| blob | 93b64a6b9ee3a74102034b407dfd1f7301be17d3 |
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 4.00:
6 * chain.c32: support booting GPT partitions by index
7 * chain.c32: support booting the Syslinux partition with "fs"
8 * chain.c32: implement gpt.txt hand-over protocol
9 Changes in 3.86:
10 * chain.c32: fix chainloading the MBR of a hard disk (broken
11 in 3.85).
12 * mboot.c32: report the boot loader name in the information
13 structure.
14 * com32: set argv[0] in a com32 module.
15 * core: add a workaround for a bug in Xen HVM older than
16 version 3.3: disable halt on those platforms.
17 * Fix problems where certain operations in com32 modules would
18 cause the core to believe the system was idle.
19 * MEMDISK: fix MBR detection when used with a DOSEMU header or
20 an offset.
21 * MEMDISK: generate the mBFT checksum correctly.
23 Changes in 3.85:
24 * gPXELINUX: updated to gPXE 1.0.0. gPXELINUX can now do NBP
25 chainloading, and does not require a second DHCP.
26 * vesamenu.c32: unbreak the default "grey hole" background.
27 * We no longer have a built-in default of "linux auto".
28 Instead, if no DEFAULT or UI statement is found, or the
29 configuration file is missing entirely, we drop to the boot:
30 prompt with an error message (if NOESCAPE is set, we stop
31 with a "boot failed" message; this is also the case for
32 PXELINUX if the configuration file is not found.)
33 * chain.c32: support chainloading Grub4DOS; patch by Gert
34 Hulselmans.
35 * New tool: sysdump.c32, can be used to produce system
36 information for debugging via tftp or ymodem (serial port).
37 * "vga=current" on the Linux command line is now supported.
38 * chain.c32: support for Windows Recovery Console, via the
39 "cmldr=" option.
40 * chain.c32: should now support loading NTLDR from different
41 type media than loaded from.
42 * chain.c32: support chainloading to a FAT/NTFS partition with
43 invalid "hidden sectors" via the "sethidden" option.
44 * memdisk: fix the mBFT ACPI table.
45 * vesamenu.c32: if the image is smaller than the screen, tile
46 it across the whole screen.
47 * mkdiskimage: -s option for producing a sparse image.
48 * vesamenu.c32: support arbitrary resolution setting (beyond
49 BIOS support) on some Intel-based video chipsets. This code
50 is a modified version of the "915resolution" tool by
51 Steve Tomljenovic; your mileage might vary.
53 Changes in 3.84:
54 * SYSLINUX: make the DOS installer work for MS-DOS 7.x/8.x
55 (Win9x/ME) again.
56 * HDT: updated to version 0.3.6 (numerous changes.)
57 * mboot.c32: now supports video mode setting if requested by
58 the image.
59 * MEMDISK: Fix floppy images of PC-DOS.
60 * MEMDISK: Add support for emulation of CD-ROM images; patch
61 by Shao Miller.
62 * MEMDISK: Comply with the Win9x "safe hook" standard,
63 allowing a protected-mode driver.
64 * MEMDISK: New "mBFT" ACPI table, by analogy with the iSCSI
65 iBFT table. This allows detection from a protected-mode
66 operating system without EDD support.
67 * 32-bit version of the gfxboot loader (gfxboot.c32), so far
68 experimental. This will replace gfxboot.com in the future.
69 * vesamenu.c32: new MENU RESOLUTION directive to set a screen
70 resolution other than 640x480.
71 * chain.c32: add support for loading isolinux.bin.
72 * chain.c32: make sure to always return to text mode.
73 * eltorito.sys: DOS driver for generic CD-ROMs; by Gary Tong
74 and Bart Lagerweij.
76 Changes in 3.83:
77 * PXELINUX: clear memory before handing over to a chainloaded
78 NBP. This may help avoid a bug in Windows RIS.
79 * PXELINUX: fix localboot after NBP chainloading on certain
80 BIOSes (including ASUS A8N-E, but possibly others.)
81 * chain.c32: support chainloaded bootloaders on ISOLINUX.
82 * PXELINUX: allow filenames up to 251 characters.
83 * MEMDISK: fix problems booting from USB on Thinkpads, and
84 possibly other machines or hardware combinations.
85 * isohybrid: fix the -id option.
86 * HDT: updated to version 0.3.4.
87 * MEMDISK: the stack size is now configurable, with the stack=
88 option.
89 * Simple menu: fix Ctrl-W (word erase) in command-line edit.
90 * Simple menu: fix crash on some platforms.
91 * Gfxboot: fixes to the configuration file parsing.
92 * PXELINUX: add a tool to override specific DHCP options via
93 values hardcoded in the pxelinux.0 file. These hardcoded
94 values can be either "before DHCP" (defaults if DHCP do not
95 provide values), or "after DHCP" (overrides DHCP). The tool
96 pxelinux-options can be used to set these options. This
97 feature does not apply to gpxelinux.0; when used with gPXE
98 this is better handled by modifying the embedded script.
100 Changes in 3.82:
101 * isohybrid: fix the -partok logic for loading from a partition.
102 * ISOLINUX: deal with systems which return from INT 13h with
103 interrupts disabled.
104 * Do not invoke the idle handler during large file loads.
105 * Simple menu: make ONTIMEOUT work with MENU HIDDEN.
106 * PXELINUX: handle TFTP servers which have extra NULs at the
107 end of an OACK packet.
109 Changes in 3.81:
110 * Shuffler: fix bug in real-mode entry. This affected a
111 number of modules, probably in relatively unimportant ways,
112 but it completely broke linux.c32.
113 * Improved performance.
114 * Attempt to halt the processor while idle. This can cause
115 bad reponsiveness when using a serial console especially for
116 automated input; if that ends up being a problem, use the
117 new "NOHALT 1" configuration command.
118 * linux.c32 now suppresses all messages if the "quiet" flag is
119 specified.
120 * isohybrid: add a variety of options, and a help message.
121 * ISOLINUX: fix booting in hybrid mode when CBIOS is used.
122 This unfortunately means that the isohybrid handoff protocol
123 has changed, so the isohybrid utility must version-match
124 isolinux.bin.
125 * Drop support for ACPI 3 extended memory flags.
126 * Menu system: don't set the autocr flag on the serial
127 console.
128 * altmbr: fix handling of logical partitions.
129 * altmbr: cap at 439 bytes so the partition select byte isn't
130 part of the file.
132 Changes in 3.80:
133 * New shuffler mechanism and API.
134 * Rewritten mboot.c32 module.
135 * The syslinux_boot_linux() function has been simplified.
136 * Don't hang trying to boot a "menu quit" label from the CLI.
137 * Fix problem with boot-once "sticking" on some BIOSes.
138 * isohybrid: fix problem with images over 2 GB in size.
139 * APM poweroff module (poweroff.com) by Sebastian Herbszt.
