| blob | c0846d8e1bfb500262e59039b53429f59e22a508 |
1 Starting with 1.47, changes marked with SYSLINUX, PXELINUX, ISOLINUX
2 or EXTLINUX apply to that specific program only; other changes apply
3 to all derivatives.
5 Changes in 6.03:
6 * chain: Fix chainloading on 6.02 (Raphael S. Carvalho).
7 * core: Do not leak the __lowmem and __bss16 macros to modules;
8 hide them so modules will not use them.
9 * load_linux: Do not use size heuristic for non-relocatable
10 kernels, for zImage kernels and for non-Linux kernels.
11 * PXELINUX: Fix the SENDCOOKIES feature for HTTP
12 (Russel Santillanes).
13 * gnu-efi: Add gnu-efi as a submodule.
14 * ANSI: Support color tables with more than 256 entries
15 (James Buren).
16 * EFI: Fix displayed version; add DATE (Gene Cumm)
17 * PXELINUX, EFI: Fix bad read of file size over TFTP on EFI64
18 (Sylvain Gault).
19 * Fix hand over to kernel:
20 "Booting kernel failed: Invalid argument" error.
21 * ISOLINUX: EDX, LBA values higher than 65535; work around for
22 buggy BIOS, where the system would hang, would reboot, or
23 would show a "Disk error 01, AX=42" message.
24 * core/legacynet: Enable dot quad resolution (Gene Cumm).
25 * diag/geodsp improvements (Gene Cumm).
26 * DOS: Fix syslinux.com DOS-based installer.
27 * Improve gcc 4.3.0 compatibility.
28 * syslxint: fix compilation on non-x86 architectures.
29 * localboot: Fix "localboot 0x80" and similar cases.
30 * Add memset() calls prior to any intcall() and other mem fixes;
31 specially relevant for older hardware and/or buggy BIOS.
32 * poweroff.c32: Fixes (Gene Cumm).
33 * HDT: Fix memory leak in CLI (Felipe Pena).
34 * ACPI: Remove memset of buffer; it makes things clearer but
35 also prevents some compilation warnings (Erwan Velu).
36 * Add manpages for isohybrid, memdiskfind
37 (Peter Jones, Gene Cumm).
38 * ISOLINUX: Experimental Rock Ridge support (Thomas Schmitt).
39 * comapi: Remove the comapi interfaces.
40 * EFI: Fixes on PE files and OVMF compatibility
41 (Sylvain Gault, Gene Cumm).
42 * EFI: Updates and fixes for gnu-efi sub-module
43 (Sylvain Gault, Gene Cumm).
44 * BIOS: Fix low memory check.
45 * Filesystem UUID to SYSAPPEND bit 0x40000 for FAT and ext2
46 (Serj Kalichev).
47 * Makefiles: Export the firmware type as a cpp variable.
48 Additional improvements. Fix "make spotless".
49 * core, BIOS: Move __syslinux_shuffler_size to assembly.
50 Actually get the shuffler size sanely. Fix booting recent
51 Syslinux versions on certain hardware and on certain
52 virtualization software (e.g. QEMU 0.11.1, VirtualBox 4.1.x).
53 * lua: Upgrade to v.5.2.3 (Ferenc Wágner) and additional fixes.
54 * chainload: Fixes to chain.c32 and pxechn.c32.
55 * NTFS: Make byte_shift a constant.
56 * NTFS: Correct parsing of file runs (Andy Alex).
57 * core, BIOS: Correct detection of EDD (Andy Alex).
58 * core: Avoid initializing the cache more than once
59 (Raphael S. Carvalho).
60 * NTFS: Handle fragmented $MFT file (Andy Alex).
61 * BIOS: Use int 0x16, ah=0x02 to probe for shift flags. Attempt
62 workaround for USB keyboards not responding at boot time.
63 * kbd: Getting the keyboard shift state is now a firmware method.
64 * kbd: Fix force-prompt features.
65 * BTRFS: Fix booting on BTRFS.
66 * cache, btrfs: Provide a general cached read routine.
67 * NTFS: Correct file->offset usage in ntfs_readdir (Andy Alex).
68 * New support for UFS/FFS (UFS1/2) (Raphael S. Carvalho).
69 * adv: Remove double definition;
70 it should fix uses of the ADV, including "--once".
71 * memdump: Remove old obsolete COM16 binary.
72 * isohybrid: Numerous fixes (Thomas Schmitt).
73 * chain.c32: Add an adjustable "strict={0,1,2}" flag, improve
74 error reporting (Michal Soltys.)
75 * lpxelinux.0: Workaround for various buggy BIOSes (Gene
76 Cumm.)
77 * PXE: Fix a stack-smashing bug which broke a large number of
78 systems.
80 Changes in 6.02:
81 * efi64: Add support for booting 32-bit kernels.
82 * efi: Use the EFI handover protocol when booting kernels if
83 available.
84 * Fix various make targets that became broken when switching to
85 per-firmware object directories, including 'make install' and
86 'make netinstall'.
87 * efi: Improve handling of packet loss in UDP stack.
88 * tests: Introduce a new regression test framework designed to
89 ensure bugs are not reintroduced once fixed.
90 * efi: Implement localboot support.
92 Changes in 6.01:
93 * efi: Mark some symbols as __export otherwise libcom32.c32 and
94 vesamenu.c32 will refuse to load.
95 * bios: Wire up the bios kernel loader. It was impossible to
96 load a kernel from bios in 6.00.
97 * efi: Fix 'make installer'. There are no EFI installers so
98 don't try and build them as we run into build errors.
99 * efi: Reuse the initial TFTP client port in subsequent
100 transfers otherwise the server will send an error packet.
101 * efi: Some firmware will not set a default TTL value in IP
102 packets - we must explicitly set it ourselves otherwise a
103 value of zero may be used.
104 * bios, font: Fix a font regression affecting some VirtualBox
105 users.
107 Changes in 6.00:
108 * Add support for booting from EFI.
109 * EFI TCP/IP support. This allows the EFI backend to hook into
110 the generic TFTP, HTTP and FTP functionality.
112 Changes in 5.11:
113 * Dynamic debug support: Add new module, debug.c32, that allows
114 debug code to be dynamically enabled and disabled at runtime.
116 Changes in 5.10:
117 * PXELINUX: An entirely new network implementation based on
118 the lwIP embedded TCP/IP stack. As a result, plain PXELINUX
119 can now support HTTP and FTP without gPXE/iPXE. ls/readdir
120 functionality is supported over HTTP with an indexing
121 webserver, or over FTP with most common FTP servers. For the
122 new network stack use lpxelinux.0. For the legacy stack use
123 pxelinux.0.
124 * Rename the "ipappend" option to "sysappend" ("ipappend" is
125 still accepted as an alias) and make it available for all
126 derivatives. Add additional strings derived from the system
127 DMI/SMBIOS information if available.
128 * "sysappend" strings are also sent as http cookies, with the
129 prefix _Syslinux_ added, on all http transfers. This can be
130 overridden with the SENDCOOKIES configuration file command.
131 * poweroff.c32: A new module to power off a system via APM. It
132 replaces the poweroff COMBOOT module (Sebastian Herbszt).
133 * PXELINUX: Fix booting with DHCP options 209 and 210 which was
134 broken in 5.00.
135 * Handle loading kernel images with no protected mode code. A
136 legitimate kernel image can consist solely of real-mode code.
137 The support for booting such images was broken in 5.00 (Josh Triplett).
138 * Fix a regression in the .psf font file loader introduced
139 in 5.00.
141 Changes in 5.01:
142 * txt/: A new AsciiDoc documentation set (work-in-progress)
143 (Gene Cumm).
144 * core: Fix a bug in the realloc() implementation that caused
145 machines to appear to run out of free memory.
146 * ldlinux: Fix multiple buffer overflows in cmdline parsing
147 code that resulted in files failing to run and cmdlines
148 being truncated.
149 * core: Fix debug build by tagging __bad_SEG() with __export.
150 * com32: Restrict library filenames to 8.3 format.
151 * EXTLINUX: Fix installation and subdirectory patching.
152 * ISOLINUX: Fix booting isohybrid images that are over 32K.
153 * com32: Strip modules to reduce their size.
154 * XFS: Implement directory block cache and fix
155 shortform-directory lookup (Paulo Alcantara).
157 Changes in 5.00:
158 * com32: Switched from the COM32 object format to ELF as it is
159 a much more powerful format that allows undefined symbols to
160 be resolved at runtime and dynamic loading of module
161 dependencies, which means modules now become shared object
162 files instead of statically linked binaries - reducing both
163 disk space and runtime memory consumption.
164 * core: Split non-core functionality into ldlinux.c32, which
165 is an ELF module loaded by the core that contains everything
166 the core doesn't require to boot the system, e.g. config
167 parser, command-line interface, etc.
168 * Replaced __intcall() calls with direct function calls now
169 that we can resolve undefined symbols at runtime, thanks to
170 the ELF object support. Now that we no longer need to go
171 through the 16-bit interrupt mechanism we can make full use
172 of the 32-bit execution environment. This change required
173 reimplementing lots of the 16-bit assembly code from core/
174 in C.
175 * com32: __com32.cs_bounce is gone now we always run in a
176 32-bit environment once we execute ldlinux.c32.
177 * ldlinux: A new "PATH" directive was added to the ldlinux.c32
178 config parser that specifies a colon-separated list of
179 directories to search when attempting to load modules.
180 * ALL: Delete all references to/code for 16-bit COMBOOT files.
181 COMBOOT files (.cbt and .com) are no longer supported under
182 Syslinux.
184 Changes in 4.07:
185 * EXTLINUX: fix crash caused by dereferencing garbage pointer.
186 * Plug memory leak in searchdir which eventually leads to an
187 observable hang (Shao Miller).
188 * ISOLINUX: fix bug triggered by isohybrid images larger than
189 32K which results in an invalid image checksum error.
190 * menugen: make it Py3k compatible (Paulo Alcantara).
192 Changes in 4.06:
193 * Support for NTFS, by Paulo Alcantara.
194 * EXTLINUX: more robust device detection, allow user to override.
195 * kontron_wdt.c32: Add a new module to enable the hardware
196 watchdog of some Kontron boards. It allows enabling the watchdog
197 and then booting a given image.
198 * HDT updated, and now can display images regarding some detection
199 steps. Add postexec command to run a particular entry after
200 HDT's execution, add silent option and various fixes.
201 * ifcpu.c32: Detect hypervisor presence.
202 * lua.c32: Add dhcp support and support for native Syslinux
203 functions syslinux_config(), syslinux_ipappend_strings() and
204 syslinux_reboot().
