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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 3.84:
6 * SYSLINUX: make the DOS installer work for MS-DOS 7.x/8.x
7 (Win9x/ME) again.
8 * HDT: updated to version 0.3.5.
10 Changes in 3.83:
11 * PXELINUX: clear memory before handing over to a chainloaded
12 NBP. This may help avoid a bug in Windows RIS.
13 * PXELINUX: fix localboot after NBP chainloading on certain
14 BIOSes (including ASUS A8N-E, but possibly others.)
15 * chain.c32: support chainloaded bootloaders on ISOLINUX.
16 * PXELINUX: allow filenames up to 251 characters.
17 * MEMDISK: fix problems booting from USB on Thinkpads, and
18 possibly other machines or hardware combinations.
19 * isohybrid: fix the -id option.
20 * HDT: updated to version 0.3.4.
21 * MEMDISK: the stack size is now configurable, with the stack=
22 option.
23 * Simple menu: fix Ctrl-W (word erase) in command-line edit.
24 * Simple menu: fix crash on some platforms.
25 * Gfxboot: fixes to the configuration file parsing.
26 * PXELINUX: add a tool to override specific DHCP options via
27 values hardcoded in the pxelinux.0 file. These hardcoded
28 values can be either "before DHCP" (defaults if DHCP do not
29 provide values), or "after DHCP" (overrides DHCP). The tool
30 pxelinux-options can be used to set these options. This
31 feature does not apply to gpxelinux.0; when used with gPXE
32 this is better handled by modifying the embedded script.
34 Changes in 3.82:
35 * isohybrid: fix the -partok logic for loading from a partition.
36 * ISOLINUX: deal with systems which return from INT 13h with
37 interrupts disabled.
38 * Do not invoke the idle handler during large file loads.
39 * Simple menu: make ONTIMEOUT work with MENU HIDDEN.
40 * PXELINUX: handle TFTP servers which have extra NULs at the
41 end of an OACK packet.
43 Changes in 3.81:
44 * Shuffler: fix bug in real-mode entry. This affected a
45 number of modules, probably in relatively unimportant ways,
46 but it completely broke linux.c32.
47 * Improved performance.
48 * Attempt to halt the processor while idle. This can cause
49 bad reponsiveness when using a serial console especially for
50 automated input; if that ends up being a problem, use the
51 new "NOHALT 1" configuration command.
52 * linux.c32 now suppresses all messages if the "quiet" flag is
53 specified.
54 * isohybrid: add a variety of options, and a help message.
55 * ISOLINUX: fix booting in hybrid mode when CBIOS is used.
56 This unfortunately means that the isohybrid handoff protocol
57 has changed, so the isohybrid utility must version-match
58 isolinux.bin.
59 * Drop support for ACPI 3 extended memory flags.
60 * Menu system: don't set the autocr flag on the serial
61 console.
62 * altmbr: fix handling of logical partitions.
63 * altmbr: cap at 439 bytes so the partition select byte isn't
64 part of the file.
66 Changes in 3.80:
67 * New shuffler mechanism and API.
68 * Rewritten mboot.c32 module.
69 * The syslinux_boot_linux() function has been simplified.
70 * Don't hang trying to boot a "menu quit" label from the CLI.
71 * Fix problem with boot-once "sticking" on some BIOSes.
72 * isohybrid: fix problem with images over 2 GB in size.
73 * APM poweroff module (poweroff.com) by Sebastian Herbszt.
74 * ISOLINUX: fix the handling of large directories. Bug found
75 and fixed by Steffen Winterfeldt.
77 Changes in 3.75:
78 * PXELINUX: fix the "keeppxe" option, which was broken in
79 3.74.
80 * MEMDISK: correct the extraction of geometry information from
81 the MBR of a hard disk image, again broken in 3.74.
82 * extlinux(1) man page from Brian Pellin.
83 * Simple menu: MENU SAVE is now controllable on a menu-by-menu
84 or entry-by-entry basis.
85 * gPXELINUX: fix interrupt-disabling bug.
86 * HDT: fix lockup on machines with certain PCI configurations.
88 Changes in 3.74:
89 * New UI directive, which allows a more natural way to specify
90 a menu system (or not.) With the UI directive specifying
91 the menu system, the DEFAULT directive can be used to select
92 the default entry inside the menus.
93 * kbdmap.c32: new module to load a new keyboard map
94 dynamically.
95 * isohybrid: workaround bug in some versions of binutils.
96 * Fix issue with the placement of the initrd on some machines.
97 * ifcpu64: fix handling of less than three arguments.
98 * Fix bug in the shuffle library when dealing with a very
99 large number of fragments.
100 * Documentation fixes by Vicente Jimenez Aguilar.
101 * gPXE updated to version 0.9.7.
102 * hdt.c32: Hardware Detection Tool, an interactive hardware
103 analyzer module by Erwan Velu.
104 * MEMDISK: enable automatic determination of the disk geometry
105 for a large floppy disk image if (and only if) it is
106 formatted with a FAT filesystem.
107 * SYSLINUX: fix the handling of .bss files on FAT12/16.
108 * Suppress the Loading ... message if "quiet" is specified on
109 the kernel command line.
110 * Fix the use of "CONSOLE 0" with menu.c32.
111 * Allow COM32 modules to be aware of all memory even in the
112 presence of a memory hole. The "linux.c32" module can be
113 used to load a kernel (or memdisk) plus large initrd on
114 such a system.
115 * MBR: produce alternate MBR variants which force the drive
116 number to hd0 (_f variants), or force the drive number to
117 hd0 if the Ctrl key is pressed (_c variants.) Furthermore,
118 add an MBR variant (altmbr*.bin) which ignores the active
119 flag and instead boots the partition number specified in the
120 byte at offset 439 decimal.
121 * Add IPAPPEND strings to com32 modules, especially needed for
122 linux.c32.
123 * New MENU SAVE directive which saves the latest menu
124 selection until the next boot. Currently only implemented for
125 EXTLINUX.
126 * gfxboot.com: *experimental* interface module to Steffen
127 Winterfeldt's "gfxboot" graphical front end
128 (http://gfxboot.sourceforge.net/). Module by Sebastian Herbszt.
130 Changes in 3.73:
131 * Upgrade gPXE to release version 0.9.5.
132 * Fix a number of build errors on various platforms.
133 * Handle systems with E820 "extended attributes" per ACPI 3.
134 Someone "cleverly" decided to change the E820 spec in a
135 backwards-incompatible manner!
136 * MEMDISK: default to "safeint".
137 * Adopt the moniker "The Syslinux Project", standard proper
138 noun capitalization, to refer to the project as a whole.
139 Thus, reserve the all-caps "SYSLINUX" to refer to the FAT
140 loader.
141 * mboot.c32: add "-solaris" option to pass DHCP information to
142 the Solaris kernel; required for automatic Solaris boot
143 without using Solaris' pxeboot program.
144 * config.c32: trivial COM32 module to restart Syslinux with
145 another configuration file from the command line (equivalent
146 to the CONFIG command in the configuratin file.)
148 Changes in 3.72:
149 * Include the pxechain.com module from Jeffery Hutzelman at
150 Carnegie Mellon University. This allows chaining another
151 PXE boot program while changing the DHCP packet passed to
152 it.
153 * Reorganize the Makefile system.
154 * Major PCI core cleanups and other source cleanup.
155 * gPXE code updated.
156 * Try to avoid memory-snooping attacks on passwords. Note
157 that if someone has root on the box, they generally don't
158 need to compromise the boot loader...