140 * ISOLINUX: fix the handling of large directories. Bug found
141 and fixed by Steffen Winterfeldt.
143 Changes in 3.75:
144 * PXELINUX: fix the "keeppxe" option, which was broken in
145 3.74.
146 * MEMDISK: correct the extraction of geometry information from
147 the MBR of a hard disk image, again broken in 3.74.
148 * extlinux(1) man page from Brian Pellin.
149 * Simple menu: MENU SAVE is now controllable on a menu-by-menu
150 or entry-by-entry basis.
151 * gPXELINUX: fix interrupt-disabling bug.
152 * HDT: fix lockup on machines with certain PCI configurations.
154 Changes in 3.74:
155 * New UI directive, which allows a more natural way to specify
156 a menu system (or not.) With the UI directive specifying
157 the menu system, the DEFAULT directive can be used to select
158 the default entry inside the menus.
159 * kbdmap.c32: new module to load a new keyboard map
160 dynamically.
161 * isohybrid: workaround bug in some versions of binutils.
162 * Fix issue with the placement of the initrd on some machines.
163 * ifcpu64: fix handling of less than three arguments.
164 * Fix bug in the shuffle library when dealing with a very
165 large number of fragments.
166 * Documentation fixes by Vicente Jimenez Aguilar.
167 * gPXE updated to version 0.9.7.
168 * hdt.c32: Hardware Detection Tool, an interactive hardware
169 analyzer module by Erwan Velu.
170 * MEMDISK: enable automatic determination of the disk geometry
171 for a large floppy disk image if (and only if) it is
172 formatted with a FAT filesystem.
173 * SYSLINUX: fix the handling of .bss files on FAT12/16.
174 * Suppress the Loading ... message if "quiet" is specified on
175 the kernel command line.
176 * Fix the use of "CONSOLE 0" with menu.c32.
177 * Allow COM32 modules to be aware of all memory even in the
178 presence of a memory hole. The "linux.c32" module can be
179 used to load a kernel (or memdisk) plus large initrd on
180 such a system.
181 * MBR: produce alternate MBR variants which force the drive
182 number to hd0 (_f variants), or force the drive number to
183 hd0 if the Ctrl key is pressed (_c variants.) Furthermore,
184 add an MBR variant (altmbr*.bin) which ignores the active
185 flag and instead boots the partition number specified in the
186 byte at offset 439 decimal.
187 * Add IPAPPEND strings to com32 modules, especially needed for
188 linux.c32.
189 * New MENU SAVE directive which saves the latest menu
190 selection until the next boot. Currently only implemented for
191 EXTLINUX.
192 * gfxboot.com: *experimental* interface module to Steffen
193 Winterfeldt's "gfxboot" graphical front end
194 (http://gfxboot.sourceforge.net/). Module by Sebastian Herbszt.
196 Changes in 3.73:
197 * Upgrade gPXE to release version 0.9.5.
198 * Fix a number of build errors on various platforms.
199 * Handle systems with E820 "extended attributes" per ACPI 3.
200 Someone "cleverly" decided to change the E820 spec in a
201 backwards-incompatible manner!
202 * MEMDISK: default to "safeint".
203 * Adopt the moniker "The Syslinux Project", standard proper
204 noun capitalization, to refer to the project as a whole.
205 Thus, reserve the all-caps "SYSLINUX" to refer to the FAT
206 loader.
207 * mboot.c32: add "-solaris" option to pass DHCP information to
208 the Solaris kernel; required for automatic Solaris boot
209 without using Solaris' pxeboot program.
210 * config.c32: trivial COM32 module to restart Syslinux with
211 another configuration file from the command line (equivalent
212 to the CONFIG command in the configuratin file.)
214 Changes in 3.72:
215 * Include the pxechain.com module from Jeffery Hutzelman at
216 Carnegie Mellon University. This allows chaining another
217 PXE boot program while changing the DHCP packet passed to
218 it.
219 * Reorganize the Makefile system.
220 * Major PCI core cleanups and other source cleanup.
221 * gPXE code updated.
222 * Try to avoid memory-snooping attacks on passwords. Note
223 that if someone has root on the box, they generally don't
224 need to compromise the boot loader...
225 * ISOLINUX: fix crash when given a zero-length file.
226 * sdi.c32: support gzipped SDI images.
227 * ISOLINUX: support generating images which can be either
228 a CD-ROM or a hard disk (USB disk, etc.) See
229 doc/isolinux.txt for more information.
230 * Remote gdb support for COM32 modules; patch from Stefan
231 Hajnoczi.
232 * Support beeps in F-key help in the simple menu system.
233 * Tab display of labels, based on a patch from Sebastian
234 Herbszt. Can be disabled with the NOCOMPLETE configuration
235 command.
236 * "menu default" can now be specified after "menu begin", to
237 indicate that a specific submenu should be the default entry.
239 Changes in 3.71:
240 * Workaround for a VESA BIOS which tries to make DOS system
241 calls(!!)
242 * Simple menu: fix navigation around disabled entries
243 (or at least try to...)
244 * EXTLINUX: proper error message when confused about mount
245 point.
246 * MEMDISK: be smarter about incompletely disabled floppies in
247 the BIOS and about being the only floppy.
248 * Optionally allow initrd to be specified on a separate line
249 rather than as part of the "append" line. This is not
250 recommended, but apparently makes life easier for some
251 tools.
252 * SYSLINUX: if no config file is present, set the current
253 directory to the root directory (Sebastian Herbszt).
254 * chain.c32: option "hide" to support hiding and unhiding of
255 primary partitions on the boot drive with DOS, Win, or OS/2
256 partition types (01, 04, 06, 07, 0b, 0c, 0e).
257 * Unbreak the KBDMAP command (broken in 3.70).
258 * EXTLINUX: fix the handling of the ADV when using CBIOS.
259 * ifcpu64.c32: simple COM32 module to select a 32- or 64-bit
260 kernel (and optionally 32-bit kernels with or without PAE.)
261 Eventually we want a scripting language for this
262 kind of stuff; a Lua module is under development.
263 * Fix parsing of the SERIAL command without a baud rate
264 specified.
265 * chain.c32: error out when try to boot an unbootable
266 partition.
267 * SYSLINUX: when building the Win32 installer, search for
268 MinGW under a large number of possible names.
270 Changes in 3.70:
271 * PXELINUX: Support enhanced capabilities when running on top
272 of gPXE (http://www.etherboot.org/). In particular, support
273 URL-style syntax for filenames, and any protocol that gPXE
274 supports (except, currently, iSCSI and AoE.) This feature
275 is currently highly experimental.
276 * Substantial infrastructure changes to support files whose
277 length aren't known at open time (typically network
278 connections.) Please note that the semantics of some of the
279 comboot APIs have changed slightly; please see doc/comboot.txt.
280 * PXELINUX: We no longer require a TFTP server which supports
281 the tsize option for all transfers.