205 * isohybrid: Workaround for various EFI systems.
206 * pxechn.c32, a PXE NBP chainloader. More versatile alternative
207 to pxechain.com and resolves the PXELINUX -> WDS issue with
208 Microsoft Windows Server 2008R2 (Gene Cumm).
209 * btrfs: Fix booting off of a subvolume.
210 * com32: Add device tree support.
211 * SYSLINUX: Fix relative paths for VFAT. The CONFIG and APPEND
212 directives now support entirely relative paths.
214 Changes in 4.05:
215 * HDT updated, and now supports uploading data to a TFTP
216 server.
217 * ISOLINUX: remove the .img file support; it has been broken
218 on virtually all systems since the beginning, and has been
219 totally broken since 4.00 at least. Use MEMDISK instead.
220 * chain.c32: Support chaining ReactOS' FreeLdr (Shao Miller)
221 * isohybrid: -m option to add support for Mac EFI booting.
222 * ifmemdsk.c32: Choose boot option based on presence of
223 MEMDISK.
224 * Remove bogus distributed mk-lba-img binary.
225 * The Syslinux project has a new, cool logo by Abi
226 "ixxvil" Rasheed (doc/logo/*).
228 Changes in 4.04:
229 * PXELINUX: Fix handling of unqualified DNS names.
230 * PXELINUX: Fix timer bug when PXELINUX might be unloaded
231 (Gene Cumm).
232 * core/writedec.inc: Fix duplicate declaration and overflow
233 (Gene Cumm).
234 * GCC 4.5 fixes.
235 * sample directory: Fix Makefile include (Gene Cumm).
236 * ver.com: New universal DOS/COMBOOT application to display
237 version information (includes DRMK) (Gene Cumm).
238 * rosh.c32: updated; Using getopt() for internal commands to aid
239 parsing options; Fix bugs in ls; add warm reboot and echo
240 (Gene Cumm).
241 * com32: fix a file descriptor leak.
242 * gfxboot.c32: handle TEXT..ENDTEXT; error out on no LABELs
243 found (Sebastian Herbszt).
244 * Fix booting on non-partitioned devices.
245 * MBR, isohybrid: Workaround for a BIOS issue on Acer
246 Travelmate and possibly other machines.
247 * COM32: Adding ACPI parsing libary
248 * HDT: Release 0.4.1 to support ACPI parsing,
249 improved mutli-core/cpu reporting
250 * LUA: Updating to 5.1.4-2
251 * SYSLINUX: core/diskstart.inc: Reset DS after checksum in case
252 it isn't 0 (Gene Cumm).
253 * win64: Script update for additional mingw compiler names
254 (Gene Cumm).
255 * diag: New directory for diagnostic-related tools. Add a
256 handoff MBR/VBR and geometry display images (Gene Cumm).
257 * MEMDISK: use "mem=" parameter to mark available memory above
258 this point as reserved (core already does alignment) (Gene Cumm).
259 * MEMDISK: Additional disk probe checks and debug output
260 (Shao Miller, Gene Cumm).
261 * gpxe: add gpxelinuxk.0, based off of undionly.kpxe + new
262 script (Gene Cumm).
263 * isohybrid: install the isohdpfx*.bin/isohdppx*.bin files to
264 make isohybrid images in one step with GNU xorriso.
265 * PXELINUX: disable a hack that would make localboot work on
266 some machines, but break just about as many. Some machines
267 which worked with "localboot 0" in previous versions may
268 need "localboot -1" in this one. If you have a machine
269 which requires "localboot -1", a copy of the dmidecode
270 or sysdump output would be appreciated.
271 * Include a set of diagnostics by Gene Cumm.
272 * Fixes for gcc 4.6 and binutils 2.21.51.
273 * chain.c32: Allow "uuid" as a synonym to "guid".
274 * Handle directory names starting with .. for vfat and
275 iso9660.
276 * New MENU HIDDENKEY command to provide a one-keystroke way to
277 activate a boot option from a hidden menu intro screen.
279 Changes in 4.03:
280 * Don't hang if no configuration file is found.
281 * Better support for booting from MBRs which don't pass
282 handover information.
283 * EXTLINUX: Try to be smarter about finding the partition
284 offset.
285 * chain.c32: support chainloading Dell Real Mode Kernel (Gene
286 Cumm).
287 * chain.c32: fix booting in CHS mode.
288 * rosh.c32 updated (Gene Cumm).
289 * Fix the -s option to the syslinux/extlinux installer (Arwin
290 Vosselman).
291 * isohybrid: fix padding of large images (PJ Pandit).
293 Changes in 4.02:
294 * SYSLINUX: correctly handle the case where the -d option is
295 specified with a non-absolute path, i.e. "syslinux -d
296 syslinux" instead of "syslinux -d /syslinux".
297 * ISOLINUX: recognize the directory names /boot/syslinux and
298 /syslinux, and the filename syslinux.cfg in addition to the
299 isolinux-specific names. Thus, "syslinux.cfg" is now a
300 generic name, whereas "isolinux.cfg" or "extlinux.conf" is
301 specific to different derivative.
302 * chain.c32: support setting alternate config filename for
303 stage2 of GRUB Legacy (Gert Hulselmans).
304 * whichsys.c32: execute specific command, based on Syslinux
305 bootloader variant (Gert Hulselmans).
306 * lua.c32: a lot of new bindings added to the "syslinux"
307 namespace: VESA, PCI, DMI, kernel loading (Marcel Ritter).
308 * btrfs: print a comprehensive error message if compressed or
309 encrypted files are encountered (neither is currently
310 supported.)
311 * SYSLINUX: mtools installer: honor TMPDIR, error out on disk
312 full.
313 * Handle fallbacks from EDD to CHS, to deal with systems which
314 announce EDD support but don't actually have it.
315 * SYSLINUX: the mtools, DOS and win32 installers now use the new
316 command line options.
317 * PXELINUX: fix the use of IP addresses in TFTP :: or tftp://
318 host syntax.
319 * SYSLINUX: experimental Win64 installer (syslinux64.exe).
321 Changes in 4.01:
322 * ISOLINUX: fix initialization on systems which don't zero
323 low memory.
324 * SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: fix handing of disk read retries in
325 EDD mode.
326 * ISOLINUX: change the initialization sequence to avoid
327 problems with certain (old) BIOSes. Special thanks to
328 Helmut Hullen for invaluable debugging support.
329 * ifplop.c32: new module which detects if the PLoP Boot Loader
330 already has booted a CDROM or USB drive (Gert Hulselmans).
331 * Correct a severe memory overwrite bug, triggered primarily
332 when selecting a very long command line in the menu system.
333 * lua.c32: Lua script interpreter, currently experimental
334 (Alexey Zaytsev, Marcel Ritter, Geert Stappers).
335 * PXELINUX: new option IPAPPEND 4 to append the system UUID to
336 the kernel command line.
337 * PXELINUX: display BOOTIF and SYSUUID at startup time, and
338 when Ctrl-N is pressed on the command line.
340 Changes in 4.00:
341 * Major code base changes; all filesystem rewritten in C.
342 This work was done primarily by Liu Aleaxander (Yuanhan Liu).
343 * EXTLINUX: btrfs and ext4 support. btrfs support was done by
344 Alek Du of Intel.
345 * EXTLINUX is no longer a separate derivative; extlinux and
346 syslinux both install the same loader (ldlinux.sys); for the
347 Linux-based installers the extlinux binary is used for a
348 mounted filesystem; the syslinux binary for an unmounted
349 filesystem.
350 * When loading a new configuration file with the CONFIG
351 command, one can now also specify a new current directory
352 with an APPEND statement.
353 * Full ADV support for Syslinux, to boot-once and MENU SAVE
354 works.
355 * Full support of GPT-partitioned disks, including disks
356 and/or parititions larger than 2 TiB (if supported by BIOS.)
357 * The GPT handover protocol adjusted to the current T13
358 committee draft; see doc/gpt.txt.
359 * HDT: code cleanup, small bugfixes
360 * The "linux" syslinux installer (syslinux-nomtools) now has a
361 command-line syntax closer to the extlinux installer. The
362 mtools, dos and win32 installers will get this new syntax
363 eventually, but it is not implemented yet.
364 * chain.c32: support booting GPT partitions by index, GUID, label.
365 * chain.c32: support booting the Syslinux partition with "fs".
366 * chain.c32: implement gpt.txt hand-over protocol.
367 * chain.c32: support for chainloading Grub stage 2.
368 * PXELINUX: TFTP URL syntax (tftp://) supported even when not
369 running gPXE/gpxelinux.
370 * New ls.c32 module to display the contents of the disk from
371 the command line, and pwd.c32 to display the current
372 directory.
373 * rosh.c32 (read only shell) updated and hopefully usable.
374 * PXELINUX: Support "localboot -1", just like the other
375 derivatives.
376 * gfxboot.com removed in favor of gfxboot.c32.
377 * New MENU HELP statement to display fullscreen help text as a
378 result of a menu selection.
379 * memdiskfind utility that can be used with the phram driver
380 in the Linux kernel to mount a memdisk.
381 * ifcpu.c32: Adding usage when no parameters are given,
382 adding PAE support.
383 * ifcpu.c32, ifcpu64.c32: handle more than one argument per
384 target.
385 * isohybrid: C version which does not require Perl.
386 * New command MENU IMMEDIATE to permit hotkeys to activate
387 immediately without needing Enter.
388 * mdiskchk.com supports a --no-sequential (or -n) option to
389 suppress the classic all-drive-probing heuristic. Useful
390 on BIOSes who crash/hang when certain drive numbers are
391 probed.
392 * ElTorito.Sys DOS driver now scans drive numbers upwards
393 instead of downwards, in order to avoid a fairly common
394 bug on some BIOSes where probing drive 0xFF causes a
395 failure.
396 * NASM 2.03 or later required to build. 2.07 or later
397 recommended.
399 Changes in 3.86:
400 * chain.c32: fix chainloading the MBR of a hard disk (broken
401 in 3.85).
402 * mboot.c32: report the boot loader name in the information
403 structure.
404 * com32: set argv[0] in a com32 module.
405 * core: add a workaround for a bug in Xen HVM older than
406 version 3.3: disable halt on those platforms.
407 * Fix problems where certain operations in com32 modules would
408 cause the core to believe the system was idle.
409 * MEMDISK: fix MBR detection when used with a DOSEMU header or
410 an offset.
411 * MEMDISK: generate the mBFT checksum correctly.
