions.
* Simple menu system: add password support.
* EXTLINUX: Sparse files now handled correctly.
* EXTLINUX: Large directories now handled correctly.
* ALL: At the prompt, Ctrl-X now forces text mode.
* Fix configuration file parsing error, that could cause
hangs.
* Rewritten advanced menuing system from Murali Ganapathy.
* MEMDISK: New "bigraw" mode to work around certain broken
BIOS flash programs.
* COM32 module to boot Multiboot systems, including Xen. See
com32/modules/mboot.doc.
* Max command line changed to 1023 characters. Note that the
kernel proper still can only handle 255 characters without
patching, and COM16 binaries can only handle 125 characters.
Changes in 3.07:
* Fix chainloading (chain.c32).
* Fix zlib build problem.
* Use a private copy of <linux/ext2_fs.h>.
Changes in 3.06:
* Fix typo that caused the ramdisk to load in the wrong place.
Changes in 3.05:
* New API function "shuffle and boot"; allows COM32 modules to
load or construct (almost) arbitrarily complex objects,
e.g. a kernel and its initrd/initramfs in pieces, and have
the API core reorganize memory for booting. (A library API
for this function will be introduced in a later version.)
* The initrd= option now supports multiple filenames separated
by commas. This is mostly useful for initramfs, which can
be composed of multiple separate cpio or cpio.gz archives.
(Note: all files except the last one are zero-padded to a 4K
page boundary. This should not affect initramfs.)
* EXTLINUX: Fix API function 000Ah (get derivative-specific
info).
* libcom32/ethersel: Support PCI Config Mechanism #2 on
machines still infested with that hideous old hack.
* SYSLINUX: Fix directory-parsing bug.
Changes in 3.02:
* SYSLINUX: The "unix" installer now sets the MS-DOS
attributes (hidden, system, readonly.)
* COM32 library: build the .lnx (test modules for running
under Linux) as architecture native modules, in case
i386 devel libraries aren't installed.
* EXTLINUX: Hack for systems which don't have BLKGETSIZE64
defined in the standard header files.
* Simple menu system: minor aestetic improvements, and try to
work better over a serial console (speed, and readability on
monochrome terminal emulators.)
* New CONSOLE directive to control output on the video console
(useful for dealing with some broken serial-forwarding
BIOSes.)
* New com32 module "ethersel" for searching for an Ethernet
card and selecting the proper version of Etherboot.
* EXTLINUX: Allow the user to override the detected geometry.
Add help.
Changes in 3.01:
* EXTLINUX, SYSLINUX: Fix compile errors on some systems.
* EXTLINUX: Default to zipdrive geometry (64 heads, 32
sectors) if no other geometry can be detected.
Changes in 3.00:
* SYSLINUX: Support FAT32 and EDD. As an unfortunate
consequence, LDLINUX.SYS is no longer an ordinary file; it
is block-mapped at install time, which means it can only be
written using the syslinux installers.
* SYSLINUX: Reorganize the source code for the installers;
each one of the installers (dos, win32, unix, mtools) is now
built in its own subdirectory. In particular, "mtools" is
the unprivileged installer which uses mtools; "unix" is the
privileged installer which uses system calls.
* SYSLINUX: Completely rewritten DOS installer in C.
* ALL: "label" statement information is now stored in a
compressed format, which means that a lot more labels are
permitted (500-1000 in a typical configuration, but depends
on the complexity.)
* EXTLINUX: New derivative, which boots from an ext2/ext3
filesystem.
* SYSLINUX: The DOS and Win32 installers can now optionally
write the boot sector to a file instead of the real boot
sector. This is not supported in the Linux installers,
however.
* ALL: New NOESCAPE command, disables the "hold down the Shift
key to display the prompt" behaviour.
* New simple menu system, as an alternative to the advanced
menu system already present. See README.menu for details.
* PXELINUX: Filenames can now be prefixed with an IP address
or DNS name plus :: (e.g. 192.0.2.1::filename or
server.domain.com::filename), which downloads a file from an
alternate TFTP server, or just a :: (e.g. ::filename), which
suppresses the common pathname prefix. See pxelinux.doc.
* SYSLINUX: Add an -m option to the DOS and Win32 installers
to write an MBR and -a to mark the partition SYSLINUX is
being installed on active.