282 * PXELINUX: Integrate with the gPXE source base; unified image
283 now included as "gpxelinux.0".
284 * The source tree has been restructured; files that were
285 previously in the root have moved into the core, dos, gpxe,
286 and utils directories.
287 * "make install", "make netinstall", and "make extbootinstall"
288 have been updated massively. "make install-all" now installs
289 all three.
290 * Change default dir for auxiliary files from
291 /usr/lib/syslinux to /usr/share/syslinux.
292 * SYSLINUX: VFAT long filename support.
293 * MEMDISK: Any image less than 4096K (4 MB) is treated as a
294 floppy disk. The geometry-guessing code will recognize all
295 common extended formats, but it is still possible some very
296 exotic formats need geometry specification. Large floppies
297 and very small harddisks still need explicit specification.
298 * chain.c32: option "swap" to support swapping of BIOS drive
299 numbers. This is necessary to boot certain operating systems
300 (DOS, Windows) from a secondary drive.
301 * chain.c32: option "file=" to support loading a boot file from
302 the SYSLINUX filesystem instead of loading the boot sector
303 from the drive.
304 * chain.c32: option "seg=" to control the load location.
305 * chain.c32: option "ntldr=" as a shorthand for "seg=0x2000
306 file="; use this to load one of WinNT's loaders:
308 chain.c32 hd0 1 ntldr=/MiniNT/setupldr.bin
310 Note that the file needs to be in the SYSLINUX filesystem.
311 * chain.32: options "freedos=" and "msdos="/"pcdos=" as
312 shorthands for "seg=0x60 file=" and "seg=0x70 file="
313 respectively; use this to load FreeDOS's kernel.sys, MS-DOS's
314 io.sys or PC-DOS's ibmbio.sys.
315 * Change to the A20 algorithm which *MIGHT* help systems that
316 have systems which freeze when Syslinux is used with USB
317 keyboards. Note that this has been hard do verify, so I
318 would greatly appreciate feedback on it.
319 * Complex menu system: unbreak menus which has unnamed
320 submenus, like complex.c.
321 * Fix newline on the serial port for some com32 modules.
322 * chain.c32: support "boot" as the drive specification,
323 indicating the drive from which it was booted
324 (for syslinux/extlinux).
325 * SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: support "localboot" with the same feature
326 set as ISOLINUX.
327 * Add an experimental MBR for GPT partition tables.
328 * Use $(CC) when determining compile flags.
329 * chain.c32: fix booting from logical partitions (Sergey
330 Vlasov.)
332 Changes in 3.63:
333 * Fix errors in the PCI and DMI detection modules (Erwan Velu,
334 Sebastian Herbszt).
335 * Fix host dependencies and other issues in the build system.
336 * PXELINUX: Allow class E addresses as unicast.
337 * sdi.c32: module to load Microsoft System Deployment Images.
338 For additional information, please see:
339 http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms838543.aspx
340 * EXTLINUX: Correct reading directories with deleted entries.
341 * Shuffle library: correct the handling of certain geometries
342 (an upward move with source material blocking the move); as
343 required by sdi.c32 but theoretically possible for other
344 formats as well.
345 * Add "make netinstall" to install /tftpboot.
346 * Fix some documentation files that didn't get moved/renamed.
348 Changes in 3.62:
349 * Clean up garbage after "aborted." message.
350 * Clean up memdump.com filenames.
351 * Support SHA256 and SHA512 encrypted passwords.
352 * The shuffle library now can generate chained descriptors,
353 thus allowing pretty much arbitrarily complex memory maps.
354 * Handle command lines up to 2047 characters, the current
355 Linux kernel limit.
356 * vesamenu: support systems without linear framebuffer support
357 (sigh, what is this, 1993?) and 15-bit RGB modes.
358 * Move the label storage (for the command-line interface) to
359 high memory, removing the size limit and freeing up 64K of
360 low memory.
361 * Get rid of 4096-entry limit in the simple menu system.
362 * New hierarchial submenu support: see MENU BEGIN, MENU END,
363 MENU GOTO in doc/menu.txt.
364 * MENU QUIT allows creating a menu entry for returning to the
365 command line.
366 * ISOLINUX: Work around bug in certain Adaptec BIOSes,
367 patch by Bruce Robson.
368 * pngtopnm dependency removed from samples/ directory.
369 * Text documentation files (in doc/) renamed *.doc -> *.txt.
371 Changes in 3.61:
372 * EXTLINUX: fix crash when accessing an empty file.
373 * elf.c32: If a PHDR segment is present, load it.
374 * Fix SHA-1 and MD5 passwords.
375 * ISOLINUX: fix booting when mastered without
376 mkisofs -boot-info-table (broken since 3.50, sigh...)
377 * Handle BIOSes which emit multiple contiguous valid
378 memory regions in the e820 map.
380 Changes in 3.60:
381 * Support for "auxilliary data vector", a small amount of
382 writable storage. Currently only supported for EXTLINUX,
383 but the infrastructure is there for the other derivatives,
384 assuming a suitable storage location can be found.
385 * EXTLINUX: boot-once support (--once, --clear-once, and
386 --reset-adv).
387 * A command is now required to the EXTLINUX installer, i.e. at
388 least one of --install, --update, --once, --clear-once, or
389 --reset-adv.
391 Changes in 3.55:
392 * PXELINUX: as per RFC 5071, PXELINUX no longer requires the
393 use of the magic cookie option (208) for unencapsulated
394 options. Currently it does not require it for
395 vendor-encapsulated options (vendor-option-space) either,
396 but that MAY be reverted in the future if it causes
397 problems.
398 * Documentation text files moved to a common "doc" directory;
399 man pages from the Debian project added to the "man"
400 directory.
401 * Correct bug with self-overlapping memory areas when using
402 the shuffle interface.
404 Changes in 3.54:
405 * Add "menu separator", "menu indent", "menu disabled"
406 (see README.menu).
407 * vesamenu: fix handing of VESA modes with noncontiguous
408 memory buffers. In particular, Qemu/KVM sets up such a mode
409 when Cirrus Logic emulation is enabled (which is the
410 default.)
411 * Support for calling real mode functions using far calls,
412 with argument on the stack. This was implemented to support
413 the BIOS BBS specification, but subsequent experiments show
414 that the at least one of the most common BIOS cores, Award,
415 passes the presence check but doesn't actually implement the
416 functionality.
418 Changes in 3.53:
419 * Fix bugs related to the $PnP BIOS functionality on some
420 platforms.
421 * PXELINUX: Fix the "naked" version of :: (suppress prefix.)
422 * elf.c32: better error messages.
423 * Faster operation under Intel VT virtualization.
424 * PXELINUX: Fix DHCP bootfile option.
425 * mkdiskimage: Support more than 1024 cylinders.
426 * (Hopefully) fix installer on non-x86 platforms.
427 * Fix shuffle_and_boot_rm, used by linux.c32.