413 Changes in 3.85:
414 * gPXELINUX: updated to gPXE 1.0.0. gPXELINUX can now do NBP
415 chainloading, and does not require a second DHCP.
416 * vesamenu.c32: unbreak the default "grey hole" background.
417 * We no longer have a built-in default of "linux auto".
418 Instead, if no DEFAULT or UI statement is found, or the
419 configuration file is missing entirely, we drop to the boot:
420 prompt with an error message (if NOESCAPE is set, we stop
421 with a "boot failed" message; this is also the case for
422 PXELINUX if the configuration file is not found.)
423 * chain.c32: support chainloading Grub4DOS; patch by Gert
424 Hulselmans.
425 * New tool: sysdump.c32, can be used to produce system
426 information for debugging via tftp or ymodem (serial port).
427 * "vga=current" on the Linux command line is now supported.
428 * chain.c32: support for Windows Recovery Console, via the
429 "cmldr=" option.
430 * chain.c32: should now support loading NTLDR from different
431 type media than loaded from.
432 * chain.c32: support chainloading to a FAT/NTFS partition with
433 invalid "hidden sectors" via the "sethidden" option.
434 * memdisk: fix the mBFT ACPI table.
435 * vesamenu.c32: if the image is smaller than the screen, tile
436 it across the whole screen.
437 * mkdiskimage: -s option for producing a sparse image.
438 * vesamenu.c32: support arbitrary resolution setting (beyond
439 BIOS support) on some Intel-based video chipsets. This code
440 is a modified version of the "915resolution" tool by
441 Steve Tomljenovic; your mileage might vary.
443 Changes in 3.84:
444 * SYSLINUX: make the DOS installer work for MS-DOS 7.x/8.x
445 (Win9x/ME) again.
446 * HDT: updated to version 0.3.6 (numerous changes.)
447 * mboot.c32: now supports video mode setting if requested by
448 the image.
449 * MEMDISK: Fix floppy images of PC-DOS.
450 * MEMDISK: Add support for emulation of CD-ROM images; patch
451 by Shao Miller.
452 * MEMDISK: Comply with the Win9x "safe hook" standard,
453 allowing a protected-mode driver.
454 * MEMDISK: New "mBFT" ACPI table, by analogy with the iSCSI
455 iBFT table. This allows detection from a protected-mode
456 operating system without EDD support.
457 * 32-bit version of the gfxboot loader (gfxboot.c32), so far
458 experimental. This will replace gfxboot.com in the future.
459 * vesamenu.c32: new MENU RESOLUTION directive to set a screen
460 resolution other than 640x480.
461 * chain.c32: add support for loading isolinux.bin.
462 * chain.c32: make sure to always return to text mode.
463 * eltorito.sys: DOS driver for generic CD-ROMs; by Gary Tong
464 and Bart Lagerweij.
466 Changes in 3.83:
467 * PXELINUX: clear memory before handing over to a chainloaded
468 NBP. This may help avoid a bug in Windows RIS.
469 * PXELINUX: fix localboot after NBP chainloading on certain
470 BIOSes (including ASUS A8N-E, but possibly others.)
471 * chain.c32: support chainloaded bootloaders on ISOLINUX.
472 * PXELINUX: allow filenames up to 251 characters.
473 * MEMDISK: fix problems booting from USB on Thinkpads, and
474 possibly other machines or hardware combinations.
475 * isohybrid: fix the -id option.
476 * HDT: updated to version 0.3.4.
477 * MEMDISK: the stack size is now configurable, with the stack=
478 option.
479 * Simple menu: fix Ctrl-W (word erase) in command-line edit.
480 * Simple menu: fix crash on some platforms.
481 * Gfxboot: fixes to the configuration file parsing.
482 * PXELINUX: add a tool to override specific DHCP options via
483 values hardcoded in the pxelinux.0 file. These hardcoded
484 values can be either "before DHCP" (defaults if DHCP do not
485 provide values), or "after DHCP" (overrides DHCP). The tool
486 pxelinux-options can be used to set these options. This
487 feature does not apply to gpxelinux.0; when used with gPXE
488 this is better handled by modifying the embedded script.
490 Changes in 3.82:
491 * isohybrid: fix the -partok logic for loading from a partition.
492 * ISOLINUX: deal with systems which return from INT 13h with
493 interrupts disabled.
494 * Do not invoke the idle handler during large file loads.
495 * Simple menu: make ONTIMEOUT work with MENU HIDDEN.
496 * PXELINUX: handle TFTP servers which have extra NULs at the
497 end of an OACK packet.
499 Changes in 3.81:
500 * Shuffler: fix bug in real-mode entry. This affected a
501 number of modules, probably in relatively unimportant ways,
502 but it completely broke linux.c32.
503 * Improved performance.
504 * Attempt to halt the processor while idle. This can cause
505 bad reponsiveness when using a serial console especially for
506 automated input; if that ends up being a problem, use the
507 new "NOHALT 1" configuration command.
508 * linux.c32 now suppresses all messages if the "quiet" flag is
509 specified.
510 * isohybrid: add a variety of options, and a help message.
511 * ISOLINUX: fix booting in hybrid mode when CBIOS is used.
512 This unfortunately means that the isohybrid handoff protocol
513 has changed, so the isohybrid utility must version-match
514 isolinux.bin.
515 * Drop support for ACPI 3 extended memory flags.
516 * Menu system: don't set the autocr flag on the serial
517 console.
518 * altmbr: fix handling of logical partitions.
519 * altmbr: cap at 439 bytes so the partition select byte isn't
520 part of the file.
522 Changes in 3.80:
523 * New shuffler mechanism and API.
524 * Rewritten mboot.c32 module.
525 * The syslinux_boot_linux() function has been simplified.
526 * Don't hang trying to boot a "menu quit" label from the CLI.
527 * Fix problem with boot-once "sticking" on some BIOSes.
528 * isohybrid: fix problem with images over 2 GB in size.
529 * APM poweroff module (poweroff.com) by Sebastian Herbszt.
530 * ISOLINUX: fix the handling of large directories. Bug found
531 and fixed by Steffen Winterfeldt.
533 Changes in 3.75:
534 * PXELINUX: fix the "keeppxe" option, which was broken in
535 3.74.
536 * MEMDISK: correct the extraction of geometry information from
537 the MBR of a hard disk image, again broken in 3.74.
538 * extlinux(1) man page from Brian Pellin.
539 * Simple menu: MENU SAVE is now controllable on a menu-by-menu
540 or entry-by-entry basis.
541 * gPXELINUX: fix interrupt-disabling bug.
542 * HDT: fix lockup on machines with certain PCI configurations.
544 Changes in 3.74:
545 * New UI directive, which allows a more natural way to specify
546 a menu system (or not.) With the UI directive specifying
547 the menu system, the DEFAULT directive can be used to select
548 the default entry inside the menus.
549 * kbdmap.c32: new module to load a new keyboard map
550 dynamically.
551 * isohybrid: workaround bug in some versions of binutils.
552 * Fix issue with the placement of the initrd on some machines.
553 * ifcpu64: fix handling of less than three arguments.
554 * Fix bug in the shuffle library when dealing with a very
555 large number of fragments.
556 * Documentation fixes by Vicente Jimenez Aguilar.
557 * gPXE updated to version 0.9.7.
558 * hdt.c32: Hardware Detection Tool, an interactive hardware
559 analyzer module by Erwan Velu.
560 * MEMDISK: enable automatic determination of the disk geometry
561 for a large floppy disk image if (and only if) it is
562 formatted with a FAT filesystem.
563 * SYSLINUX: fix the handling of .bss files on FAT12/16.
564 * Suppress the Loading ... message if "quiet" is specified on
565 the kernel command line.
566 * Fix the use of "CONSOLE 0" with menu.c32.
567 * Allow COM32 modules to be aware of all memory even in the
568 presence of a memory hole. The "linux.c32" module can be
569 used to load a kernel (or memdisk) plus large initrd on
570 such a system.
571 * MBR: produce alternate MBR variants which force the drive
572 number to hd0 (_f variants), or force the drive number to
573 hd0 if the Ctrl key is pressed (_c variants.) Furthermore,
574 add an MBR variant (altmbr*.bin) which ignores the active
575 flag and instead boots the partition number specified in the
576 byte at offset 439 decimal.
577 * Add IPAPPEND strings to com32 modules, especially needed for
578 linux.c32.
579 * New MENU SAVE directive which saves the latest menu
580 selection until the next boot. Currently only implemented for
581 EXTLINUX.
582 * gfxboot.com: *experimental* interface module to Steffen
583 Winterfeldt's "gfxboot" graphical front end
584 (http://gfxboot.sourceforge.net/). Module by Sebastian Herbszt.
586 Changes in 3.73:
587 * Upgrade gPXE to release version 0.9.5.
588 * Fix a number of build errors on various platforms.
589 * Handle systems with E820 "extended attributes" per ACPI 3.
590 Someone "cleverly" decided to change the E820 spec in a
591 backwards-incompatible manner!
592 * MEMDISK: default to "safeint".
593 * Adopt the moniker "The Syslinux Project", standard proper
594 noun capitalization, to refer to the project as a whole.
595 Thus, reserve the all-caps "SYSLINUX" to refer to the FAT
596 loader.
597 * mboot.c32: add "-solaris" option to pass DHCP information to
598 the Solaris kernel; required for automatic Solaris boot
599 without using Solaris' pxeboot program.
600 * config.c32: trivial COM32 module to restart Syslinux with
601 another configuration file from the command line (equivalent
602 to the CONFIG command in the configuratin file.)
604 Changes in 3.72:
605 * Include the pxechain.com module from Jeffery Hutzelman at
606 Carnegie Mellon University. This allows chaining another
607 PXE boot program while changing the DHCP packet passed to
608 it.
609 * Reorganize the Makefile system.
610 * Major PCI core cleanups and other source cleanup.
611 * gPXE code updated.
612 * Try to avoid memory-snooping attacks on passwords. Note
613 that if someone has root on the box, they generally don't
614 need to compromise the boot loader...
615 * ISOLINUX: fix crash when given a zero-length file.
616 * sdi.c32: support gzipped SDI images.
617 * ISOLINUX: support generating images which can be either
618 a CD-ROM or a hard disk (USB disk, etc.) See
619 doc/isolinux.txt for more information.
620 * Remote gdb support for COM32 modules; patch from Stefan
621 Hajnoczi.
622 * Support beeps in F-key help in the simple menu system.
623 * Tab display of labels, based on a patch from Sebastian
624 Herbszt. Can be disabled with the NOCOMPLETE configuration
625 command.