159 * ISOLINUX: fix crash when given a zero-length file.
160 * sdi.c32: support gzipped SDI images.
161 * ISOLINUX: support generating images which can be either
162 a CD-ROM or a hard disk (USB disk, etc.) See
163 doc/isolinux.txt for more information.
164 * Remote gdb support for COM32 modules; patch from Stefan
165 Hajnoczi.
166 * Support beeps in F-key help in the simple menu system.
167 * Tab display of labels, based on a patch from Sebastian
168 Herbszt. Can be disabled with the NOCOMPLETE configuration
169 command.
170 * "menu default" can now be specified after "menu begin", to
171 indicate that a specific submenu should be the default entry.
173 Changes in 3.71:
174 * Workaround for a VESA BIOS which tries to make DOS system
175 calls(!!)
176 * Simple menu: fix navigation around disabled entries
177 (or at least try to...)
178 * EXTLINUX: proper error message when confused about mount
179 point.
180 * MEMDISK: be smarter about incompletely disabled floppies in
181 the BIOS and about being the only floppy.
182 * Optionally allow initrd to be specified on a separate line
183 rather than as part of the "append" line. This is not
184 recommended, but apparently makes life easier for some
185 tools.
186 * SYSLINUX: if no config file is present, set the current
187 directory to the root directory (Sebastian Herbszt).
188 * chain.c32: option "hide" to support hiding and unhiding of
189 primary partitions on the boot drive with DOS, Win, or OS/2
190 partition types (01, 04, 06, 07, 0b, 0c, 0e).
191 * Unbreak the KBDMAP command (broken in 3.70).
192 * EXTLINUX: fix the handling of the ADV when using CBIOS.
193 * ifcpu64.c32: simple COM32 module to select a 32- or 64-bit
194 kernel (and optionally 32-bit kernels with or without PAE.)
195 Eventually we want a scripting language for this
196 kind of stuff; a Lua module is under development.
197 * Fix parsing of the SERIAL command without a baud rate
198 specified.
199 * chain.c32: error out when try to boot an unbootable
200 partition.
201 * SYSLINUX: when building the Win32 installer, search for
202 MinGW under a large number of possible names.
204 Changes in 3.70:
205 * PXELINUX: Support enhanced capabilities when running on top
206 of gPXE (http://www.etherboot.org/). In particular, support
207 URL-style syntax for filenames, and any protocol that gPXE
208 supports (except, currently, iSCSI and AoE.) This feature
209 is currently highly experimental.
210 * Substantial infrastructure changes to support files whose
211 length aren't known at open time (typically network
212 connections.) Please note that the semantics of some of the
213 comboot APIs have changed slightly; please see doc/comboot.txt.
214 * PXELINUX: We no longer require a TFTP server which supports
215 the tsize option for all transfers.
216 * PXELINUX: Integrate with the gPXE source base; unified image
217 now included as "gpxelinux.0".
218 * The source tree has been restructured; files that were
219 previously in the root have moved into the core, dos, gpxe,
220 and utils directories.
221 * "make install", "make netinstall", and "make extbootinstall"
222 have been updated massively. "make install-all" now installs
223 all three.
224 * Change default dir for auxiliary files from
225 /usr/lib/syslinux to /usr/share/syslinux.
226 * SYSLINUX: VFAT long filename support.
227 * MEMDISK: Any image less than 4096K (4 MB) is treated as a
228 floppy disk. The geometry-guessing code will recognize all
229 common extended formats, but it is still possible some very
230 exotic formats need geometry specification. Large floppies
231 and very small harddisks still need explicit specification.
232 * chain.c32: option "swap" to support swapping of BIOS drive
233 numbers. This is necessary to boot certain operating systems
234 (DOS, Windows) from a secondary drive.
235 * chain.c32: option "file=" to support loading a boot file from
236 the SYSLINUX filesystem instead of loading the boot sector
237 from the drive.
238 * chain.c32: option "seg=" to control the load location.
239 * chain.c32: option "ntldr=" as a shorthand for "seg=0x2000
240 file="; use this to load one of WinNT's loaders:
242 chain.c32 hd0 1 ntldr=/MiniNT/setupldr.bin
244 Note that the file needs to be in the SYSLINUX filesystem.
245 * chain.32: options "freedos=" and "msdos="/"pcdos=" as
246 shorthands for "seg=0x60 file=" and "seg=0x70 file="
247 respectively; use this to load FreeDOS's kernel.sys, MS-DOS's
248 io.sys or PC-DOS's ibmbio.sys.
249 * Change to the A20 algorithm which *MIGHT* help systems that
250 have systems which freeze when Syslinux is used with USB
251 keyboards. Note that this has been hard do verify, so I
252 would greatly appreciate feedback on it.
253 * Complex menu system: unbreak menus which has unnamed
254 submenus, like complex.c.
255 * Fix newline on the serial port for some com32 modules.
256 * chain.c32: support "boot" as the drive specification,
257 indicating the drive from which it was booted
258 (for syslinux/extlinux).
259 * SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: support "localboot" with the same feature
260 set as ISOLINUX.
261 * Add an experimental MBR for GPT partition tables.
262 * Use $(CC) when determining compile flags.
263 * chain.c32: fix booting from logical partitions (Sergey
264 Vlasov.)
266 Changes in 3.63:
267 * Fix errors in the PCI and DMI detection modules (Erwan Velu,
268 Sebastian Herbszt).
269 * Fix host dependencies and other issues in the build system.
270 * PXELINUX: Allow class E addresses as unicast.
271 * sdi.c32: module to load Microsoft System Deployment Images.
272 For additional information, please see:
273 http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms838543.aspx
274 * EXTLINUX: Correct reading directories with deleted entries.
275 * Shuffle library: correct the handling of certain geometries
276 (an upward move with source material blocking the move); as
277 required by sdi.c32 but theoretically possible for other
278 formats as well.
279 * Add "make netinstall" to install /tftpboot.
280 * Fix some documentation files that didn't get moved/renamed.
282 Changes in 3.62:
283 * Clean up garbage after "aborted." message.
284 * Clean up memdump.com filenames.
285 * Support SHA256 and SHA512 encrypted passwords.
286 * The shuffle library now can generate chained descriptors,
287 thus allowing pretty much arbitrarily complex memory maps.
288 * Handle command lines up to 2047 characters, the current
289 Linux kernel limit.
290 * vesamenu: support systems without linear framebuffer support
291 (sigh, what is this, 1993?) and 15-bit RGB modes.
292 * Move the label storage (for the command-line interface) to
293 high memory, removing the size limit and freeing up 64K of
294 low memory.
295 * Get rid of 4096-entry limit in the simple menu system.
296 * New hierarchial submenu support: see MENU BEGIN, MENU END,
297 MENU GOTO in doc/menu.txt.
298 * MENU QUIT allows creating a menu entry for returning to the
299 command line.
300 * ISOLINUX: Work around bug in certain Adaptec BIOSes,
301 patch by Bruce Robson.
302 * pngtopnm dependency removed from samples/ directory.
303 * Text documentation files (in doc/) renamed *.doc -> *.txt.
305 Changes in 3.61:
306 * EXTLINUX: fix crash when accessing an empty file.
307 * elf.c32: If a PHDR segment is present, load it.
308 * Fix SHA-1 and MD5 passwords.
309 * ISOLINUX: fix booting when mastered without
310 mkisofs -boot-info-table (broken since 3.50, sigh...)
311 * Handle BIOSes which emit multiple contiguous valid
312 memory regions in the e820 map.