* MEMDISK: Give a way to query the boot loader type while
running MEMDISK; see memdisk/memdisk.doc and
sample/mdiskchk.c.
* mkdiskimage: substantially improved mkdiskimage which, among
other things, can now be used to initialize USB keys as
zipdrives; see README.usbkey for more information.
Changes in 2.13:
* MEMDISK: Fix command-line parsing "brown paper bag" class
bug.
* MEMDISK: Add "raw" mode to support the DOS boot disk from
WinME/XP, which seems to deliberately crash the system
when someone uses the "INT 15h mover" highmem API.
* Make "make install" do something sane for the com32
development environment.
* In the spec file, create a separate -devel RPM for the com32
development environment.
Changes in 2.12:
* Simple C library, based on klibc, for writing COM32
programs.
* Fix the handling of file length in loading of COM32
programs.
* MEMDISK: Work around a linker bug by rearranging the code to
not use the linker for the 16-bit code.
* SYSLINUX: If we're building on a machine without a Win32
(mingw) compiler, just skip building syslinux.exe.
* ISOLINUX: Support non-mkisofs mastering programs, at least
as long as the image is single-session. For best results,
ISOLINUX should be the only boot loader installed.
* MEMDISK: Allow the user to specify that the simulated disk
should be write-protected.
Changes in 2.11:
* ALL: Add an API call to get the configuration file name.
* SYSLINUX: Fix bug in 2.10 that prevented it from working
correctly for a lot of people.
* SYSLINUX: In the installer, make mtools a bit less fussy.
* Make the menu system compile with newer gcc's.
Changes in 2.10:
* MEMDISK: Handle images compressed with zip as well as with
gzip. Some Windows-based image tools apparently generate
these kinds of images by default. Patch by Patrick
LoPresti.
* Major menu improvement from Murali Ganapathy.
* ISOLINUX: Wonderfully sick and brilliant workaround for
severe bugs in certain Award BIOSes; from Knut Petersen.
* SYSLINUX: Fix for the nomtools installed, from Frederic
Pasteleurs.
* PXELINUX: Fix handling of IP numbers in the ranges
100-109 and 200-209.
* ALL: New option "allowoptions" (defaults to 1), which
controls if options are allowed on the command line or not.
* SYSLINUX: Support building under klibc (see the klibc
distribution for details.)
Changes in 2.09:
* SYSLINUX: Remove residual setuid crap from
syslinux-nomtools.
* Handle video pages correctly when using the API functions.
* Handle compiling on an x86-64 platform correctly.
* Menu system from Murali Krishnan Ganapathy; see the menu
directory for information.
* COMBOOT: Allow COMBOOT programs to change screen text mode.
* COMBOOT: Correct the documentation of how to detect
SYSLINUX from COMBOOT!!!!
* COMBOOT: Fix "get key without echo" API function.
* SYSLINUX: Fix bug that affected the API open function.
* ALL: Improve the E820 memory parser, to work around some
buggy BIOSes.
Changes in 2.08:
* Add new configuration command "ontimeout" to allow timeout
to have a different action than just pressing Enter.
* Add new configuration command "onerror" to allow a custom
command to be executed in case the kernel image is not found.
* Fix bugs in the COMBOOT/COM32 command-line parsing. APPEND
now works with COMBOOT/COM32 images.
* PXELINUX: Poll for ARP requests while sitting at the
prompt. This makes some boot servers a lot less unhappy.
* PXELINUX: Actually free sockets when we get a failure
(including file not found.) This bug would cause us to run
out of sockets and thus "go deaf" after a while.
* MEMDISK: Add an API to query for the existence of MEMDISK.
* SYSLINUX: Fix loading boot sectors (.bs/.bss) from floppy
disk.
* .c32 is now one of the extensions searched for
automatically.
* PXELINUX: RFBG.exe seems to randomly overwrite memory
location 0x5700. Thus, don't use it!
* PXELINUX: Change pathname length max from 63 to 127; change
max vkernels from 128 to 64.
* Support Ctrl-U -> kill entire command line input.
* The "samples" directory contains a (barely at all tested)
chain loading example, chain.c32, which may be used to
chainload local floppy disks and hard disks. Use with
"chain fdN" or "chain hdN [partition]"; N = 0 for the first
drive of each type.