626 * "menu default" can now be specified after "menu begin", to
627 indicate that a specific submenu should be the default entry.
629 Changes in 3.71:
630 * Workaround for a VESA BIOS which tries to make DOS system
631 calls(!!)
632 * Simple menu: fix navigation around disabled entries
633 (or at least try to...)
634 * EXTLINUX: proper error message when confused about mount
635 point.
636 * MEMDISK: be smarter about incompletely disabled floppies in
637 the BIOS and about being the only floppy.
638 * Optionally allow initrd to be specified on a separate line
639 rather than as part of the "append" line. This is not
640 recommended, but apparently makes life easier for some
641 tools.
642 * SYSLINUX: if no config file is present, set the current
643 directory to the root directory (Sebastian Herbszt).
644 * chain.c32: option "hide" to support hiding and unhiding of
645 primary partitions on the boot drive with DOS, Win, or OS/2
646 partition types (01, 04, 06, 07, 0b, 0c, 0e).
647 * Unbreak the KBDMAP command (broken in 3.70).
648 * EXTLINUX: fix the handling of the ADV when using CBIOS.
649 * ifcpu64.c32: simple COM32 module to select a 32- or 64-bit
650 kernel (and optionally 32-bit kernels with or without PAE.)
651 Eventually we want a scripting language for this
652 kind of stuff; a Lua module is under development.
653 * Fix parsing of the SERIAL command without a baud rate
654 specified.
655 * chain.c32: error out when try to boot an unbootable
656 partition.
657 * SYSLINUX: when building the Win32 installer, search for
658 MinGW under a large number of possible names.
660 Changes in 3.70:
661 * PXELINUX: Support enhanced capabilities when running on top
662 of gPXE (http://www.etherboot.org/). In particular, support
663 URL-style syntax for filenames, and any protocol that gPXE
664 supports (except, currently, iSCSI and AoE.) This feature
665 is currently highly experimental.
666 * Substantial infrastructure changes to support files whose
667 length aren't known at open time (typically network
668 connections.) Please note that the semantics of some of the
669 comboot APIs have changed slightly; please see doc/comboot.txt.
670 * PXELINUX: We no longer require a TFTP server which supports
671 the tsize option for all transfers.
672 * PXELINUX: Integrate with the gPXE source base; unified image
673 now included as "gpxelinux.0".
674 * The source tree has been restructured; files that were
675 previously in the root have moved into the core, dos, gpxe,
676 and utils directories.
677 * "make install", "make netinstall", and "make extbootinstall"
678 have been updated massively. "make install-all" now installs
679 all three.
680 * Change default dir for auxiliary files from
681 /usr/lib/syslinux to /usr/share/syslinux.
682 * SYSLINUX: VFAT long filename support.
683 * MEMDISK: Any image less than 4096K (4 MB) is treated as a
684 floppy disk. The geometry-guessing code will recognize all
685 common extended formats, but it is still possible some very
686 exotic formats need geometry specification. Large floppies
687 and very small harddisks still need explicit specification.
688 * chain.c32: option "swap" to support swapping of BIOS drive
689 numbers. This is necessary to boot certain operating systems
690 (DOS, Windows) from a secondary drive.
691 * chain.c32: option "file=" to support loading a boot file from
692 the SYSLINUX filesystem instead of loading the boot sector
693 from the drive.
694 * chain.c32: option "seg=" to control the load location.
695 * chain.c32: option "ntldr=" as a shorthand for "seg=0x2000
696 file="; use this to load one of WinNT's loaders:
698 chain.c32 hd0 1 ntldr=/MiniNT/setupldr.bin
700 Note that the file needs to be in the SYSLINUX filesystem.
701 * chain.32: options "freedos=" and "msdos="/"pcdos=" as
702 shorthands for "seg=0x60 file=" and "seg=0x70 file="
703 respectively; use this to load FreeDOS's kernel.sys, MS-DOS's
704 io.sys or PC-DOS's ibmbio.sys.
705 * Change to the A20 algorithm which *MIGHT* help systems that
706 have systems which freeze when Syslinux is used with USB
707 keyboards. Note that this has been hard do verify, so I
708 would greatly appreciate feedback on it.
709 * Complex menu system: unbreak menus which has unnamed
710 submenus, like complex.c.
711 * Fix newline on the serial port for some com32 modules.
712 * chain.c32: support "boot" as the drive specification,
713 indicating the drive from which it was booted
714 (for syslinux/extlinux).
715 * SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: support "localboot" with the same feature
716 set as ISOLINUX.
717 * Add an experimental MBR for GPT partition tables.
718 * Use $(CC) when determining compile flags.
719 * chain.c32: fix booting from logical partitions (Sergey
720 Vlasov.)
722 Changes in 3.63:
723 * Fix errors in the PCI and DMI detection modules (Erwan Velu,
724 Sebastian Herbszt).
725 * Fix host dependencies and other issues in the build system.
726 * PXELINUX: Allow class E addresses as unicast.
727 * sdi.c32: module to load Microsoft System Deployment Images.
728 For additional information, please see:
729 http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms838543.aspx
730 * EXTLINUX: Correct reading directories with deleted entries.
731 * Shuffle library: correct the handling of certain geometries
732 (an upward move with source material blocking the move); as
733 required by sdi.c32 but theoretically possible for other
734 formats as well.
735 * Add "make netinstall" to install /tftpboot.
736 * Fix some documentation files that didn't get moved/renamed.
738 Changes in 3.62:
739 * Clean up garbage after "aborted." message.
740 * Clean up memdump.com filenames.
741 * Support SHA256 and SHA512 encrypted passwords.
742 * The shuffle library now can generate chained descriptors,
743 thus allowing pretty much arbitrarily complex memory maps.
744 * Handle command lines up to 2047 characters, the current
745 Linux kernel limit.
746 * vesamenu: support systems without linear framebuffer support
747 (sigh, what is this, 1993?) and 15-bit RGB modes.
748 * Move the label storage (for the command-line interface) to
749 high memory, removing the size limit and freeing up 64K of
750 low memory.
751 * Get rid of 4096-entry limit in the simple menu system.
752 * New hierarchial submenu support: see MENU BEGIN, MENU END,
753 MENU GOTO in doc/menu.txt.
754 * MENU QUIT allows creating a menu entry for returning to the
755 command line.
756 * ISOLINUX: Work around bug in certain Adaptec BIOSes,
757 patch by Bruce Robson.
758 * pngtopnm dependency removed from samples/ directory.
759 * Text documentation files (in doc/) renamed *.doc -> *.txt.
761 Changes in 3.61:
762 * EXTLINUX: fix crash when accessing an empty file.
763 * elf.c32: If a PHDR segment is present, load it.
764 * Fix SHA-1 and MD5 passwords.
765 * ISOLINUX: fix booting when mastered without
766 mkisofs -boot-info-table (broken since 3.50, sigh...)
767 * Handle BIOSes which emit multiple contiguous valid
768 memory regions in the e820 map.
770 Changes in 3.60:
771 * Support for "auxiliary data vector", a small amount of
772 writable storage. Currently only supported for EXTLINUX,
773 but the infrastructure is there for the other derivatives,
774 assuming a suitable storage location can be found.
775 * EXTLINUX: boot-once support (--once, --clear-once, and
776 --reset-adv).
777 * A command is now required to the EXTLINUX installer, i.e. at
778 least one of --install, --update, --once, --clear-once, or
779 --reset-adv.
781 Changes in 3.55:
782 * PXELINUX: as per RFC 5071, PXELINUX no longer requires the
783 use of the magic cookie option (208) for unencapsulated
784 options. Currently it does not require it for
785 vendor-encapsulated options (vendor-option-space) either,
786 but that MAY be reverted in the future if it causes
787 problems.
788 * Documentation text files moved to a common "doc" directory;
789 man pages from the Debian project added to the "man"
790 directory.
791 * Correct bug with self-overlapping memory areas when using
792 the shuffle interface.
794 Changes in 3.54:
795 * Add "menu separator", "menu indent", "menu disabled"
796 (see README.menu).
797 * vesamenu: fix handing of VESA modes with noncontiguous
798 memory buffers. In particular, Qemu/KVM sets up such a mode
799 when Cirrus Logic emulation is enabled (which is the
800 default.)
801 * Support for calling real mode functions using far calls,
802 with argument on the stack. This was implemented to support
803 the BIOS BBS specification, but subsequent experiments show
804 that the at least one of the most common BIOS cores, Award,
805 passes the presence check but doesn't actually implement the
806 functionality.
808 Changes in 3.53:
809 * Fix bugs related to the $PnP BIOS functionality on some
810 platforms.
811 * PXELINUX: Fix the "naked" version of :: (suppress prefix.)
812 * elf.c32: better error messages.
813 * Faster operation under Intel VT virtualization.
814 * PXELINUX: Fix DHCP bootfile option.
815 * mkdiskimage: Support more than 1024 cylinders.
816 * (Hopefully) fix installer on non-x86 platforms.
817 * Fix shuffle_and_boot_rm, used by linux.c32.
818 * Fix shuffle_and_boot_pm on 386/486.
819 * ISOLINUX (at least): fix bss memory overwrite hang.
820 * MBR: Fix booting from logical partitions.
821 * Code cleanups.
823 Changes in 3.52:
824 * Handle capitalized F-key commands in the menu system.
825 * Fix padding error when loading multiple ramdisks.
826 * Workaround for VMware crashing when trying to print a
827 message during early kernel boot (does not seem to work,
828 consider deleting.)
829 * chain.c32: add the ability to search for a specific MBR
830 signature at runtime.
831 * Fall back to the server identity option if the siaddr field
832 in the DHCP header isn't set. This seems to match the
833 behaviour of most PXE stacks.
834 * mkdiskimage: give the generated disk image an MBR signature.
835 * MEMDISK: Fix failures on some BIOSes.
836 * Simple menu system: new "MENU HIDDEN" option to not display
837 the menu unless the user presses a key.
838 * Simple menu system: support MD5-encrypted passwords (modern
839 Unix standard style, with "$1$" prefixes.)
840 * pcitest.c32: now functions as a full "lspci". Thanks to
841 Erwan Velu for this work.
842 * MEMDISK: Make EDD actually work.
843 * ISOLINUX: Fix for certain broken CD-ROM BIOSes which
844 randomly corrupted register FS.
845 * Simple menu system: fix memory overwrite bug that caused
846 some systems to lock up or behave weirdly.
847 * Fix building on 64-bit systems without a 32-bit libc installed.
849 Changes in 3.51:
850 * EXTLINUX: Fix failure to find the configuration file.