428 * Fix shuffle_and_boot_pm on 386/486.
429 * ISOLINUX (at least): fix bss memory overwrite hang.
430 * MBR: Fix booting from logical partitions.
431 * Code cleanups.
433 Changes in 3.52:
434 * Handle capitalized F-key commands in the menu system.
435 * Fix padding error when loading multiple ramdisks.
436 * Workaround for VMware crashing when trying to print a
437 message during early kernel boot (does not seem to work,
438 consider deleting.)
439 * chain.c32: add the ability to search for a specific MBR
440 signature at runtime.
441 * Fall back to the server identity option if the siaddr field
442 in the DHCP header isn't set. This seems to match the
443 behaviour of most PXE stacks.
444 * mkdiskimage: give the generated disk image an MBR signature.
445 * MEMDISK: Fix failures on some BIOSes.
446 * Simple menu system: new "MENU HIDDEN" option to not display
447 the menu unless the user presses a key.
448 * Simple menu system: support MD5-encrypted passwords (modern
449 Unix standard style, with "$1$" prefixes.)
450 * pcitest.c32: now functions as a full "lspci". Thanks to
451 Erwan Velu for this work.
452 * MEMDISK: Make EDD actually work.
453 * ISOLINUX: Fix for certain broken CD-ROM BIOSes which
454 randomly corrupted register FS.
455 * Simple menu system: fix memory overwrite bug that caused
456 some systems to lock up or behave weirdly.
457 * Fix building on 64-bit systems without a 32-bit libc installed.
459 Changes in 3.51:
460 * EXTLINUX: Fix failure to find the configuration file.
462 Changes in 3.50:
463 * New keywords allow the type of file to be specified in the
464 configuration file.
465 * It is now supported to load a different configuration file
466 with the CONFIG keyword.
467 * Fix API call 0x0019 (Read Disk.)
468 * MENU AUTOBOOT, MENU TABMSG, MENU PASSPROMPT allows
469 internationalization of menu messages.
470 * A new feature, TEXT HELP, allows the administrator to set
471 a multi-line help message for individual selections.
472 * Fix API call 0x0012 (Cleanup, shuffle and boot.)
473 * New API call "Cleanup, shuffle and boot to flat protected mode"
474 * New API call "Cleanup, shuffle and boot to real mode",
475 similar to API call 0x0012 but allows arbitrary register setting.
476 * Introduce a library interface for loading arbitrary binary
477 formats with relatively easily understood code. See
478 the elf.c32 module for an example on how to use it.
479 * New module "elf.c32", to load a protected-mode ELF kernel.
480 * MBR (old and new): Fix bug in CHS mode when LBA >
481 65535*sectors.
482 * vesamenu: fix decoding of palettized PNG images.
483 * Update the Linux kernel boot protocol.
484 * PXELINUX: Press Ctrl-N at the boot prompt to read out the
485 network info.
486 * Instead of the (non-existent) MAC, use the client identifier
487 for networks like Infiniband and Firewire/1394.
488 * Add a new INCLUDE command to the core syslinux parser.
489 * Allow binding help text to F11 and F12.
490 * F-key help now available in the simple menu system.
491 * Disabled the polling for ARP during idle. It is simply too
492 slow on some (broken!) PXE stacks.
493 * PXELINUX: also try to fetch the config file based on UUID.
494 * SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: New RAID mode (-r) which calls the BIOS
495 to load the next device (typically the next drive) on boot
496 failure.
498 Changes in 3.36:
499 * MEMDISK: Disable EDD by default on floppy disks. EDD can be
500 enabled with the "edd" option and disabled with "noedd".
501 This (hopefully) should make Ghost work again.
502 * SYSLINUX: "unix" installer now uses Linux ioctls instead of
503 using libfat.
504 * New MBR which can boot from logical partitions.
505 * SYSLINUX: Fix bug in detecting special extensions which was
506 introduced in 3.35 :(
507 * PXELINUX: Unbreak chainbooting FreeBSD (and possibly others.)
509 Changes in 3.35:
510 * MEMDISK: New "safeint" mode.
511 * MEMDISK: Be more compliant with the PnP BIOS spec.
512 * MEMDISK: Turn on EDD support by default.
513 * MEMDISK: Try to work on some machines on which it would not
514 work when there was no floppy drive in the system.
515 * Simple menu system: fix serial console support (broken in
516 3.30).
517 * SYSLINUX: Support subdirectories. Like ISOLINUX, the
518 "current directory" is the directory in which syslinux.cfg
519 is found; this is searched for in the sequence
520 /boot/syslinux, /syslinux, /. As a side benefit, label names
521 like "linux-2.6.18" and "linux-2.6.19" are now supported.
523 To install ldlinux.sys in a subdirectory, pass the -d
524 directory option to the SYSLINUX installer.
526 This work was sponsored by slax.org (thanks, Tomas!)
527 * New API call: read disk.
528 * Invoke ONERROR on initrd load failure.
530 Changes in 3.31:
531 * The simple menu system (menu.c32 and vesamenu.c32) now
532 support loading more than one configuration file at a time,
533 using MENU INCLUDE or by specifying multiple filenames.
534 * The MENU COLOR statement can now control the shadowing mode.
536 Changes in 3.30:
537 * libcom32 extended to support graphics mode and graphical console.
538 * vesamenu.c32, new graphical version of the Simple
539 Menu System, see README.menu.
540 * New com32 modules by Erwan Velu do selection based on CPUID
541 or PCI devices present.
542 * RPM spec: add syslinux-tftpboot module; move syslinux by
543 default to the /usr/share/syslinux directory.
544 * RPM spec: extlinux is now a separate package.
546 Changes in 3.20:
547 * EXTLINUX: New options --install (-i) and --update (-U), to
548 make it clear if a boot loader should be installed or
549 updated. For now, defaults to --install for compatibility;
550 a future version will require one of these options.
551 * New library functions to load and place files in memory.
552 * mboot.c32 bug fixes.
553 * Remove 8 MB kernel size restriction.
554 * Add "klibc" target for building unix/syslinux and
555 extlinux/extlinux with klcc (klibc-1.4.27 or later.)
556 * PXELINUX: Fail (and eventually reboot) if no configuration
557 file was found.
558 * COM32 module by Erwan Velu to make decisions based on DMI
559 info.
560 * Fix issue where going back and forth between menus a lot
561 would cause a hang.
562 * ISOLINUX: Fix bug which made "cd boot sectors" not work.
564 Changes in 3.11:
565 * MEMDISK: Fix bug by which accessing the real floppy disk
566 as B: in MS-DOS was broken.
567 * Simple menu system: allow tweaking of the screen layout.
568 * Simple menu system: better command-line editing, correctly
569 handle command lines above 256 characters.
570 * PXELINUX: revert memory allocation change that caused
571 problems on some network cards.
572 * MEMDISK: Try work around a bug on some BIOSes when no
573 physical floppy disk is present in the system.