314 Changes in 3.60:
315 * Support for "auxilliary data vector", a small amount of
316 writable storage. Currently only supported for EXTLINUX,
317 but the infrastructure is there for the other derivatives,
318 assuming a suitable storage location can be found.
319 * EXTLINUX: boot-once support (--once, --clear-once, and
320 --reset-adv).
321 * A command is now required to the EXTLINUX installer, i.e. at
322 least one of --install, --update, --once, --clear-once, or
323 --reset-adv.
325 Changes in 3.55:
326 * PXELINUX: as per RFC 5071, PXELINUX no longer requires the
327 use of the magic cookie option (208) for unencapsulated
328 options. Currently it does not require it for
329 vendor-encapsulated options (vendor-option-space) either,
330 but that MAY be reverted in the future if it causes
331 problems.
332 * Documentation text files moved to a common "doc" directory;
333 man pages from the Debian project added to the "man"
334 directory.
335 * Correct bug with self-overlapping memory areas when using
336 the shuffle interface.
338 Changes in 3.54:
339 * Add "menu separator", "menu indent", "menu disabled"
340 (see README.menu).
341 * vesamenu: fix handing of VESA modes with noncontiguous
342 memory buffers. In particular, Qemu/KVM sets up such a mode
343 when Cirrus Logic emulation is enabled (which is the
344 default.)
345 * Support for calling real mode functions using far calls,
346 with argument on the stack. This was implemented to support
347 the BIOS BBS specification, but subsequent experiments show
348 that the at least one of the most common BIOS cores, Award,
349 passes the presence check but doesn't actually implement the
350 functionality.
352 Changes in 3.53:
353 * Fix bugs related to the $PnP BIOS functionality on some
354 platforms.
355 * PXELINUX: Fix the "naked" version of :: (suppress prefix.)
356 * elf.c32: better error messages.
357 * Faster operation under Intel VT virtualization.
358 * PXELINUX: Fix DHCP bootfile option.
359 * mkdiskimage: Support more than 1024 cylinders.
360 * (Hopefully) fix installer on non-x86 platforms.
361 * Fix shuffle_and_boot_rm, used by linux.c32.
362 * Fix shuffle_and_boot_pm on 386/486.
363 * ISOLINUX (at least): fix bss memory overwrite hang.
364 * MBR: Fix booting from logical partitions.
365 * Code cleanups.
367 Changes in 3.52:
368 * Handle capitalized F-key commands in the menu system.
369 * Fix padding error when loading multiple ramdisks.
370 * Workaround for VMware crashing when trying to print a
371 message during early kernel boot (does not seem to work,
372 consider deleting.)
373 * chain.c32: add the ability to search for a specific MBR
374 signature at runtime.
375 * Fall back to the server identity option if the siaddr field
376 in the DHCP header isn't set. This seems to match the
377 behaviour of most PXE stacks.
378 * mkdiskimage: give the generated disk image an MBR signature.
379 * MEMDISK: Fix failures on some BIOSes.
380 * Simple menu system: new "MENU HIDDEN" option to not display
381 the menu unless the user presses a key.
382 * Simple menu system: support MD5-encrypted passwords (modern
383 Unix standard style, with "$1$" prefixes.)
384 * pcitest.c32: now functions as a full "lspci". Thanks to
385 Erwan Velu for this work.
386 * MEMDISK: Make EDD actually work.
387 * ISOLINUX: Fix for certain broken CD-ROM BIOSes which
388 randomly corrupted register FS.
389 * Simple menu system: fix memory overwrite bug that caused
390 some systems to lock up or behave weirdly.
391 * Fix building on 64-bit systems without a 32-bit libc installed.
393 Changes in 3.51:
394 * EXTLINUX: Fix failure to find the configuration file.
396 Changes in 3.50:
397 * New keywords allow the type of file to be specified in the
398 configuration file.
399 * It is now supported to load a different configuration file
400 with the CONFIG keyword.
401 * Fix API call 0x0019 (Read Disk.)
402 * MENU AUTOBOOT, MENU TABMSG, MENU PASSPROMPT allows
403 internationalization of menu messages.
404 * A new feature, TEXT HELP, allows the administrator to set
405 a multi-line help message for individual selections.
406 * Fix API call 0x0012 (Cleanup, shuffle and boot.)
407 * New API call "Cleanup, shuffle and boot to flat protected mode"
408 * New API call "Cleanup, shuffle and boot to real mode",
409 similar to API call 0x0012 but allows arbitrary register setting.
410 * Introduce a library interface for loading arbitrary binary
411 formats with relatively easily understood code. See
412 the elf.c32 module for an example on how to use it.
413 * New module "elf.c32", to load a protected-mode ELF kernel.
414 * MBR (old and new): Fix bug in CHS mode when LBA >
415 65535*sectors.
416 * vesamenu: fix decoding of palettized PNG images.
417 * Update the Linux kernel boot protocol.
418 * PXELINUX: Press Ctrl-N at the boot prompt to read out the
419 network info.
420 * Instead of the (non-existent) MAC, use the client identifier
421 for networks like Infiniband and Firewire/1394.
422 * Add a new INCLUDE command to the core syslinux parser.
423 * Allow binding help text to F11 and F12.
424 * F-key help now available in the simple menu system.
425 * Disabled the polling for ARP during idle. It is simply too
426 slow on some (broken!) PXE stacks.
427 * PXELINUX: also try to fetch the config file based on UUID.
428 * SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: New RAID mode (-r) which calls the BIOS
429 to load the next device (typically the next drive) on boot
430 failure.
432 Changes in 3.36:
433 * MEMDISK: Disable EDD by default on floppy disks. EDD can be
434 enabled with the "edd" option and disabled with "noedd".
435 This (hopefully) should make Ghost work again.
436 * SYSLINUX: "unix" installer now uses Linux ioctls instead of
437 using libfat.
438 * New MBR which can boot from logical partitions.
439 * SYSLINUX: Fix bug in detecting special extensions which was
440 introduced in 3.35 :(
441 * PXELINUX: Unbreak chainbooting FreeBSD (and possibly others.)
443 Changes in 3.35:
444 * MEMDISK: New "safeint" mode.
445 * MEMDISK: Be more compliant with the PnP BIOS spec.
446 * MEMDISK: Turn on EDD support by default.
447 * MEMDISK: Try to work on some machines on which it would not
448 work when there was no floppy drive in the system.
449 * Simple menu system: fix serial console support (broken in
450 3.30).
451 * SYSLINUX: Support subdirectories. Like ISOLINUX, the
452 "current directory" is the directory in which syslinux.cfg
453 is found; this is searched for in the sequence
454 /boot/syslinux, /syslinux, /. As a side benefit, label names
455 like "linux-2.6.18" and "linux-2.6.19" are now supported.
457 To install ldlinux.sys in a subdirectory, pass the -d
458 directory option to the SYSLINUX installer.
460 This work was sponsored by slax.org (thanks, Tomas!)
461 * New API call: read disk.
462 * Invoke ONERROR on initrd load failure.
464 Changes in 3.31:
465 * The simple menu system (menu.c32 and vesamenu.c32) now
466 support loading more than one configuration file at a time,
467 using MENU INCLUDE or by specifying multiple filenames.
468 * The MENU COLOR statement can now control the shadowing mode.
470 Changes in 3.30:
471 * libcom32 extended to support graphics mode and graphical console.
472 * vesamenu.c32, new graphical version of the Simple
473 Menu System, see README.menu.
474 * New com32 modules by Erwan Velu do selection based on CPUID
475 or PCI devices present.