852 Changes in 3.50:
853 * New keywords allow the type of file to be specified in the
854 configuration file.
855 * It is now supported to load a different configuration file
856 with the CONFIG keyword.
857 * Fix API call 0x0019 (Read Disk.)
858 * MENU AUTOBOOT, MENU TABMSG, MENU PASSPROMPT allows
859 internationalization of menu messages.
860 * A new feature, TEXT HELP, allows the administrator to set
861 a multi-line help message for individual selections.
862 * Fix API call 0x0012 (Cleanup, shuffle and boot.)
863 * New API call "Cleanup, shuffle and boot to flat protected mode"
864 * New API call "Cleanup, shuffle and boot to real mode",
865 similar to API call 0x0012 but allows arbitrary register setting.
866 * Introduce a library interface for loading arbitrary binary
867 formats with relatively easily understood code. See
868 the elf.c32 module for an example on how to use it.
869 * New module "elf.c32", to load a protected-mode ELF kernel.
870 * MBR (old and new): Fix bug in CHS mode when LBA >
871 65535*sectors.
872 * vesamenu: fix decoding of palettized PNG images.
873 * Update the Linux kernel boot protocol.
874 * PXELINUX: Press Ctrl-N at the boot prompt to read out the
875 network info.
876 * Instead of the (non-existent) MAC, use the client identifier
877 for networks like Infiniband and Firewire/1394.
878 * Add a new INCLUDE command to the core syslinux parser.
879 * Allow binding help text to F11 and F12.
880 * F-key help now available in the simple menu system.
881 * Disabled the polling for ARP during idle. It is simply too
882 slow on some (broken!) PXE stacks.
883 * PXELINUX: also try to fetch the config file based on UUID.
884 * SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: New RAID mode (-r) which calls the BIOS
885 to load the next device (typically the next drive) on boot
886 failure.
888 Changes in 3.36:
889 * MEMDISK: Disable EDD by default on floppy disks. EDD can be
890 enabled with the "edd" option and disabled with "noedd".
891 This (hopefully) should make Ghost work again.
892 * SYSLINUX: "unix" installer now uses Linux ioctls instead of
893 using libfat.
894 * New MBR which can boot from logical partitions.
895 * SYSLINUX: Fix bug in detecting special extensions which was
896 introduced in 3.35 :(
897 * PXELINUX: Unbreak chainbooting FreeBSD (and possibly others.)
899 Changes in 3.35:
900 * MEMDISK: New "safeint" mode.
901 * MEMDISK: Be more compliant with the PnP BIOS spec.
902 * MEMDISK: Turn on EDD support by default.
903 * MEMDISK: Try to work on some machines on which it would not
904 work when there was no floppy drive in the system.
905 * Simple menu system: fix serial console support (broken in
906 3.30).
907 * SYSLINUX: Support subdirectories. Like ISOLINUX, the
908 "current directory" is the directory in which syslinux.cfg
909 is found; this is searched for in the sequence
910 /boot/syslinux, /syslinux, /. As a side benefit, label names
911 like "linux-2.6.18" and "linux-2.6.19" are now supported.
913 To install ldlinux.sys in a subdirectory, pass the -d
914 directory option to the SYSLINUX installer.
916 This work was sponsored by slax.org (thanks, Tomas!)
917 * New API call: read disk.
918 * Invoke ONERROR on initrd load failure.
920 Changes in 3.31:
921 * The simple menu system (menu.c32 and vesamenu.c32) now
922 support loading more than one configuration file at a time,
923 using MENU INCLUDE or by specifying multiple filenames.
924 * The MENU COLOR statement can now control the shadowing mode.
926 Changes in 3.30:
927 * libcom32 extended to support graphics mode and graphical console.
928 * vesamenu.c32, new graphical version of the Simple
929 Menu System, see README.menu.
930 * New com32 modules by Erwan Velu do selection based on CPUID
931 or PCI devices present.
932 * RPM spec: add syslinux-tftpboot module; move syslinux by
933 default to the /usr/share/syslinux directory.
934 * RPM spec: extlinux is now a separate package.
936 Changes in 3.20:
937 * EXTLINUX: New options --install (-i) and --update (-U), to
938 make it clear if a boot loader should be installed or
939 updated. For now, defaults to --install for compatibility;
940 a future version will require one of these options.
941 * New library functions to load and place files in memory.
942 * mboot.c32 bug fixes.
943 * Remove 8 MB kernel size restriction.
944 * Add "klibc" target for building unix/syslinux and
945 extlinux/extlinux with klcc (klibc-1.4.27 or later.)
946 * PXELINUX: Fail (and eventually reboot) if no configuration
947 file was found.
948 * COM32 module by Erwan Velu to make decisions based on DMI
949 info.
950 * Fix issue where going back and forth between menus a lot
951 would cause a hang.
952 * ISOLINUX: Fix bug which made "cd boot sectors" not work.
954 Changes in 3.11:
955 * MEMDISK: Fix bug by which accessing the real floppy disk
956 as B: in MS-DOS was broken.
957 * Simple menu system: allow tweaking of the screen layout.
958 * Simple menu system: better command-line editing, correctly
959 handle command lines above 256 characters.
960 * PXELINUX: revert memory allocation change that caused
961 problems on some network cards.
962 * MEMDISK: Try work around a bug on some BIOSes when no
963 physical floppy disk is present in the system.
964 * Enable the 16550A FIFOs, if present, when doing serial
965 console.
966 * New "totaltimeout" command establishes a timeout without
967 regard for any user input.
968 * Simple menu system: timeout behaviour now more in line with
969 user expectations.
970 * Simple menu system: "ontimeout" should now work correctly.
972 Changes in 3.10:
973 * gcc 4.0.1 compilation fixes.
974 * Add support for querying the PCI BIOS in libcom32
975 (used by ethersel et al.)
976 * Fix PCI handing (ethersel etc) on several old chipsets (and
977 VMWare.)
978 * Try to deal with systems with broken EBIOS.
979 * New API call to do "localboot".
980 * New API call to query features.
981 * New API call to run kernel image, a lower-level call than
982 "run command". See comboot.doc.
983 * Fix for bug in EBIOS code discovered by Arwin Vosselman.
984 * NOESCAPE security fix.
985 * Comments are now recognized even without a space following #.
986 * Fix incorrect handling of mixes of entries with and without
987 MENU PASSWD.
988 * The idle API call now harmlessly returns failure if it is a
989 no-op. That way the caller can decide whether or not to
990 bother invoking it again.
991 * Temporarily disable the idle API call on PXELINUX, due to
992 some platforms on which the idle API call seems to hang; this
993 problem has not yet been debugged.
994 * MEMDISK: the handling of DOSEMU-headered images was broken;
995 fix it.
996 * EXTLINUX: symlinks are now supported.
997 * Simple menu system: N and P now work correctly as hotkeys.
998 * MEMDISK: more BIOS bug workarounds.
1000 Changes in 3.09:
1001 * gcc4 compilation fix.
1002 * <BEL> (Ctrl-G) in message files now causes a beep.
1003 * Reduce the command line to 511 characters; 1023 caused
1004 memory overflows.
1006 Changes in 3.08:
1007 * SYSLINUX: Fix performance regression (-s mode always
1008 enabled.)
1009 * Add API function for idle loop.
1010 * libutil: Add do_idle() function for idle loop, make
1011 get_key() use it.
1012 * libutil: Add SHA-1 and base64 functions.
1013 * Simple menu system: add password support.
1014 * EXTLINUX: Sparse files now handled correctly.
1015 * EXTLINUX: Large directories now handled correctly.
1016 * ALL: At the prompt, Ctrl-X now forces text mode.
1017 * Fix configuration file parsing error, that could cause
1018 hangs.
1019 * Rewritten advanced menuing system from Murali Ganapathy.
1020 * MEMDISK: New "bigraw" mode to work around certain broken
1021 BIOS flash programs.
1022 * COM32 module to boot Multiboot systems, including Xen. See
1023 com32/modules/mboot.doc.
1024 * Max command line changed to 1023 characters. Note that the
1025 kernel proper still can only handle 255 characters without
1026 patching, and COM16 binaries can only handle 125 characters.
1028 Changes in 3.07:
1029 * Fix chainloading (chain.c32).
1030 * Fix zlib build problem.
1031 * Use a private copy of <linux/ext2_fs.h>.
1033 Changes in 3.06:
1034 * Fix typo that caused the ramdisk to load in the wrong place.
1036 Changes in 3.05:
1037 * New API function "shuffle and boot"; allows COM32 modules to
1038 load or construct (almost) arbitrarily complex objects,
1039 e.g. a kernel and its initrd/initramfs in pieces, and have
1040 the API core reorganize memory for booting. (A library API
1041 for this function will be introduced in a later version.)
1042 * The initrd= option now supports multiple filenames separated
1043 by commas. This is mostly useful for initramfs, which can
1044 be composed of multiple separate cpio or cpio.gz archives.
1045 (Note: all files except the last one are zero-padded to a 4K
1046 page boundary. This should not affect initramfs.)
1047 * EXTLINUX: Fix API function 000Ah (get derivative-specific
1048 info).
1049 * libcom32/ethersel: Support PCI Config Mechanism #2 on
1050 machines still infested with that hideous old hack.
1051 * SYSLINUX: Fix directory-parsing bug.
1053 Changes in 3.02:
1054 * SYSLINUX: The "unix" installer now sets the MS-DOS
1055 attributes (hidden, system, readonly.)
1056 * COM32 library: build the .lnx (test modules for running
1057 under Linux) as architecture native modules, in case
1058 i386 devel libraries aren't installed.
1059 * EXTLINUX: Hack for systems which don't have BLKGETSIZE64
1060 defined in the standard header files.
1061 * Simple menu system: minor aestetic improvements, and try to
1062 work better over a serial console (speed, and readability on
1063 monochrome terminal emulators.)
1064 * New CONSOLE directive to control output on the video console
1065 (useful for dealing with some broken serial-forwarding
1066 BIOSes.)
1067 * New com32 module "ethersel" for searching for an Ethernet
1068 card and selecting the proper version of Etherboot.
1069 * EXTLINUX: Allow the user to override the detected geometry.
1070 Add help.
1072 Changes in 3.01:
1073 * EXTLINUX, SYSLINUX: Fix compile errors on some systems.
1074 * EXTLINUX: Default to zipdrive geometry (64 heads, 32
1075 sectors) if no other geometry can be detected.
1077 Changes in 3.00:
1078 * SYSLINUX: Support FAT32 and EDD. As an unfortunate
1079 consequence, LDLINUX.SYS is no longer an ordinary file; it
1080 is block-mapped at install time, which means it can only be
1081 written using the syslinux installers.