574 * Enable the 16550A FIFOs, if present, when doing serial
575 console.
576 * New "totaltimeout" command establishes a timeout without
577 regard for any user input.
578 * Simple menu system: timeout behaviour now more in line with
579 user expectations.
580 * Simple menu system: "ontimeout" should now work correctly.
582 Changes in 3.10:
583 * gcc 4.0.1 compilation fixes.
584 * Add support for querying the PCI BIOS in libcom32
585 (used by ethersel et al.)
586 * Fix PCI handing (ethersel etc) on several old chipsets (and
587 VMWare.)
588 * Try to deal with systems with broken EBIOS.
589 * New API call to do "localboot".
590 * New API call to query features.
591 * New API call to run kernel image, a lower-level call than
592 "run command". See comboot.doc.
593 * Fix for bug in EBIOS code discovered by Arwin Vosselman.
594 * NOESCAPE security fix.
595 * Comments are now recognized even without a space following #.
596 * Fix incorrect handling of mixes of entries with and without
597 MENU PASSWD.
598 * The idle API call now harmlessly returns failure if it is a
599 no-op. That way the caller can decide whether or not to
600 bother invoking it again.
601 * Temporarily disable the idle API call on PXELINUX, due to
602 some platforms on which the idle API call seems to hang; this
603 problem has not yet been debugged.
604 * MEMDISK: the handling of DOSEMU-headered images was broken;
605 fix it.
606 * EXTLINUX: symlinks are now supported.
607 * Simple menu system: N and P now work correctly as hotkeys.
608 * MEMDISK: more BIOS bug workarounds.
610 Changes in 3.09:
611 * gcc4 compilation fix.
612 * <BEL> (Ctrl-G) in message files now causes a beep.
613 * Reduce the command line to 511 characters; 1023 caused
614 memory overflows.
616 Changes in 3.08:
617 * SYSLINUX: Fix performance regression (-s mode always
618 enabled.)
619 * Add API function for idle loop.
620 * libutil: Add do_idle() function for idle loop, make
621 get_key() use it.
622 * libutil: Add SHA-1 and base64 functions.
623 * Simple menu system: add password support.
624 * EXTLINUX: Sparse files now handled correctly.
625 * EXTLINUX: Large directories now handled correctly.
626 * ALL: At the prompt, Ctrl-X now forces text mode.
627 * Fix configuration file parsing error, that could cause
628 hangs.
629 * Rewritten advanced menuing system from Murali Ganapathy.
630 * MEMDISK: New "bigraw" mode to work around certain broken
631 BIOS flash programs.
632 * COM32 module to boot Multiboot systems, including Xen. See
633 com32/modules/mboot.doc.
634 * Max command line changed to 1023 characters. Note that the
635 kernel proper still can only handle 255 characters without
636 patching, and COM16 binaries can only handle 125 characters.
638 Changes in 3.07:
639 * Fix chainloading (chain.c32).
640 * Fix zlib build problem.
641 * Use a private copy of <linux/ext2_fs.h>.
643 Changes in 3.06:
644 * Fix typo that caused the ramdisk to load in the wrong place.
646 Changes in 3.05:
647 * New API function "shuffle and boot"; allows COM32 modules to
648 load or construct (almost) arbitrarily complex objects,
649 e.g. a kernel and its initrd/initramfs in pieces, and have
650 the API core reorganize memory for booting. (A library API
651 for this function will be introduced in a later version.)
652 * The initrd= option now supports multiple filenames separated
653 by commas. This is mostly useful for initramfs, which can
654 be composed of multiple separate cpio or cpio.gz archives.
655 (Note: all files except the last one are zero-padded to a 4K
656 page boundary. This should not affect initramfs.)
657 * EXTLINUX: Fix API function 000Ah (get derivative-specific
658 info).
659 * libcom32/ethersel: Support PCI Config Mechanism #2 on
660 machines still infested with that hideous old hack.
661 * SYSLINUX: Fix directory-parsing bug.
663 Changes in 3.02:
664 * SYSLINUX: The "unix" installer now sets the MS-DOS
665 attributes (hidden, system, readonly.)
666 * COM32 library: build the .lnx (test modules for running
667 under Linux) as architecture native modules, in case
668 i386 devel libraries aren't installed.
669 * EXTLINUX: Hack for systems which don't have BLKGETSIZE64
670 defined in the standard header files.
671 * Simple menu system: minor aestetic improvements, and try to
672 work better over a serial console (speed, and readability on
673 monochrome terminal emulators.)
674 * New CONSOLE directive to control output on the video console
675 (useful for dealing with some broken serial-forwarding
676 BIOSes.)
677 * New com32 module "ethersel" for searching for an Ethernet
678 card and selecting the proper version of Etherboot.
679 * EXTLINUX: Allow the user to override the detected geometry.
680 Add help.
682 Changes in 3.01:
683 * EXTLINUX, SYSLINUX: Fix compile errors on some systems.
684 * EXTLINUX: Default to zipdrive geometry (64 heads, 32
685 sectors) if no other geometry can be detected.
687 Changes in 3.00:
688 * SYSLINUX: Support FAT32 and EDD. As an unfortunate
689 consequence, LDLINUX.SYS is no longer an ordinary file; it
690 is block-mapped at install time, which means it can only be
691 written using the syslinux installers.
692 * SYSLINUX: Reorganize the source code for the installers;
693 each one of the installers (dos, win32, unix, mtools) is now
694 built in its own subdirectory. In particular, "mtools" is
695 the unprivileged installer which uses mtools; "unix" is the
696 privileged installer which uses system calls.
697 * SYSLINUX: Completely rewritten DOS installer in C.
698 * ALL: "label" statement information is now stored in a
699 compressed format, which means that a lot more labels are
700 permitted (500-1000 in a typical configuration, but depends
701 on the complexity.)
702 * EXTLINUX: New derivative, which boots from an ext2/ext3
703 filesystem.
704 * SYSLINUX: The DOS and Win32 installers can now optionally
705 write the boot sector to a file instead of the real boot
706 sector. This is not supported in the Linux installers,
707 however.
708 * ALL: New NOESCAPE command, disables the "hold down the Shift
709 key to display the prompt" behaviour.
710 * New simple menu system, as an alternative to the advanced
711 menu system already present. See README.menu for details.
712 * PXELINUX: Filenames can now be prefixed with an IP address
713 or DNS name plus :: (e.g. 192.0.2.1::filename or
714 server.domain.com::filename), which downloads a file from an
715 alternate TFTP server, or just a :: (e.g. ::filename), which
716 suppresses the common pathname prefix. See pxelinux.doc.
717 * SYSLINUX: Add an -m option to the DOS and Win32 installers
718 to write an MBR and -a to mark the partition SYSLINUX is
719 being installed on active.
720 * MEMDISK: Give a way to query the boot loader type while
721 running MEMDISK; see memdisk/memdisk.doc and
722 sample/mdiskchk.c.