476 * RPM spec: add syslinux-tftpboot module; move syslinux by
477 default to the /usr/share/syslinux directory.
478 * RPM spec: extlinux is now a separate package.
480 Changes in 3.20:
481 * EXTLINUX: New options --install (-i) and --update (-U), to
482 make it clear if a boot loader should be installed or
483 updated. For now, defaults to --install for compatibility;
484 a future version will require one of these options.
485 * New library functions to load and place files in memory.
486 * mboot.c32 bug fixes.
487 * Remove 8 MB kernel size restriction.
488 * Add "klibc" target for building unix/syslinux and
489 extlinux/extlinux with klcc (klibc-1.4.27 or later.)
490 * PXELINUX: Fail (and eventually reboot) if no configuration
491 file was found.
492 * COM32 module by Erwan Velu to make decisions based on DMI
493 info.
494 * Fix issue where going back and forth between menus a lot
495 would cause a hang.
496 * ISOLINUX: Fix bug which made "cd boot sectors" not work.
498 Changes in 3.11:
499 * MEMDISK: Fix bug by which accessing the real floppy disk
500 as B: in MS-DOS was broken.
501 * Simple menu system: allow tweaking of the screen layout.
502 * Simple menu system: better command-line editing, correctly
503 handle command lines above 256 characters.
504 * PXELINUX: revert memory allocation change that caused
505 problems on some network cards.
506 * MEMDISK: Try work around a bug on some BIOSes when no
507 physical floppy disk is present in the system.
508 * Enable the 16550A FIFOs, if present, when doing serial
509 console.
510 * New "totaltimeout" command establishes a timeout without
511 regard for any user input.
512 * Simple menu system: timeout behaviour now more in line with
513 user expectations.
514 * Simple menu system: "ontimeout" should now work correctly.
516 Changes in 3.10:
517 * gcc 4.0.1 compilation fixes.
518 * Add support for querying the PCI BIOS in libcom32
519 (used by ethersel et al.)
520 * Fix PCI handing (ethersel etc) on several old chipsets (and
521 VMWare.)
522 * Try to deal with systems with broken EBIOS.
523 * New API call to do "localboot".
524 * New API call to query features.
525 * New API call to run kernel image, a lower-level call than
526 "run command". See comboot.doc.
527 * Fix for bug in EBIOS code discovered by Arwin Vosselman.
528 * NOESCAPE security fix.
529 * Comments are now recognized even without a space following #.
530 * Fix incorrect handling of mixes of entries with and without
531 MENU PASSWD.
532 * The idle API call now harmlessly returns failure if it is a
533 no-op. That way the caller can decide whether or not to
534 bother invoking it again.
535 * Temporarily disable the idle API call on PXELINUX, due to
536 some platforms on which the idle API call seems to hang; this
537 problem has not yet been debugged.
538 * MEMDISK: the handling of DOSEMU-headered images was broken;
539 fix it.
540 * EXTLINUX: symlinks are now supported.
541 * Simple menu system: N and P now work correctly as hotkeys.
542 * MEMDISK: more BIOS bug workarounds.
544 Changes in 3.09:
545 * gcc4 compilation fix.
546 * <BEL> (Ctrl-G) in message files now causes a beep.
547 * Reduce the command line to 511 characters; 1023 caused
548 memory overflows.
550 Changes in 3.08:
551 * SYSLINUX: Fix performance regression (-s mode always
552 enabled.)
553 * Add API function for idle loop.
554 * libutil: Add do_idle() function for idle loop, make
555 get_key() use it.
556 * libutil: Add SHA-1 and base64 functions.
557 * Simple menu system: add password support.
558 * EXTLINUX: Sparse files now handled correctly.
559 * EXTLINUX: Large directories now handled correctly.
560 * ALL: At the prompt, Ctrl-X now forces text mode.
561 * Fix configuration file parsing error, that could cause
562 hangs.
563 * Rewritten advanced menuing system from Murali Ganapathy.
564 * MEMDISK: New "bigraw" mode to work around certain broken
565 BIOS flash programs.
566 * COM32 module to boot Multiboot systems, including Xen. See
567 com32/modules/mboot.doc.
568 * Max command line changed to 1023 characters. Note that the
569 kernel proper still can only handle 255 characters without
570 patching, and COM16 binaries can only handle 125 characters.
572 Changes in 3.07:
573 * Fix chainloading (chain.c32).
574 * Fix zlib build problem.
575 * Use a private copy of <linux/ext2_fs.h>.
577 Changes in 3.06:
578 * Fix typo that caused the ramdisk to load in the wrong place.
580 Changes in 3.05:
581 * New API function "shuffle and boot"; allows COM32 modules to
582 load or construct (almost) arbitrarily complex objects,
583 e.g. a kernel and its initrd/initramfs in pieces, and have
584 the API core reorganize memory for booting. (A library API
585 for this function will be introduced in a later version.)
586 * The initrd= option now supports multiple filenames separated
587 by commas. This is mostly useful for initramfs, which can
588 be composed of multiple separate cpio or cpio.gz archives.
589 (Note: all files except the last one are zero-padded to a 4K
590 page boundary. This should not affect initramfs.)
591 * EXTLINUX: Fix API function 000Ah (get derivative-specific
592 info).
593 * libcom32/ethersel: Support PCI Config Mechanism #2 on
594 machines still infested with that hideous old hack.
595 * SYSLINUX: Fix directory-parsing bug.
597 Changes in 3.02:
598 * SYSLINUX: The "unix" installer now sets the MS-DOS
599 attributes (hidden, system, readonly.)
600 * COM32 library: build the .lnx (test modules for running
601 under Linux) as architecture native modules, in case
602 i386 devel libraries aren't installed.
603 * EXTLINUX: Hack for systems which don't have BLKGETSIZE64
604 defined in the standard header files.
605 * Simple menu system: minor aestetic improvements, and try to
606 work better over a serial console (speed, and readability on
607 monochrome terminal emulators.)
608 * New CONSOLE directive to control output on the video console
609 (useful for dealing with some broken serial-forwarding
610 BIOSes.)
611 * New com32 module "ethersel" for searching for an Ethernet
612 card and selecting the proper version of Etherboot.
613 * EXTLINUX: Allow the user to override the detected geometry.
614 Add help.
616 Changes in 3.01:
617 * EXTLINUX, SYSLINUX: Fix compile errors on some systems.
618 * EXTLINUX: Default to zipdrive geometry (64 heads, 32
619 sectors) if no other geometry can be detected.
621 Changes in 3.00:
622 * SYSLINUX: Support FAT32 and EDD. As an unfortunate
623 consequence, LDLINUX.SYS is no longer an ordinary file; it
624 is block-mapped at install time, which means it can only be
625 written using the syslinux installers.
626 * SYSLINUX: Reorganize the source code for the installers;
627 each one of the installers (dos, win32, unix, mtools) is now
628 built in its own subdirectory. In particular, "mtools" is
629 the unprivileged installer which uses mtools; "unix" is the
630 privileged installer which uses system calls.
631 * SYSLINUX: Completely rewritten DOS installer in C.
632 * ALL: "label" statement information is now stored in a
633 compressed format, which means that a lot more labels are
634 permitted (500-1000 in a typical configuration, but depends
635 on the complexity.)
636 * EXTLINUX: New derivative, which boots from an ext2/ext3
637 filesystem.
638 * SYSLINUX: The DOS and Win32 installers can now optionally
639 write the boot sector to a file instead of the real boot
640 sector. This is not supported in the Linux installers,
641 however.