1082 * SYSLINUX: Reorganize the source code for the installers;
1083 each one of the installers (dos, win32, unix, mtools) is now
1084 built in its own subdirectory. In particular, "mtools" is
1085 the unprivileged installer which uses mtools; "unix" is the
1086 privileged installer which uses system calls.
1087 * SYSLINUX: Completely rewritten DOS installer in C.
1088 * ALL: "label" statement information is now stored in a
1089 compressed format, which means that a lot more labels are
1090 permitted (500-1000 in a typical configuration, but depends
1091 on the complexity.)
1092 * EXTLINUX: New derivative, which boots from an ext2/ext3
1093 filesystem.
1094 * SYSLINUX: The DOS and Win32 installers can now optionally
1095 write the boot sector to a file instead of the real boot
1096 sector. This is not supported in the Linux installers,
1097 however.
1098 * ALL: New NOESCAPE command, disables the "hold down the Shift
1099 key to display the prompt" behaviour.
1100 * New simple menu system, as an alternative to the advanced
1101 menu system already present. See README.menu for details.
1102 * PXELINUX: Filenames can now be prefixed with an IP address
1103 or DNS name plus :: (e.g. 192.0.2.1::filename or
1104 server.domain.com::filename), which downloads a file from an
1105 alternate TFTP server, or just a :: (e.g. ::filename), which
1106 suppresses the common pathname prefix. See pxelinux.doc.
1107 * SYSLINUX: Add an -m option to the DOS and Win32 installers
1108 to write an MBR and -a to mark the partition SYSLINUX is
1109 being installed on active.
1110 * MEMDISK: Give a way to query the boot loader type while
1111 running MEMDISK; see memdisk/memdisk.doc and
1112 sample/mdiskchk.c.
1113 * mkdiskimage: substantially improved mkdiskimage which, among
1114 other things, can now be used to initialize USB keys as
1115 zipdrives; see README.usbkey for more information.
1117 Changes in 2.13:
1118 * MEMDISK: Fix command-line parsing "brown paper bag" class
1119 bug.
1120 * MEMDISK: Add "raw" mode to support the DOS boot disk from
1121 WinME/XP, which seems to deliberately crash the system
1122 when someone uses the "INT 15h mover" highmem API.
1123 * Make "make install" do something sane for the com32
1124 development environment.
1125 * In the spec file, create a separate -devel RPM for the com32
1126 development environment.
1128 Changes in 2.12:
1129 * Simple C library, based on klibc, for writing COM32
1130 programs.
1131 * Fix the handling of file length in loading of COM32
1132 programs.
1133 * MEMDISK: Work around a linker bug by rearranging the code to
1134 not use the linker for the 16-bit code.
1135 * SYSLINUX: If we're building on a machine without a Win32
1136 (mingw) compiler, just skip building syslinux.exe.
1137 * ISOLINUX: Support non-mkisofs mastering programs, at least
1138 as long as the image is single-session. For best results,
1139 ISOLINUX should be the only boot loader installed.
1140 * MEMDISK: Allow the user to specify that the simulated disk
1141 should be write-protected.
1143 Changes in 2.11:
1144 * ALL: Add an API call to get the configuration file name.
1145 * SYSLINUX: Fix bug in 2.10 that prevented it from working
1146 correctly for a lot of people.
1147 * SYSLINUX: In the installer, make mtools a bit less fussy.
1148 * Make the menu system compile with newer gcc's.
1150 Changes in 2.10:
1151 * MEMDISK: Handle images compressed with zip as well as with
1152 gzip. Some Windows-based image tools apparently generate
1153 these kinds of images by default. Patch by Patrick
1154 LoPresti.
1155 * Major menu improvement from Murali Ganapathy.
1156 * ISOLINUX: Wonderfully sick and brilliant workaround for
1157 severe bugs in certain Award BIOSes; from Knut Petersen.
1158 * SYSLINUX: Fix for the nomtools installed, from Frederic
1159 Pasteleurs.
1160 * PXELINUX: Fix handling of IP numbers in the ranges
1161 100-109 and 200-209.
1162 * ALL: New option "allowoptions" (defaults to 1), which
1163 controls if options are allowed on the command line or not.
1164 * SYSLINUX: Support building under klibc (see the klibc
1165 distribution for details.)
1167 Changes in 2.09:
1168 * SYSLINUX: Remove residual setuid crap from
1169 syslinux-nomtools.
1170 * Handle video pages correctly when using the API functions.
1171 * Handle compiling on an x86-64 platform correctly.
1172 * Menu system from Murali Krishnan Ganapathy; see the menu
1173 directory for information.
1174 * COMBOOT: Allow COMBOOT programs to change screen text mode.
1175 * COMBOOT: Correct the documentation of how to detect
1176 SYSLINUX from COMBOOT!!!!
1177 * COMBOOT: Fix "get key without echo" API function.
1178 * SYSLINUX: Fix bug that affected the API open function.
1179 * ALL: Improve the E820 memory parser, to work around some
1180 buggy BIOSes.
1182 Changes in 2.08:
1183 * Add new configuration command "ontimeout" to allow timeout
1184 to have a different action than just pressing Enter.
1185 * Add new configuration command "onerror" to allow a custom
1186 command to be executed in case the kernel image is not found.
1187 * Fix bugs in the COMBOOT/COM32 command-line parsing. APPEND
1188 now works with COMBOOT/COM32 images.
1189 * PXELINUX: Poll for ARP requests while sitting at the
1190 prompt. This makes some boot servers a lot less unhappy.
1191 * PXELINUX: Actually free sockets when we get a failure
1192 (including file not found.) This bug would cause us to run
1193 out of sockets and thus "go deaf" after a while.
1194 * MEMDISK: Add an API to query for the existence of MEMDISK.
1195 * SYSLINUX: Fix loading boot sectors (.bs/.bss) from floppy
1196 disk.
1197 * .c32 is now one of the extensions searched for
1198 automatically.
1199 * PXELINUX: RFBG.exe seems to randomly overwrite memory
1200 location 0x5700. Thus, don't use it!
1201 * PXELINUX: Change pathname length max from 63 to 127; change
1202 max vkernels from 128 to 64.
1203 * Support Ctrl-U -> kill entire command line input.
1204 * The "samples" directory contains a (barely at all tested)
1205 chain loading example, chain.c32, which may be used to
1206 chainload local floppy disks and hard disks. Use with
1207 "chain fdN" or "chain hdN [partition]"; N = 0 for the first
1208 drive of each type.
1210 Changes in 2.07:
1211 * MEMDISK: Workaround for BIOSes which go into a snit when
1212 they get a RESET command for the floppy system when there is
1213 no floppy in the system.
1214 * PXELINUX: Add "ipappend 2", which passes the hardware
1215 address of the boot interface to the kernel as a
1216 command-line option.
1217 * mkdiskimage: fix the generation of the end limit.
1218 * PXELINUX: Fix multiple bugs in chainloading of other NBPs.
1219 * MEMDISK: Fix bug that would occationally cause "ran out of
1220 input data" when using compressed disk images.
1221 * SYSLINUX: Updates for the win32 installer (from Lars Munch.)
1222 * PXELINUX: PXELINUX-specific options are now recognized both
1223 in a vendor-option-space (a.k.a. type 43 encapsulated) as
1224 well as in a site-option-space (unencapsulated.)
1225 * COM32: Don't crash when DS != 0.
1226 * COMBOOT/COM32: Make file reading work correctly. Thanks to
1227 Phung Chi Kien for submitting a test program.
1229 Changes in 2.06:
1230 * ALL: Fix problem that would occationally cause a
1231 boot failure, depending on the length of the kernel.
1232 * ISOLINUX: Fix problem that would occationally cause a
1233 boot failure, depending on the length of directories.
1234 * SYSLINUX: Win32 installer now flushes buffers.
1235 * ppmtolss16: Be fully compliant with the PNM spec;
1236 actually process comments in the header and odd
1237 alignments of the various parameters, as well as
1238 "plain" (not raw) files and PBM and PGM files.
1239 * PXELINUX: Lower the default MTU to 1472 in order to deal
1240 with systems with slightly nonstandard MTUs, and PXE
1241 stacks which don't defragment correctly. Unfortunately this
1242 is very hard to test dynamically.
1244 Changes in 2.05:
1245 * PXELINUX: Add a default query based on the hardware address
1246 of the boot device. This is in lower case hexadecimal form
1247 separated by dashes and including the hardware type, for
1248 example, the Ethernet (type 1) address 88:99:AA:BB:CC:DD
1249 would query the file pxelinux.cfg/01-88-99-aa-bb-cc-dd.
1250 * PXELINUX: Fix bug involving non-IP-based config file names.
1251 * SYSLINUX: New installer for WinNT-based systems, from Lars
1252 Munch.
1253 * MEMDISK: Fix handling of memory region overlap when
1254 decompressing. Thanks to Mikhail Kupchik for identifying
1255 the problem.
1257 Changes in 2.04:
1258 * ALL: Reclaim even more low memory by observing that
1259 comboot_seg == real_mode_seg is perfectly fine, and by the
1260 fact that the 1000h segment managed to get unused in all
1261 derivatives...
1262 * PXELINUX: Attempt to negotiate full Ethernet-sized blocks
1263 (1468 bytes) using the blksize option.
1264 * SYSLINUX: Resurrect the old no-mtools version of the
1265 installer, although as a root-only tool. Some distributors
1266 have indicated that they need a small standalone installer.
1267 * MEMDISK: Fix a memory offset computation error when
1268 installing compressed disks which generally would cause
1269 1 MB of memory to be wasted.
1270 * MEMDISK: Fix installing the E820 memory map. Calling
1271 INT 15h AX=0E820h with MEMDISK 2.03 loaded would give a
1272 completely corrupt memory map.
1273 * SYSLINUX: Make libsyslinux a dynamic library, so that it can
1274 be updated separately from client programs. The whole idea,
1275 after all, is to enable alternate programs to become
1276 syslinux installers.
1277 * Include an rpm spec file in the distribution, so rpmbuild
1278 -ta works.
1280 Changes in 2.03:
1281 * Actually support comment lines in the configuration file.
1282 * PXELINUX: Try to resolve some problems with stack switches.
1283 * PXELINUX: Handle PXE stacks with broken routing.
1284 With these workarounds, the remote install PXE boot floppy
1285 (rbfg.exe) from Argon Technologies should work correctly.
1286 * Fix problems with Perl scripts in UTF-8 locales.