723 * mkdiskimage: substantially improved mkdiskimage which, among
724 other things, can now be used to initialize USB keys as
725 zipdrives; see README.usbkey for more information.
727 Changes in 2.13:
728 * MEMDISK: Fix command-line parsing "brown paper bag" class
729 bug.
730 * MEMDISK: Add "raw" mode to support the DOS boot disk from
731 WinME/XP, which seems to deliberately crash the system
732 when someone uses the "INT 15h mover" highmem API.
733 * Make "make install" do something sane for the com32
734 development environment.
735 * In the spec file, create a separate -devel RPM for the com32
736 development environment.
738 Changes in 2.12:
739 * Simple C library, based on klibc, for writing COM32
740 programs.
741 * Fix the handling of file length in loading of COM32
742 programs.
743 * MEMDISK: Work around a linker bug by rearranging the code to
744 not use the linker for the 16-bit code.
745 * SYSLINUX: If we're building on a machine without a Win32
746 (mingw) compiler, just skip building syslinux.exe.
747 * ISOLINUX: Support non-mkisofs mastering programs, at least
748 as long as the image is single-session. For best results,
749 ISOLINUX should be the only boot loader installed.
750 * MEMDISK: Allow the user to specify that the simulated disk
751 should be write-protected.
753 Changes in 2.11:
754 * ALL: Add an API call to get the configuration file name.
755 * SYSLINUX: Fix bug in 2.10 that prevented it from working
756 correctly for a lot of people.
757 * SYSLINUX: In the installer, make mtools a bit less fussy.
758 * Make the menu system compile with newer gcc's.
760 Changes in 2.10:
761 * MEMDISK: Handle images compressed with zip as well as with
762 gzip. Some Windows-based image tools apparently generate
763 these kinds of images by default. Patch by Patrick
764 LoPresti.
765 * Major menu improvement from Murali Ganapathy.
766 * ISOLINUX: Wonderfully sick and brilliant workaround for
767 severe bugs in certain Award BIOSes; from Knut Petersen.
768 * SYSLINUX: Fix for the nomtools installed, from Frederic
769 Pasteleurs.
770 * PXELINUX: Fix handling of IP numbers in the ranges
771 100-109 and 200-209.
772 * ALL: New option "allowoptions" (defaults to 1), which
773 controls if options are allowed on the command line or not.
774 * SYSLINUX: Support building under klibc (see the klibc
775 distribution for details.)
777 Changes in 2.09:
778 * SYSLINUX: Remove residual setuid crap from
779 syslinux-nomtools.
780 * Handle video pages correctly when using the API functions.
781 * Handle compiling on an x86-64 platform correctly.
782 * Menu system from Murali Krishnan Ganapathy; see the menu
783 directory for information.
784 * COMBOOT: Allow COMBOOT programs to change screen text mode.
785 * COMBOOT: Correct the documentation of how to detect
786 SYSLINUX from COMBOOT!!!!
787 * COMBOOT: Fix "get key without echo" API function.
788 * SYSLINUX: Fix bug that affected the API open function.
789 * ALL: Improve the E820 memory parser, to work around some
790 buggy BIOSes.
792 Changes in 2.08:
793 * Add new configuration command "ontimeout" to allow timeout
794 to have a different action than just pressing Enter.
795 * Add new configuration command "onerror" to allow a custom
796 command to be executed in case the kernel image is not found.
797 * Fix bugs in the COMBOOT/COM32 command-line parsing. APPEND
798 now works with COMBOOT/COM32 images.
799 * PXELINUX: Poll for ARP requests while sitting at the
800 prompt. This makes some boot servers a lot less unhappy.
801 * PXELINUX: Actually free sockets when we get a failure
802 (including file not found.) This bug would cause us to run
803 out of sockets and thus "go deaf" after a while.
804 * MEMDISK: Add an API to query for the existence of MEMDISK.
805 * SYSLINUX: Fix loading boot sectors (.bs/.bss) from floppy
806 disk.
807 * .c32 is now one of the extensions searched for
808 automatically.
809 * PXELINUX: RFBG.exe seems to randomly overwrite memory
810 location 0x5700. Thus, don't use it!
811 * PXELINUX: Change pathname length max from 63 to 127; change
812 max vkernels from 128 to 64.
813 * Support Ctrl-U -> kill entire command line input.
814 * The "samples" directory contains a (barely at all tested)
815 chain loading example, chain.c32, which may be used to
816 chainload local floppy disks and hard disks. Use with
817 "chain fdN" or "chain hdN [partition]"; N = 0 for the first
818 drive of each type.
820 Changes in 2.07:
821 * MEMDISK: Workaround for BIOSes which go into a snit when
822 they get a RESET command for the floppy system when there is
823 no floppy in the system.
824 * PXELINUX: Add "ipappend 2", which passes the hardware
825 address of the boot interface to the kernel as a
826 command-line option.
827 * mkdiskimage: fix the generation of the end limit.
828 * PXELINUX: Fix multiple bugs in chainloading of other NBPs.
829 * MEMDISK: Fix bug that would occationally cause "ran out of
830 input data" when using compressed disk images.
831 * SYSLINUX: Updates for the win32 installer (from Lars Munch.)
832 * PXELINUX: PXELINUX-specific options are now recognized both
833 in a vendor-option-space (a.k.a. type 43 encapsulated) as
834 well as in a site-option-space (unencapsulated.)
835 * COM32: Don't crash when DS != 0.
836 * COMBOOT/COM32: Make file reading work correctly. Thanks to
837 Phung Chi Kien for submitting a test program.
839 Changes in 2.06:
840 * ALL: Fix problem that would occationally cause a
841 boot failure, depending on the length of the kernel.
842 * ISOLINUX: Fix problem that would occationally cause a
843 boot failure, depending on the length of directories.
844 * SYSLINUX: Win32 installer now flushes buffers.
845 * ppmtolss16: Be fully compliant with the PNM spec;
846 actually process comments in the header and odd
847 alignments of the various parameters, as well as
848 "plain" (not raw) files and PBM and PGM files.
849 * PXELINUX: Lower the default MTU to 1472 in order to deal
850 with systems with slightly nonstandard MTUs, and PXE
851 stacks which don't defragment correctly. Unfortunately this
852 is very hard to test dynamically.
854 Changes in 2.05:
855 * PXELINUX: Add a default query based on the hardware address
856 of the boot device. This is in lower case hexadecimal form
857 separated by dashes and including the hardware type, for
858 example, the Ethernet (type 1) address 88:99:AA:BB:CC:DD
859 would query the file pxelinux.cfg/01-88-99-aa-bb-cc-dd.
860 * PXELINUX: Fix bug involving non-IP-based config file names.
861 * SYSLINUX: New installer for WinNT-based systems, from Lars
862 Munch.
863 * MEMDISK: Fix handling of memory region overlap when
864 decompressing. Thanks to Mikhail Kupchik for identifying
865 the problem.