642 * ALL: New NOESCAPE command, disables the "hold down the Shift
643 key to display the prompt" behaviour.
644 * New simple menu system, as an alternative to the advanced
645 menu system already present. See README.menu for details.
646 * PXELINUX: Filenames can now be prefixed with an IP address
647 or DNS name plus :: (e.g. 192.0.2.1::filename or
648 server.domain.com::filename), which downloads a file from an
649 alternate TFTP server, or just a :: (e.g. ::filename), which
650 suppresses the common pathname prefix. See pxelinux.doc.
651 * SYSLINUX: Add an -m option to the DOS and Win32 installers
652 to write an MBR and -a to mark the partition SYSLINUX is
653 being installed on active.
654 * MEMDISK: Give a way to query the boot loader type while
655 running MEMDISK; see memdisk/memdisk.doc and
656 sample/mdiskchk.c.
657 * mkdiskimage: substantially improved mkdiskimage which, among
658 other things, can now be used to initialize USB keys as
659 zipdrives; see README.usbkey for more information.
661 Changes in 2.13:
662 * MEMDISK: Fix command-line parsing "brown paper bag" class
663 bug.
664 * MEMDISK: Add "raw" mode to support the DOS boot disk from
665 WinME/XP, which seems to deliberately crash the system
666 when someone uses the "INT 15h mover" highmem API.
667 * Make "make install" do something sane for the com32
668 development environment.
669 * In the spec file, create a separate -devel RPM for the com32
670 development environment.
672 Changes in 2.12:
673 * Simple C library, based on klibc, for writing COM32
674 programs.
675 * Fix the handling of file length in loading of COM32
676 programs.
677 * MEMDISK: Work around a linker bug by rearranging the code to
678 not use the linker for the 16-bit code.
679 * SYSLINUX: If we're building on a machine without a Win32
680 (mingw) compiler, just skip building syslinux.exe.
681 * ISOLINUX: Support non-mkisofs mastering programs, at least
682 as long as the image is single-session. For best results,
683 ISOLINUX should be the only boot loader installed.
684 * MEMDISK: Allow the user to specify that the simulated disk
685 should be write-protected.
687 Changes in 2.11:
688 * ALL: Add an API call to get the configuration file name.
689 * SYSLINUX: Fix bug in 2.10 that prevented it from working
690 correctly for a lot of people.
691 * SYSLINUX: In the installer, make mtools a bit less fussy.
692 * Make the menu system compile with newer gcc's.
694 Changes in 2.10:
695 * MEMDISK: Handle images compressed with zip as well as with
696 gzip. Some Windows-based image tools apparently generate
697 these kinds of images by default. Patch by Patrick
698 LoPresti.
699 * Major menu improvement from Murali Ganapathy.
700 * ISOLINUX: Wonderfully sick and brilliant workaround for
701 severe bugs in certain Award BIOSes; from Knut Petersen.
702 * SYSLINUX: Fix for the nomtools installed, from Frederic
703 Pasteleurs.
704 * PXELINUX: Fix handling of IP numbers in the ranges
705 100-109 and 200-209.
706 * ALL: New option "allowoptions" (defaults to 1), which
707 controls if options are allowed on the command line or not.
708 * SYSLINUX: Support building under klibc (see the klibc
709 distribution for details.)
711 Changes in 2.09:
712 * SYSLINUX: Remove residual setuid crap from
713 syslinux-nomtools.
714 * Handle video pages correctly when using the API functions.
715 * Handle compiling on an x86-64 platform correctly.
716 * Menu system from Murali Krishnan Ganapathy; see the menu
717 directory for information.
718 * COMBOOT: Allow COMBOOT programs to change screen text mode.
719 * COMBOOT: Correct the documentation of how to detect
720 SYSLINUX from COMBOOT!!!!
721 * COMBOOT: Fix "get key without echo" API function.
722 * SYSLINUX: Fix bug that affected the API open function.
723 * ALL: Improve the E820 memory parser, to work around some
724 buggy BIOSes.
726 Changes in 2.08:
727 * Add new configuration command "ontimeout" to allow timeout
728 to have a different action than just pressing Enter.
729 * Add new configuration command "onerror" to allow a custom
730 command to be executed in case the kernel image is not found.
731 * Fix bugs in the COMBOOT/COM32 command-line parsing. APPEND
732 now works with COMBOOT/COM32 images.
733 * PXELINUX: Poll for ARP requests while sitting at the
734 prompt. This makes some boot servers a lot less unhappy.
735 * PXELINUX: Actually free sockets when we get a failure
736 (including file not found.) This bug would cause us to run
737 out of sockets and thus "go deaf" after a while.
738 * MEMDISK: Add an API to query for the existence of MEMDISK.
739 * SYSLINUX: Fix loading boot sectors (.bs/.bss) from floppy
740 disk.
741 * .c32 is now one of the extensions searched for
742 automatically.
743 * PXELINUX: RFBG.exe seems to randomly overwrite memory
744 location 0x5700. Thus, don't use it!
745 * PXELINUX: Change pathname length max from 63 to 127; change
746 max vkernels from 128 to 64.
747 * Support Ctrl-U -> kill entire command line input.
748 * The "samples" directory contains a (barely at all tested)
749 chain loading example, chain.c32, which may be used to
750 chainload local floppy disks and hard disks. Use with
751 "chain fdN" or "chain hdN [partition]"; N = 0 for the first
752 drive of each type.
754 Changes in 2.07:
755 * MEMDISK: Workaround for BIOSes which go into a snit when
756 they get a RESET command for the floppy system when there is
757 no floppy in the system.
758 * PXELINUX: Add "ipappend 2", which passes the hardware
759 address of the boot interface to the kernel as a
760 command-line option.
761 * mkdiskimage: fix the generation of the end limit.
762 * PXELINUX: Fix multiple bugs in chainloading of other NBPs.
763 * MEMDISK: Fix bug that would occationally cause "ran out of
764 input data" when using compressed disk images.
765 * SYSLINUX: Updates for the win32 installer (from Lars Munch.)
766 * PXELINUX: PXELINUX-specific options are now recognized both
767 in a vendor-option-space (a.k.a. type 43 encapsulated) as
768 well as in a site-option-space (unencapsulated.)
769 * COM32: Don't crash when DS != 0.
770 * COMBOOT/COM32: Make file reading work correctly. Thanks to
771 Phung Chi Kien for submitting a test program.
773 Changes in 2.06:
774 * ALL: Fix problem that would occationally cause a
775 boot failure, depending on the length of the kernel.
776 * ISOLINUX: Fix problem that would occationally cause a
777 boot failure, depending on the length of directories.
778 * SYSLINUX: Win32 installer now flushes buffers.
779 * ppmtolss16: Be fully compliant with the PNM spec;
780 actually process comments in the header and odd
781 alignments of the various parameters, as well as
782 "plain" (not raw) files and PBM and PGM files.
783 * PXELINUX: Lower the default MTU to 1472 in order to deal
784 with systems with slightly nonstandard MTUs, and PXE
785 stacks which don't defragment correctly. Unfortunately this
786 is very hard to test dynamically.
788 Changes in 2.05:
789 * PXELINUX: Add a default query based on the hardware address
790 of the boot device. This is in lower case hexadecimal form
791 separated by dashes and including the hardware type, for
792 example, the Ethernet (type 1) address 88:99:AA:BB:CC:DD
793 would query the file pxelinux.cfg/01-88-99-aa-bb-cc-dd.
794 * PXELINUX: Fix bug involving non-IP-based config file names.