1287 * You probably need NASM 0.98.34 or later to compile this
1288 version. 0.98.36 is recommended.
1289 * MEMDISK: Now supports gzip compressed images.
1291 Changes in 2.02:
1292 * SYSLINUX: Security flaws have been found in the SYSLINUX
1293 installer when running setuid root. Rewrite the SYSLINUX
1294 installer so it uses mtools instead. It therefore now
1295 requires mtools (specifically mcopy and mattrib) to exist on
1296 your system, but it will not require root privileges and
1297 SHOULD NOT be setuid.
1299 Changes in 2.01:
1300 * MEMDISK: Fix memory sizing bug when the ramdisk crosses the
1301 16 MB boundary.
1302 * MEMDISK: Add a "pause" option to stop immediately before
1303 booting, to read off the messages.
1304 * MEMDISK: Support disk images with DOSEMU headers.
1305 * Update the mkdiskimage script to handle newer mtools
1306 versions, and be able to generate disk images with DOSEMU
1307 headers (controlled by the -d option).
1308 * Fix the COM32 sample program.
1309 * PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Fix some COMBOOT API calls.
1310 * PXELINUX: Doc fix.
1311 * Build SYSLINUX into a small library for encapsulation into
1312 other programs (however, please keep in mind this is a GPL'd
1313 library.)
1314 * SYSLINUX: Make installer work with "owner" in /etc/fstab.
1315 * SYSLINUX: Fix issue with working on nonpartitioned hard disk
1316 devices. THIS CONFIGURATION IS NOT RECOMMENDED.
1318 Changes in 2.00:
1319 * ALL: Add support for "COM32" (32-bit COMBOOT) images.
1320 * ALL: Add an API for COMBOOT/COM32 images. See comboot.doc
1321 for details. There is a C development environment for
1322 COM32 being created; it should be ready at some point in
1323 the future.
1324 * Fix mbr.asm so that it actually works.
1325 * SYSLINUX: The syslinux installer *SHOULD* now be safe to
1326 run setuid root.
1327 * PXELINUX: Fix bug where PXELINUX would override random
1328 chunks of the UNDI code segment! Thanks to Kevin Tran for
1329 finding this bug.
1330 * ISOLINUX: Fix a bug related to slashes in pathnames.
1331 * ISOLINUX: Fix a bug in handling initrds over 128 MB.
1332 * ALL: Make the <Ctrl-V> key print out the version; this is
1333 to help debugging.
1334 * Add a small script, mkdiskimage, to create a DOS-formatted
1335 hard disk image using mtools. This may be useful in
1336 conjunction with MEMDISK.
1337 * ISOLINUX: Search for a /boot/isolinux directory as well as
1338 /isolinux.
1339 * ALL: Fix a bug related to very long configuration files.
1340 * PXELINUX: Work around a NASM bug which would result in no
1341 delay before reset if an error occurs.
1343 Changes in 1.76:
1344 * ISOLINUX: Remove code no longer used which caused hangs on
1345 some Toshiba laptops.
1347 Changes in 1.75:
1348 * ALL: NASM 0.98.32 or later is now required to build
1349 SYSLINUX from sources.
1350 * SYSLINUX: put back in the workaround for the BIOS floppy
1351 table. This seems to be a requirement for "extended" floppy
1352 formats to work correctly.
1353 * SYSLINUX: No longer warn if one is trying to boot on a 286
1354 or older. The above BIOS workaround no longer fits if the
1355 requirement to use only 8086-compatible code in the early
1356 boot is maintained. It made sense in 1994, but in 2002 a
1357 286 or older is a museum object.
1358 * SYSLINUX: Use a downright bizarre, stateful algorithm to try
1359 to guess the maximum transfer size. I am *hoping* this will
1360 cut down on the number of systems for which -s is required
1361 to work at any acceptable speed.
1362 * ISOLINUX: Add a few more workarounds for various broken El
1363 Torito BIOSes.
1364 * Make sure .depend files aren't accidentally packed...
1365 * ALL: Fix bugs in the extension-detect code; this caused
1366 files like COMBOOT images and CD boot sectors to be
1367 mis-identified as Linux kernels and rejected.
1368 * ALL: Fix the return from COMBOOT.
1369 * ALL: Do some of the early groundwork for supporting DOS
1370 system calls in COMBOOT.
1371 * Get rid of unnecessary "near" directives, making the code
1372 bigger.
1373 * PXELINUX: Put the PXE stack back in the init state before
1374 invoking a chain-loaded NBP.
1375 * PXELINUX: Actually found the combination of calls that
1376 allows some (most?) PXE 2+ stacks to be unloaded from memory
1377 properly.
1378 * PXELINUX: Add "keeppxe" command-line option to disable
1379 the standard unloading of the PXE stack.
1381 Changes in 1.74:
1382 * SYSLINUX: fix bug that would cause valid kernel images to be
1383 labelled "invalid".
1385 Changes in 1.73:
1386 * Work on removing gratuitous differences between modules.
1387 * Break up the source in common and module-specific files.
1388 * PXELINUX: Allow chaining of other PXE NBPs.
1389 * ISOLINUX: Allow loading "CD-ROM boot sectors".
1390 * ALL: generalize the definition of a boot sector/NBP.
1392 Changes in 1.72:
1393 * PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Fix bugs in the new core code.
1395 Changes in 1.71:
1396 * Fix a "brown paper bag" class bug in the new core code.
1398 Changes in 1.70:
1399 * Major code restructuring.
1400 * Relax the conventional memory limits somewhat.
1401 * MEMDISK: Set up the "version number string" pointer in the
1402 header correctly.
1403 * SYSLINUX: Fix, again, "the bug that won't die": the use of
1404 the offset parameter with the SYSLINUX installer.
1405 * SYSLINUX: Fix possible superblock corruption problem in the
1406 SYSLINUX installer.
1408 Changes in 1.67:
1409 * Handle bug in the location of initrd.
1411 Changes in 1.66:
1412 * MEMDISK: Make compile with newer versions of gcc.
1414 Changes in 1.65:
1415 * ISOLINUX: Support booting disk image files (to boot DOS or
1416 other non-Linux operating systems), *IF* the BIOS works
1417 correctly; unfortunately many BIOSes apparently don't.
1418 * Support Linux boot protocol version 2.03 (explicitly
1419 specify the initrd address limit.)
1420 * Handle small "pseudo-kernels"; images that use the Linux
1421 kernel boot protocols but are less than 64K in size.
1422 * MEMDISK: New subsystem; this is a driver which allows
1423 legacy OSes to boot using an in-memory simulated disk.
1424 See memdisk/memdisk.doc for more info.
1425 * PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Correctly handle files larger than 65535
1426 blocks (32 MB for PXELINUX, 128 MB for ISOLINUX.)
1427 * PXELINUX: Make a best-effort attempt at freeing all memory
1428 claimed. From the looks of it, it will fail on most PXE
1429 stacks.
1431 Changes in 1.64:
1432 * Limited support for hardware flow control when using a
1433 serial port console.
1434 * Support specifying the serial port I/O address explicitly.
1435 * Make DOS installer hopefully behave more nicely when used on
1436 recent Windows versions.
1437 * Fix returning to text mode when a font has been specified.
1438 * Attempt to detect missing serial port hardware and disable
1439 the serial port if there is nothing there.
1441 Changes in 1.63:
1442 * Make the ppmtolss16 program handle color conversion more
1443 correctly.
1444 * Clean up "make install" target, honour INSTALLROOT if it
1445 exists.
1446 * SYSLINUX: Fix stack-smash bug identified by Steffen
1447 Winterfeldt.
1448 * Hopefully fix return-to-text-mode on some graphics cards.
1449 * ISOLINUX: Bug workaround for Award BIOS 4.51, and perhaps
1450 other buggy BIOSes as well.
1452 Changes in 1.62:
1453 * PXELINUX: Allow the DHCP server to override the
1454 configuration file name and pathname prefix, using
1455 "site-specific" DHCP options.
1456 * PXELINUX: Documentation fixes.
1457 * PXELINUX: Fix the "ipappend" option; the last two values
1458 were reversed vs. what the kernel expected.
1459 * Introduce a way to return to text mode once we are already
1460 in graphics mode. This may be useful for F-key help
1461 screens.
1462 * Fix several bugs in the way return to text mode was handled.
1464 Changes in 1.61:
1465 * ISOLINUX: Support full pathname searches. Max length for a
1466 pathname is 255 characters. As a result, only 64 "label"
1467 statements are supported in ISOLINUX.
1468 * PXELINUX: Max filename length extended to 63 characters.
1470 Changes in 1.60:
1471 * Add support for graphical splash screens.
1472 * Add mode control characters, which allows you to control
1473 message display output depending on output mode (text,
1474 graphics, or serial port.)
1475 * ISOLINUX: New program, which boots Linux from a CD-ROM
1476 without using floppy emulation mode. See isolinux.doc for
1477 more details.
1478 * PXELINUX: Don't search for boot sector file types, since
1479 they don't work anyway.
1480 * SYSLINUX: Document the LOCK command for Win9x, and the error
1481 dialog box for WinNT/2K.
1483 Changes in 1.54:
1484 * PXELINUX: Fix code for finding !PXE from PXENV+. This was
1485 due to a spec bug; match the most recent spec since that
1486 seems to be what implementations actually do.
1487 * SYSLINUX: Add some smarts to the boot sector, which
1488 hopefully should reduce the number of systems which require
1489 stupid mode ("syslinux -s").
1490 * PXELINUX: Document further some of the pathologies with old
1491 PXE stacks.
1492 * When specifying a "default" command line, no longer
1493 automatically appent "auto". See the "DEFAULT" command in
1494 syslinux.doc for more information.
1495 * PXELINUX: Clean up the allocation of local socket numbers.
1497 Changes in 1.53:
1498 * PXELINUX: Rename pxelinux.bin to pxelinux.0, to match what
1499 most PXE servers seem to expect.
1500 * PXELINUX: Update the DHCP/boot server setup documentation.
1501 * PXELINUX: Support new "localboot" option for "label"
1502 sections.
1503 * PXELINUX: More robust parsing of DHCP/boot server packets.
1504 * PXELINUX: Include a small utility program "gethostip" to
1505 compute hexadecimal IP addresses.
1507 Changes in 1.52:
1508 * PXELINUX: Fix bugs introduced by new A20 code. (SYSLINUX
1509 has also been changed for code consistency reasons, but I'm
1510 pretty sure the changes are don't care on SYSLINUX.)
1511 * Documentation updates.
1512 * PXELINUX: Add "ipappend" option to generate an ip= option to
1513 the kernel.