867 Changes in 2.04:
868 * ALL: Reclaim even more low memory by observing that
869 comboot_seg == real_mode_seg is perfectly fine, and by the
870 fact that the 1000h segment managed to get unused in all
871 derivatives...
872 * PXELINUX: Attempt to negotiate full Ethernet-sized blocks
873 (1468 bytes) using the blksize option.
874 * SYSLINUX: Resurrect the old no-mtools version of the
875 installer, although as a root-only tool. Some distributors
876 have indicated that they need a small standalone installer.
877 * MEMDISK: Fix a memory offset computation error when
878 installing compressed disks which generally would cause
879 1 MB of memory to be wasted.
880 * MEMDISK: Fix installing the E820 memory map. Calling
881 INT 15h AX=0E820h with MEMDISK 2.03 loaded would give a
882 completely corrupt memory map.
883 * SYSLINUX: Make libsyslinux a dynamic library, so that it can
884 be updated separately from client programs. The whole idea,
885 after all, is to enable alternate programs to become
886 syslinux installers.
887 * Include an rpm spec file in the distribution, so rpmbuild
888 -ta works.
890 Changes in 2.03:
891 * Actually support comment lines in the configuration file.
892 * PXELINUX: Try to resolve some problems with stack switches.
893 * PXELINUX: Handle PXE stacks with broken routing.
894 With these workarounds, the remote install PXE boot floppy
895 (rbfg.exe) from Argon Technologies should work correctly.
896 * Fix problems with Perl scripts in UTF-8 locales.
897 * You probably need NASM 0.98.34 or later to compile this
898 version. 0.98.36 is recommended.
899 * MEMDISK: Now supports gzip compressed images.
901 Changes in 2.02:
902 * SYSLINUX: Security flaws have been found in the SYSLINUX
903 installer when running setuid root. Rewrite the SYSLINUX
904 installer so it uses mtools instead. It therefore now
905 requires mtools (specifically mcopy and mattrib) to exist on
906 your system, but it will not require root privileges and
907 SHOULD NOT be setuid.
909 Changes in 2.01:
910 * MEMDISK: Fix memory sizing bug when the ramdisk crosses the
911 16 MB boundary.
912 * MEMDISK: Add a "pause" option to stop immediately before
913 booting, to read off the messages.
914 * MEMDISK: Support disk images with DOSEMU headers.
915 * Update the mkdiskimage script to handle newer mtools
916 versions, and be able to generate disk images with DOSEMU
917 headers (controlled by the -d option).
918 * Fix the COM32 sample program.
919 * PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Fix some COMBOOT API calls.
920 * PXELINUX: Doc fix.
921 * Build SYSLINUX into a small library for encapsulation into
922 other programs (however, please keep in mind this is a GPL'd
923 library.)
924 * SYSLINUX: Make installer work with "owner" in /etc/fstab.
925 * SYSLINUX: Fix issue with working on nonpartitioned hard disk
926 devices. THIS CONFIGURATION IS NOT RECOMMENDED.
928 Changes in 2.00:
929 * ALL: Add support for "COM32" (32-bit COMBOOT) images.
930 * ALL: Add an API for COMBOOT/COM32 images. See comboot.doc
931 for details. There is a C development environment for
932 COM32 being created; it should be ready at some point in
933 the future.
934 * Fix mbr.asm so that it actually works.
935 * SYSLINUX: The syslinux installer *SHOULD* now be safe to
936 run setuid root.
937 * PXELINUX: Fix bug where PXELINUX would override random
938 chunks of the UNDI code segment! Thanks to Kevin Tran for
939 finding this bug.
940 * ISOLINUX: Fix a bug related to slashes in pathnames.
941 * ISOLINUX: Fix a bug in handling initrds over 128 MB.
942 * ALL: Make the <Ctrl-V> key print out the version; this is
943 to help debugging.
944 * Add a small script, mkdiskimage, to create a DOS-formatted
945 hard disk image using mtools. This may be useful in
946 conjunction with MEMDISK.
947 * ISOLINUX: Search for a /boot/isolinux directory as well as
948 /isolinux.
949 * ALL: Fix a bug related to very long configuration files.
950 * PXELINUX: Work around a NASM bug which would result in no
951 delay before reset if an error occurs.
953 Changes in 1.76:
954 * ISOLINUX: Remove code no longer used which caused hangs on
955 some Toshiba laptops.
957 Changes in 1.75:
958 * ALL: NASM 0.98.32 or later is now required to build
959 SYSLINUX from sources.
960 * SYSLINUX: put back in the workaround for the BIOS floppy
961 table. This seems to be a requirement for "extended" floppy
962 formats to work correctly.
963 * SYSLINUX: No longer warn if one is trying to boot on a 286
964 or older. The above BIOS workaround no longer fits if the
965 requirement to use only 8086-compatible code in the early
966 boot is maintained. It made sense in 1994, but in 2002 a
967 286 or older is a museum object.
968 * SYSLINUX: Use a downright bizarre, stateful algorithm to try
969 to guess the maximum transfer size. I am *hoping* this will
970 cut down on the number of systems for which -s is required
971 to work at any acceptable speed.
972 * ISOLINUX: Add a few more workarounds for various broken El
973 Torito BIOSes.
974 * Make sure .depend files aren't accidentally packed...
975 * ALL: Fix bugs in the extension-detect code; this caused
976 files like COMBOOT images and CD boot sectors to be
977 mis-identified as Linux kernels and rejected.
978 * ALL: Fix the return from COMBOOT.
979 * ALL: Do some of the early groundwork for supporting DOS
980 system calls in COMBOOT.
981 * Get rid of unnecessary "near" directives, making the code
982 bigger.
983 * PXELINUX: Put the PXE stack back in the init state before
984 invoking a chain-loaded NBP.
985 * PXELINUX: Actually found the combination of calls that
986 allows some (most?) PXE 2+ stacks to be unloaded from memory
987 properly.
988 * PXELINUX: Add "keeppxe" command-line option to disable
989 the standard unloading of the PXE stack.
991 Changes in 1.74:
992 * SYSLINUX: fix bug that would cause valid kernel images to be
993 labelled "invalid".
995 Changes in 1.73:
996 * Work on removing gratuitous differences between modules.
997 * Break up the source in common and module-specific files.
998 * PXELINUX: Allow chaining of other PXE NBPs.
999 * ISOLINUX: Allow loading "CD-ROM boot sectors".
1000 * ALL: generalize the definition of a boot sector/NBP.
1002 Changes in 1.72:
1003 * PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Fix bugs in the new core code.
1005 Changes in 1.71:
1006 * Fix a "brown paper bag" class bug in the new core code.
1008 Changes in 1.70:
1009 * Major code restructuring.
1010 * Relax the conventional memory limits somewhat.
1011 * MEMDISK: Set up the "version number string" pointer in the
1012 header correctly.