795 * SYSLINUX: New installer for WinNT-based systems, from Lars
796 Munch.
797 * MEMDISK: Fix handling of memory region overlap when
798 decompressing. Thanks to Mikhail Kupchik for identifying
799 the problem.
801 Changes in 2.04:
802 * ALL: Reclaim even more low memory by observing that
803 comboot_seg == real_mode_seg is perfectly fine, and by the
804 fact that the 1000h segment managed to get unused in all
805 derivatives...
806 * PXELINUX: Attempt to negotiate full Ethernet-sized blocks
807 (1468 bytes) using the blksize option.
808 * SYSLINUX: Resurrect the old no-mtools version of the
809 installer, although as a root-only tool. Some distributors
810 have indicated that they need a small standalone installer.
811 * MEMDISK: Fix a memory offset computation error when
812 installing compressed disks which generally would cause
813 1 MB of memory to be wasted.
814 * MEMDISK: Fix installing the E820 memory map. Calling
815 INT 15h AX=0E820h with MEMDISK 2.03 loaded would give a
816 completely corrupt memory map.
817 * SYSLINUX: Make libsyslinux a dynamic library, so that it can
818 be updated separately from client programs. The whole idea,
819 after all, is to enable alternate programs to become
820 syslinux installers.
821 * Include an rpm spec file in the distribution, so rpmbuild
822 -ta works.
824 Changes in 2.03:
825 * Actually support comment lines in the configuration file.
826 * PXELINUX: Try to resolve some problems with stack switches.
827 * PXELINUX: Handle PXE stacks with broken routing.
828 With these workarounds, the remote install PXE boot floppy
829 (rbfg.exe) from Argon Technologies should work correctly.
830 * Fix problems with Perl scripts in UTF-8 locales.
831 * You probably need NASM 0.98.34 or later to compile this
832 version. 0.98.36 is recommended.
833 * MEMDISK: Now supports gzip compressed images.
835 Changes in 2.02:
836 * SYSLINUX: Security flaws have been found in the SYSLINUX
837 installer when running setuid root. Rewrite the SYSLINUX
838 installer so it uses mtools instead. It therefore now
839 requires mtools (specifically mcopy and mattrib) to exist on
840 your system, but it will not require root privileges and
841 SHOULD NOT be setuid.
843 Changes in 2.01:
844 * MEMDISK: Fix memory sizing bug when the ramdisk crosses the
845 16 MB boundary.
846 * MEMDISK: Add a "pause" option to stop immediately before
847 booting, to read off the messages.
848 * MEMDISK: Support disk images with DOSEMU headers.
849 * Update the mkdiskimage script to handle newer mtools
850 versions, and be able to generate disk images with DOSEMU
851 headers (controlled by the -d option).
852 * Fix the COM32 sample program.
853 * PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Fix some COMBOOT API calls.
854 * PXELINUX: Doc fix.
855 * Build SYSLINUX into a small library for encapsulation into
856 other programs (however, please keep in mind this is a GPL'd
857 library.)
858 * SYSLINUX: Make installer work with "owner" in /etc/fstab.
859 * SYSLINUX: Fix issue with working on nonpartitioned hard disk
860 devices. THIS CONFIGURATION IS NOT RECOMMENDED.
862 Changes in 2.00:
863 * ALL: Add support for "COM32" (32-bit COMBOOT) images.
864 * ALL: Add an API for COMBOOT/COM32 images. See comboot.doc
865 for details. There is a C development environment for
866 COM32 being created; it should be ready at some point in
867 the future.
868 * Fix mbr.asm so that it actually works.
869 * SYSLINUX: The syslinux installer *SHOULD* now be safe to
870 run setuid root.
871 * PXELINUX: Fix bug where PXELINUX would override random
872 chunks of the UNDI code segment! Thanks to Kevin Tran for
873 finding this bug.
874 * ISOLINUX: Fix a bug related to slashes in pathnames.
875 * ISOLINUX: Fix a bug in handling initrds over 128 MB.
876 * ALL: Make the <Ctrl-V> key print out the version; this is
877 to help debugging.
878 * Add a small script, mkdiskimage, to create a DOS-formatted
879 hard disk image using mtools. This may be useful in
880 conjunction with MEMDISK.
881 * ISOLINUX: Search for a /boot/isolinux directory as well as
882 /isolinux.
883 * ALL: Fix a bug related to very long configuration files.
884 * PXELINUX: Work around a NASM bug which would result in no
885 delay before reset if an error occurs.
887 Changes in 1.76:
888 * ISOLINUX: Remove code no longer used which caused hangs on
889 some Toshiba laptops.
891 Changes in 1.75:
892 * ALL: NASM 0.98.32 or later is now required to build
893 SYSLINUX from sources.
894 * SYSLINUX: put back in the workaround for the BIOS floppy
895 table. This seems to be a requirement for "extended" floppy
896 formats to work correctly.
897 * SYSLINUX: No longer warn if one is trying to boot on a 286
898 or older. The above BIOS workaround no longer fits if the
899 requirement to use only 8086-compatible code in the early
900 boot is maintained. It made sense in 1994, but in 2002 a
901 286 or older is a museum object.
902 * SYSLINUX: Use a downright bizarre, stateful algorithm to try
903 to guess the maximum transfer size. I am *hoping* this will
904 cut down on the number of systems for which -s is required
905 to work at any acceptable speed.
906 * ISOLINUX: Add a few more workarounds for various broken El
907 Torito BIOSes.
908 * Make sure .depend files aren't accidentally packed...
909 * ALL: Fix bugs in the extension-detect code; this caused
910 files like COMBOOT images and CD boot sectors to be
911 mis-identified as Linux kernels and rejected.
912 * ALL: Fix the return from COMBOOT.
913 * ALL: Do some of the early groundwork for supporting DOS
914 system calls in COMBOOT.
915 * Get rid of unnecessary "near" directives, making the code
916 bigger.
917 * PXELINUX: Put the PXE stack back in the init state before
918 invoking a chain-loaded NBP.
919 * PXELINUX: Actually found the combination of calls that
920 allows some (most?) PXE 2+ stacks to be unloaded from memory
921 properly.
922 * PXELINUX: Add "keeppxe" command-line option to disable
923 the standard unloading of the PXE stack.
925 Changes in 1.74:
926 * SYSLINUX: fix bug that would cause valid kernel images to be
927 labelled "invalid".
929 Changes in 1.73:
930 * Work on removing gratuitous differences between modules.
931 * Break up the source in common and module-specific files.
932 * PXELINUX: Allow chaining of other PXE NBPs.
933 * ISOLINUX: Allow loading "CD-ROM boot sectors".
934 * ALL: generalize the definition of a boot sector/NBP.
936 Changes in 1.72:
937 * PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Fix bugs in the new core code.
939 Changes in 1.71:
940 * Fix a "brown paper bag" class bug in the new core code.
942 Changes in 1.70:
943 * Major code restructuring.
944 * Relax the conventional memory limits somewhat.
945 * MEMDISK: Set up the "version number string" pointer in the
946 header correctly.
947 * SYSLINUX: Fix, again, "the bug that won't die": the use of
948 the offset parameter with the SYSLINUX installer.
949 * SYSLINUX: Fix possible superblock corruption problem in the
950 SYSLINUX installer.
952 Changes in 1.67:
953 * Handle bug in the location of initrd.
955 Changes in 1.66:
956 * MEMDISK: Make compile with newer versions of gcc.
958 Changes in 1.65:
959 * ISOLINUX: Support booting disk image files (to boot DOS or
960 other non-Linux operating systems), *IF* the BIOS works
961 correctly; unfortunately many BIOSes apparently don't.