1515 Changes in 1.51:
1516 * PXELINUX: Not all PXE stacks fill in the IP address for a
1517 type 3 cached info query. Use a type 2 cached info query
1518 for this information (only.)
1519 * Yet another attempt at A20 coding. Now support BIOS call
1520 15:2401 as well, and handle machines which always have A20
1521 on separately.
1522 * Support memory detection using INT 15h, AX=0E820h. BIOS
1523 manufacturers have apparently gotten sloppy about keeping
1524 INT 15h, AX=0E801h working properly.
1525 * Don't issue <CR><LF> onto the serial port when we're doing
1526 screen wraparound.
1528 Changes in 1.50:
1529 * Yet another A20-code update. It seems some "legacy-free"
1530 machines and embedded gear simply don't have a KBC to talk
1531 to, and that waiting for one will wait forever. Sigh.
1533 Changes in 1.49:
1534 * SYSLINUX: Implement a hack for BIOS drivers which hog significant
1535 chunks of low memory during boot. (Note: PXELINUX already
1536 had this modification. SYSLINUX does still require that the
1537 low 512K is available; PXELINUX requires 384K. Machines
1538 with a physical memory hole in the low 640K cannot boot
1539 Linux no matter what.) Depending what the reason is for the
1540 memory hole, a new kernel (2.4.0-test3-pre3 or later) may be
1541 required.
1542 * SYSLINUX: Default installer binary now compiled against
1543 glibc 2.1. If this is inappropriate for your system and you
1544 still want to use the offical version of SYSLINUX, please
1545 follow the instructions in "distrib.doc" to rebuild the
1546 installer.
1547 * SYSLINUX: Linux installer program now supports -o <offset>
1548 option which does a loopback mount with the
1549 -o loop,offset=<> option. Useful to run SYSLINUX on an
1550 individual partition of a whole-harddisk image.
1551 * Include the source code to a Master Boot Record (MBR)
1552 functionally equivalent to the one installed DOS except it
1553 includes EBIOS support, and should be resistant to geometry
1554 changes. The MBR code is public domain.
1555 * PXELINUX: Fix "double p" bug: if the tftp prefix was null,
1556 all filenames would get a "p" preprended, e.g.
1557 "ppxelinux.cfg" and "pvmlinux".
1559 Changes in 1.48:
1560 * PXELINUX: Workaround for PXE ROMs based on the Intel PXE PDK
1561 3.0 build 071 and earlier: missing !PXE structure pointer.
1562 * PXELINUX: Handle larger BOOTP/DHCP packages.
1563 * PXELINUX: The command line passing was broken; fix.
1564 * PXELINUX: Make COMBOOT images work.
1565 * PXELINUX: Documentation on how to make booting work using
1566 the PDK 3.0-derived clients, which aren't so generous as to
1567 allow booting with only "PXEClient" specified.
1569 Changes in 1.47:
1570 * PXELINUX: RFC 1123 states that a TFTP implementation MUST
1571 use adaptive timeout, "at least an exponential backoff of
1572 retransmission timeout is necessary." Implement a very
1573 simple exponential backoff for retransmits.
1574 * PXELINUX: Updated documentation, including pointer to new
1575 TFTP server.
1576 * PXELINUX: When sending ERROR due to bad OACK, use the proper
1577 destination port number (why are TFTP port numbers so odd?)
1578 * PXELINUX: If the boot dies in the middle somewhere,
1579 eventually give up and reset the machine (unattended
1580 operation.)
1582 Changes in 1.46:
1583 * New program PXELINUX to do network booting using a
1584 PXE-compliant (Pre-Execution Environment) network booting
1585 PROM. See pxelinux.doc for details.
1587 Changes in 1.45:
1588 * Serial console support. See syslinux.doc for details.
1590 Changes in 1.44:
1591 * Change HIGHMEM_MAX to 38000000h to (hopefully) avoid the
1592 kernel stepping on it; 3f000000h was apparently a higher
1593 limit than the kernel used!
1595 Changes in 1.43:
1596 * Add sys2ansi.pl script to display the contents of a
1597 colorized SYSLINUX file.
1598 * Changed the io_delay once again, after a report that the
1599 old delay port causes hangs on some systems.
1601 Changes in 1.42:
1602 * Frob the "fast A20 gate" port as well as the keyboard
1603 controller; will this help systems with problems?
1604 * Be even more paranoid about A20, unfortunately even this
1605 seems to be not paranoid enough... what I don't understand
1606 is that if there is hardware out there *this broken*, how
1607 can it run Linux at all? Report an error message rather
1608 than hang forever if A20 is stuck.
1609 * Include some intermediate files in the distribution, plus
1610 provide a "make installer" target for distributors to relink
1611 the install programs only. I would prefer the syslinux boot
1612 loader proper to be "binary clean" for debuggablity -- use
1613 "make clean ; make installer" to rebuild the installers only.
1615 Changes in 1.41:
1616 * Don't get confused by directories, volume labels, or VFAT
1617 long names.
1618 * Use INT 15h, AX=0E801h to query memory size before trying
1619 INT 15h, AH=88h. This not only provides more headroom
1620 between the kernel and the initrd on large-memory machines,
1621 but it appears some recent BIOSes actually have started
1622 returning garbage for the AH=88h (older) call.
1623 * Trust high memory beyond the 15 MB mark if the user has
1624 specified it, or if obtained with INT 15h, AH=0E801h (with
1625 no memory holes above 1 MB.)
1627 Changes in 1.40:
1628 * Increase A20M delay and put in a test to avoid problems on
1629 certain IBM Thinkpads (thanks to Donnie Barnes of RedHat
1630 for vital info on this one.)
1631 * Support COMBOOT style boot command images.
1632 * Support chain loading (foreign operating systems, e.g. DOS).
1633 * Include a new "copybs" DOS utility to copy a boot sector to
1634 a file (under Linux, use "dd".)
1635 * Fix the DOS installer to work for disks over 32 MB.
1636 * SYSLINUX should now handle disks with more than 65536 tracks.
1638 Changes in 1.37:
1639 * Fix a bug that caused "label" statements in syslinux.cfg to
1640 not be handled properly.
1641 * Updated the documentation. Among other things, we now allow
1642 up to 128 "label" statements.
1644 Changes in 1.36:
1645 * Fix for booting old (pre-initrd) kernels.
1646 * It seems at least some versions of OS/2 doesn't set up all
1647 the fields in the superblock correctly. Account for that.
1648 * Fix bug that caused boot failure when using the mem= option.
1650 Changes in 1.35:
1651 * Loading from partitions now should work properly. (Actually
1652 tested, this time. You should even be able to dd a floppy
1653 to a partition and boot from it.)
1654 * Removed large workaround code for an alleged ancient BIOS
1655 bug I have never actually seen. The -s option should work
1656 on those machines, anyway.
1657 * Support for simple keyboard remappings, same as used by
1658 LILO (once again to support localization.) The program
1659 keytab-lilo.pl from the LILO distribution included to
1660 generate such maps.
1661 * Added a "safe, slow and stupid" (-s) option to the
1662 installers. This option will lobotomize the boot sector to
1663 hopefully work on even very buggy BIOSes.
1665 Changes in 1.34:
1666 * Ability to load a VGA font on bootup (for localized Linux
1667 distributions.)
1669 Changes in 1.33:
1670 * Bug fix in the Linux installer.
1671 * Added a workaround for a bug in certain AMI/Intel BIOSes
1672 when booting from CD-ROM.
1673 * Documentation changes.
1675 Changes in 1.32:
1676 * FAT16 filesystems are now supported.
1678 Changes in 1.31:
1679 * Now compiles under Linux, using NASM, rather than using
1680 Turbo Assembler under DOS. See http://www.cryogen.com/Nasm
1681 for information about NASM.
1682 * Linux-hosted SYSLINUX installer, as well as a
1683 rewritten DOS installer (now is written in assembler, so we
1684 don't need Turbo C.)
1686 Changes in 1.30:
1687 * Added support for loading bzImage and initrd loading, and made
1688 SYSLINUX new-setup-code aware (SYSLINUX 1.30 id=0x31).
1689 * Added LILO-style kernel labels; see the LABEL and IMPLICIT
1690 keywords in README file.
1691 * Added support for colorization of intro and help screens.
1692 * The vga= option is now handled correctly.
1693 * Massive rewrite of large chunks of the code in order to
1694 support the first two new features.
1696 Changes in 1.20:
1697 * Added simple online help at the "boot:" prompt.
1698 * Removed 2880K image as I no longer have access to such a
1699 floppy drive. (Donations accepted!!)
1700 * Decided to distribute the source in a subdirectory rather
1701 than in a nested zipfile.
1703 Changes in 1.11:
1704 * Removed a sanity check which would cause booting to fail on
1705 Phoenix BIOS version 4.03. Apparently this BIOS is buggy.
1707 Changes in 1.10:
1708 * Added configuration file SYSLINUX.CFG. This file contains all
1709 configurable options, and can be edited from any OS which can
1710 access an MS-DOS filesystem; there is no longer a need to run
1711 SYSLINUX.EXE except to write the boot sector.
1712 * Default command line now given by "default" line in config
1713 file.
1714 * LINUXMSG.TXT and BOOTMSG.TXT hard-coded file names replaced by
1715 "display" and "prompt" lines in config file.
1716 * LILO-style option appending now supported ("append" line in
1717 config file).
1718 * Prompt timeout is now supported ("timeout" line in config
1719 file). The timeout is cancelled when anything is typed on the
1720 command line.
1721 * Pressing <ESC> or <Ctrl-C> at the Loading... stage now aborts
1722 the kernel loading in progress and returns the user to the
1723 boot: prompt.
1724 * The installer now automatically sets the READONLY flag on
1725 LDLINUX.SYS.
1726 * Added 2880K disk image.
1728 Changes in 1.03:
1729 * Fixed bug that would prevent booting from double-density
1730 floppies and other DOS filesystems with multiple sectors per
1731 cluster.
1732 * Added 720K disk image.
1733 * Changed default kernel name on disk images to LINUX.
1735 Changes in 1.02:
1736 * Fixed bug that would garble the command line on recent kernels
1737 with more than 4 sectors of setup code (this wasn't really a
1738 *bug*; rather, a kernel change broke the code. Unfortunately
1739 the Linux boot interface is still sorely undocumented).
1740 * Added BOOTMSG.TXT file support (message file which does not
1741 force display of the boot prompt).
1743 Changes in 1.01:
1744 * Fixed bug on some (most?) 386 BIOSes would require two boot
1745 attempts.