962 * Support Linux boot protocol version 2.03 (explicitly
963 specify the initrd address limit.)
964 * Handle small "pseudo-kernels"; images that use the Linux
965 kernel boot protocols but are less than 64K in size.
966 * MEMDISK: New subsystem; this is a driver which allows
967 legacy OSes to boot using an in-memory simulated disk.
968 See memdisk/memdisk.doc for more info.
969 * PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Correctly handle files larger than 65535
970 blocks (32 MB for PXELINUX, 128 MB for ISOLINUX.)
971 * PXELINUX: Make a best-effort attempt at freeing all memory
972 claimed. From the looks of it, it will fail on most PXE
973 stacks.
975 Changes in 1.64:
976 * Limited support for hardware flow control when using a
977 serial port console.
978 * Support specifying the serial port I/O address explicitly.
979 * Make DOS installer hopefully behave more nicely when used on
980 recent Windows versions.
981 * Fix returning to text mode when a font has been specified.
982 * Attempt to detect missing serial port hardware and disable
983 the serial port if there is nothing there.
985 Changes in 1.63:
986 * Make the ppmtolss16 program handle color conversion more
987 correctly.
988 * Clean up "make install" target, honour INSTALLROOT if it
989 exists.
990 * SYSLINUX: Fix stack-smash bug identified by Steffen
991 Winterfeldt.
992 * Hopefully fix return-to-text-mode on some graphics cards.
993 * ISOLINUX: Bug workaround for Award BIOS 4.51, and perhaps
994 other buggy BIOSes as well.
996 Changes in 1.62:
997 * PXELINUX: Allow the DHCP server to override the
998 configuration file name and pathname prefix, using
999 "site-specific" DHCP options.
1000 * PXELINUX: Documentation fixes.
1001 * PXELINUX: Fix the "ipappend" option; the last two values
1002 were reversed vs. what the kernel expected.
1003 * Introduce a way to return to text mode once we are already
1004 in graphics mode. This may be useful for F-key help
1005 screens.
1006 * Fix several bugs in the way return to text mode was handled.
1008 Changes in 1.61:
1009 * ISOLINUX: Support full pathname searches. Max length for a
1010 pathname is 255 characters. As a result, only 64 "label"
1011 statements are supported in ISOLINUX.
1012 * PXELINUX: Max filename length extended to 63 characters.
1014 Changes in 1.60:
1015 * Add support for graphical splash screens.
1016 * Add mode control characters, which allows you to control
1017 message display output depending on output mode (text,
1018 graphics, or serial port.)
1019 * ISOLINUX: New program, which boots Linux from a CD-ROM
1020 without using floppy emulation mode. See isolinux.doc for
1021 more details.
1022 * PXELINUX: Don't search for boot sector file types, since
1023 they don't work anyway.
1024 * SYSLINUX: Document the LOCK command for Win9x, and the error
1025 dialog box for WinNT/2K.
1027 Changes in 1.54:
1028 * PXELINUX: Fix code for finding !PXE from PXENV+. This was
1029 due to a spec bug; match the most recent spec since that
1030 seems to be what implementations actually do.
1031 * SYSLINUX: Add some smarts to the boot sector, which
1032 hopefully should reduce the number of systems which require
1033 stupid mode ("syslinux -s").
1034 * PXELINUX: Document further some of the pathologies with old
1035 PXE stacks.
1036 * When specifying a "default" command line, no longer
1037 automatically appent "auto". See the "DEFAULT" command in
1038 syslinux.doc for more information.
1039 * PXELINUX: Clean up the allocation of local socket numbers.
1041 Changes in 1.53:
1042 * PXELINUX: Rename pxelinux.bin to pxelinux.0, to match what
1043 most PXE servers seem to expect.
1044 * PXELINUX: Update the DHCP/boot server setup documentation.
1045 * PXELINUX: Support new "localboot" option for "label"
1046 sections.
1047 * PXELINUX: More robust parsing of DHCP/boot server packets.
1048 * PXELINUX: Include a small utility program "gethostip" to
1049 compute hexadecimal IP addresses.
1051 Changes in 1.52:
1052 * PXELINUX: Fix bugs introduced by new A20 code. (SYSLINUX
1053 has also been changed for code consistency reasons, but I'm
1054 pretty sure the changes are don't care on SYSLINUX.)
1055 * Documentation updates.
1056 * PXELINUX: Add "ipappend" option to generate an ip= option to
1057 the kernel.
1059 Changes in 1.51:
1060 * PXELINUX: Not all PXE stacks fill in the IP address for a
1061 type 3 cached info query. Use a type 2 cached info query
1062 for this information (only.)
1063 * Yet another attempt at A20 coding. Now support BIOS call
1064 15:2401 as well, and handle machines which always have A20
1065 on separately.
1066 * Support memory detection using INT 15h, AX=0E820h. BIOS
1067 manufacturers have apparently gotten sloppy about keeping
1068 INT 15h, AX=0E801h working properly.
1069 * Don't issue <CR><LF> onto the serial port when we're doing
1070 screen wraparound.
1072 Changes in 1.50:
1073 * Yet another A20-code update. It seems some "legacy-free"
1074 machines and embedded gear simply don't have a KBC to talk
1075 to, and that waiting for one will wait forever. Sigh.
1077 Changes in 1.49:
1078 * SYSLINUX: Implement a hack for BIOS drivers which hog significant
1079 chunks of low memory during boot. (Note: PXELINUX already
1080 had this modification. SYSLINUX does still require that the
1081 low 512K is available; PXELINUX requires 384K. Machines
1082 with a physical memory hole in the low 640K cannot boot
1083 Linux no matter what.) Depending what the reason is for the
1084 memory hole, a new kernel (2.4.0-test3-pre3 or later) may be
1085 required.
1086 * SYSLINUX: Default installer binary now compiled against
1087 glibc 2.1. If this is inappropriate for your system and you
1088 still want to use the offical version of SYSLINUX, please
1089 follow the instructions in "distrib.doc" to rebuild the
1090 installer.
1091 * SYSLINUX: Linux installer program now supports -o <offset>
1092 option which does a loopback mount with the
1093 -o loop,offset=<> option. Useful to run SYSLINUX on an
1094 individual partition of a whole-harddisk image.
1095 * Include the source code to a Master Boot Record (MBR)
1096 functionally equivalent to the one installed DOS except it
1097 includes EBIOS support, and should be resistant to geometry
1098 changes. The MBR code is public domain.
1099 * PXELINUX: Fix "double p" bug: if the tftp prefix was null,
1100 all filenames would get a "p" preprended, e.g.
1101 "ppxelinux.cfg" and "pvmlinux".
1103 Changes in 1.48:
1104 * PXELINUX: Workaround for PXE ROMs based on the Intel PXE PDK
1105 3.0 build 071 and earlier: missing !PXE structure pointer.
1106 * PXELINUX: Handle larger BOOTP/DHCP packages.
1107 * PXELINUX: The command line passing was broken; fix.
1108 * PXELINUX: Make COMBOOT images work.
1109 * PXELINUX: Documentation on how to make booting work using
1110 the PDK 3.0-derived clients, which aren't so generous as to
1111 allow booting with only "PXEClient" specified.
1113 Changes in 1.47:
1114 * PXELINUX: RFC 1123 states that a TFTP implementation MUST
1115 use adaptive timeout, "at least an exponential backoff of
1116 retransmission timeout is necessary." Implement a very
1117 simple exponential backoff for retransmits.
1118 * PXELINUX: Updated documentation, including pointer to new
1119 TFTP server.
1120 * PXELINUX: When sending ERROR due to bad OACK, use the proper
1121 destination port number (why are TFTP port numbers so odd?)
1122 * PXELINUX: If the boot dies in the middle somewhere,
1123 eventually give up and reset the machine (unattended
1124 operation.)
1126 Changes in 1.46:
1127 * New program PXELINUX to do network booting using a
1128 PXE-compliant (Pre-Execution Environment) network booting
1129 PROM. See pxelinux.doc for details.
1131 Changes in 1.45:
1132 * Serial console support. See syslinux.doc for details.
1134 Changes in 1.44:
1135 * Change HIGHMEM_MAX to 38000000h to (hopefully) avoid the
1136 kernel stepping on it; 3f000000h was apparently a higher
1137 limit than the kernel used!
1139 Changes in 1.43:
1140 * Add sys2ansi.pl script to display the contents of a
1141 colorized SYSLINUX file.
1142 * Changed the io_delay once again, after a report that the
1143 old delay port causes hangs on some systems.
1145 Changes in 1.42:
1146 * Frob the "fast A20 gate" port as well as the keyboard
1147 controller; will this help systems with problems?
1148 * Be even more paranoid about A20, unfortunately even this
1149 seems to be not paranoid enough... what I don't understand
1150 is that if there is hardware out there *this broken*, how
1151 can it run Linux at all? Report an error message rather
1152 than hang forever if A20 is stuck.
1153 * Include some intermediate files in the distribution, plus
1154 provide a "make installer" target for distributors to relink
1155 the install programs only. I would prefer the syslinux boot
1156 loader proper to be "binary clean" for debuggablity -- use
1157 "make clean ; make installer" to rebuild the installers only.
1159 Changes in 1.41:
1160 * Don't get confused by directories, volume labels, or VFAT
1161 long names.
1162 * Use INT 15h, AX=0E801h to query memory size before trying
1163 INT 15h, AH=88h. This not only provides more headroom
1164 between the kernel and the initrd on large-memory machines,
1165 but it appears some recent BIOSes actually have started
1166 returning garbage for the AH=88h (older) call.
1167 * Trust high memory beyond the 15 MB mark if the user has
1168 specified it, or if obtained with INT 15h, AH=0E801h (with
1169 no memory holes above 1 MB.)
1171 Changes in 1.40:
1172 * Increase A20M delay and put in a test to avoid problems on
1173 certain IBM Thinkpads (thanks to Donnie Barnes of RedHat
1174 for vital info on this one.)
1175 * Support COMBOOT style boot command images.
1176 * Support chain loading (foreign operating systems, e.g. DOS).
1177 * Include a new "copybs" DOS utility to copy a boot sector to
1178 a file (under Linux, use "dd".)
1179 * Fix the DOS installer to work for disks over 32 MB.
1180 * SYSLINUX should now handle disks with more than 65536 tracks.
1182 Changes in 1.37:
1183 * Fix a bug that caused "label" statements in syslinux.cfg to
1184 not be handled properly.
1185 * Updated the documentation. Among other things, we now allow
1186 up to 128 "label" statements.
1188 Changes in 1.36:
1189 * Fix for booting old (pre-initrd) kernels.
1190 * It seems at least some versions of OS/2 doesn't set up all
1191 the fields in the superblock correctly. Account for that.
1192 * Fix bug that caused boot failure when using the mem= option.
1194 Changes in 1.35:
1195 * Loading from partitions now should work properly. (Actually
1196 tested, this time. You should even be able to dd a floppy
1197 to a partition and boot from it.)
1198 * Removed large workaround code for an alleged ancient BIOS
1199 bug I have never actually seen. The -s option should work
1200 on those machines, anyway.
1201 * Support for simple keyboard remappings, same as used by
1202 LILO (once again to support localization.) The program
1203 keytab-lilo.pl from the LILO distribution included to
1204 generate such maps.
1205 * Added a "safe, slow and stupid" (-s) option to the
1206 installers. This option will lobotomize the boot sector to
1207 hopefully work on even very buggy BIOSes.
1209 Changes in 1.34:
1210 * Ability to load a VGA font on bootup (for localized Linux
1211 distributions.)
1213 Changes in 1.33:
1214 * Bug fix in the Linux installer.
1215 * Added a workaround for a bug in certain AMI/Intel BIOSes
1216 when booting from CD-ROM.
1217 * Documentation changes.
1219 Changes in 1.32:
1220 * FAT16 filesystems are now supported.
1222 Changes in 1.31:
1223 * Now compiles under Linux, using NASM, rather than using
1224 Turbo Assembler under DOS. See http://www.cryogen.com/Nasm
1225 for information about NASM.
1226 * Linux-hosted SYSLINUX installer, as well as a
1227 rewritten DOS installer (now is written in assembler, so we
1228 don't need Turbo C.)
1230 Changes in 1.30:
1231 * Added support for loading bzImage and initrd loading, and made
1232 SYSLINUX new-setup-code aware (SYSLINUX 1.30 id=0x31).
1233 * Added LILO-style kernel labels; see the LABEL and IMPLICIT
1234 keywords in README file.
1235 * Added support for colorization of intro and help screens.
1236 * The vga= option is now handled correctly.
1237 * Massive rewrite of large chunks of the code in order to
1238 support the first two new features.
1240 Changes in 1.20:
1241 * Added simple online help at the "boot:" prompt.
1242 * Removed 2880K image as I no longer have access to such a
1243 floppy drive. (Donations accepted!!)
1244 * Decided to distribute the source in a subdirectory rather
1245 than in a nested zipfile.
1247 Changes in 1.11:
1248 * Removed a sanity check which would cause booting to fail on
1249 Phoenix BIOS version 4.03. Apparently this BIOS is buggy.
1251 Changes in 1.10:
1252 * Added configuration file SYSLINUX.CFG. This file contains all
1253 configurable options, and can be edited from any OS which can
1254 access an MS-DOS filesystem; there is no longer a need to run
1255 SYSLINUX.EXE except to write the boot sector.
1256 * Default command line now given by "default" line in config
1257 file.
1258 * LINUXMSG.TXT and BOOTMSG.TXT hard-coded file names replaced by
1259 "display" and "prompt" lines in config file.
1260 * LILO-style option appending now supported ("append" line in
1261 config file).
1262 * Prompt timeout is now supported ("timeout" line in config
1263 file). The timeout is cancelled when anything is typed on the
1264 command line.
1265 * Pressing <ESC> or <Ctrl-C> at the Loading... stage now aborts
1266 the kernel loading in progress and returns the user to the
1267 boot: prompt.
1268 * The installer now automatically sets the READONLY flag on
1269 LDLINUX.SYS.
1270 * Added 2880K disk image.
1272 Changes in 1.03:
1273 * Fixed bug that would prevent booting from double-density
1274 floppies and other DOS filesystems with multiple sectors per
1275 cluster.
1276 * Added 720K disk image.
1277 * Changed default kernel name on disk images to LINUX.
1279 Changes in 1.02:
1280 * Fixed bug that would garble the command line on recent kernels
1281 with more than 4 sectors of setup code (this wasn't really a
1282 *bug*; rather, a kernel change broke the code. Unfortunately
1283 the Linux boot interface is still sorely undocumented).
1284 * Added BOOTMSG.TXT file support (message file which does not
1285 force display of the boot prompt).
1287 Changes in 1.01:
1288 * Fixed bug on some (most?) 386 BIOSes would require two boot
1289 attempts.