1013 * SYSLINUX: Fix, again, "the bug that won't die": the use of
1014 the offset parameter with the SYSLINUX installer.
1015 * SYSLINUX: Fix possible superblock corruption problem in the
1016 SYSLINUX installer.
1018 Changes in 1.67:
1019 * Handle bug in the location of initrd.
1021 Changes in 1.66:
1022 * MEMDISK: Make compile with newer versions of gcc.
1024 Changes in 1.65:
1025 * ISOLINUX: Support booting disk image files (to boot DOS or
1026 other non-Linux operating systems), *IF* the BIOS works
1027 correctly; unfortunately many BIOSes apparently don't.
1028 * Support Linux boot protocol version 2.03 (explicitly
1029 specify the initrd address limit.)
1030 * Handle small "pseudo-kernels"; images that use the Linux
1031 kernel boot protocols but are less than 64K in size.
1032 * MEMDISK: New subsystem; this is a driver which allows
1033 legacy OSes to boot using an in-memory simulated disk.
1034 See memdisk/memdisk.doc for more info.
1035 * PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Correctly handle files larger than 65535
1036 blocks (32 MB for PXELINUX, 128 MB for ISOLINUX.)
1037 * PXELINUX: Make a best-effort attempt at freeing all memory
1038 claimed. From the looks of it, it will fail on most PXE
1039 stacks.
1041 Changes in 1.64:
1042 * Limited support for hardware flow control when using a
1043 serial port console.
1044 * Support specifying the serial port I/O address explicitly.
1045 * Make DOS installer hopefully behave more nicely when used on
1046 recent Windows versions.
1047 * Fix returning to text mode when a font has been specified.
1048 * Attempt to detect missing serial port hardware and disable
1049 the serial port if there is nothing there.
1051 Changes in 1.63:
1052 * Make the ppmtolss16 program handle color conversion more
1053 correctly.
1054 * Clean up "make install" target, honour INSTALLROOT if it
1055 exists.
1056 * SYSLINUX: Fix stack-smash bug identified by Steffen
1057 Winterfeldt.
1058 * Hopefully fix return-to-text-mode on some graphics cards.
1059 * ISOLINUX: Bug workaround for Award BIOS 4.51, and perhaps
1060 other buggy BIOSes as well.
1062 Changes in 1.62:
1063 * PXELINUX: Allow the DHCP server to override the
1064 configuration file name and pathname prefix, using
1065 "site-specific" DHCP options.
1066 * PXELINUX: Documentation fixes.
1067 * PXELINUX: Fix the "ipappend" option; the last two values
1068 were reversed vs. what the kernel expected.
1069 * Introduce a way to return to text mode once we are already
1070 in graphics mode. This may be useful for F-key help
1071 screens.
1072 * Fix several bugs in the way return to text mode was handled.
1074 Changes in 1.61:
1075 * ISOLINUX: Support full pathname searches. Max length for a
1076 pathname is 255 characters. As a result, only 64 "label"
1077 statements are supported in ISOLINUX.
1078 * PXELINUX: Max filename length extended to 63 characters.
1080 Changes in 1.60:
1081 * Add support for graphical splash screens.
1082 * Add mode control characters, which allows you to control
1083 message display output depending on output mode (text,
1084 graphics, or serial port.)
1085 * ISOLINUX: New program, which boots Linux from a CD-ROM
1086 without using floppy emulation mode. See isolinux.doc for
1087 more details.
1088 * PXELINUX: Don't search for boot sector file types, since
1089 they don't work anyway.
1090 * SYSLINUX: Document the LOCK command for Win9x, and the error
1091 dialog box for WinNT/2K.
1093 Changes in 1.54:
1094 * PXELINUX: Fix code for finding !PXE from PXENV+. This was
1095 due to a spec bug; match the most recent spec since that
1096 seems to be what implementations actually do.
1097 * SYSLINUX: Add some smarts to the boot sector, which
1098 hopefully should reduce the number of systems which require
1099 stupid mode ("syslinux -s").
1100 * PXELINUX: Document further some of the pathologies with old
1101 PXE stacks.
1102 * When specifying a "default" command line, no longer
1103 automatically appent "auto". See the "DEFAULT" command in
1104 syslinux.doc for more information.
1105 * PXELINUX: Clean up the allocation of local socket numbers.
1107 Changes in 1.53:
1108 * PXELINUX: Rename pxelinux.bin to pxelinux.0, to match what
1109 most PXE servers seem to expect.
1110 * PXELINUX: Update the DHCP/boot server setup documentation.
1111 * PXELINUX: Support new "localboot" option for "label"
1112 sections.
1113 * PXELINUX: More robust parsing of DHCP/boot server packets.
1114 * PXELINUX: Include a small utility program "gethostip" to
1115 compute hexadecimal IP addresses.
1117 Changes in 1.52:
1118 * PXELINUX: Fix bugs introduced by new A20 code. (SYSLINUX
1119 has also been changed for code consistency reasons, but I'm
1120 pretty sure the changes are don't care on SYSLINUX.)
1121 * Documentation updates.
1122 * PXELINUX: Add "ipappend" option to generate an ip= option to
1123 the kernel.
1125 Changes in 1.51:
1126 * PXELINUX: Not all PXE stacks fill in the IP address for a
1127 type 3 cached info query. Use a type 2 cached info query
1128 for this information (only.)
1129 * Yet another attempt at A20 coding. Now support BIOS call
1130 15:2401 as well, and handle machines which always have A20
1131 on separately.
1132 * Support memory detection using INT 15h, AX=0E820h. BIOS
1133 manufacturers have apparently gotten sloppy about keeping
1134 INT 15h, AX=0E801h working properly.
1135 * Don't issue <CR><LF> onto the serial port when we're doing
1136 screen wraparound.
1138 Changes in 1.50:
1139 * Yet another A20-code update. It seems some "legacy-free"
1140 machines and embedded gear simply don't have a KBC to talk
1141 to, and that waiting for one will wait forever. Sigh.
1143 Changes in 1.49:
1144 * SYSLINUX: Implement a hack for BIOS drivers which hog significant
1145 chunks of low memory during boot. (Note: PXELINUX already
1146 had this modification. SYSLINUX does still require that the
1147 low 512K is available; PXELINUX requires 384K. Machines
1148 with a physical memory hole in the low 640K cannot boot
1149 Linux no matter what.) Depending what the reason is for the
1150 memory hole, a new kernel (2.4.0-test3-pre3 or later) may be
1151 required.
1152 * SYSLINUX: Default installer binary now compiled against
1153 glibc 2.1. If this is inappropriate for your system and you
1154 still want to use the offical version of SYSLINUX, please
1155 follow the instructions in "distrib.doc" to rebuild the
1156 installer.
1157 * SYSLINUX: Linux installer program now supports -o <offset>
1158 option which does a loopback mount with the
1159 -o loop,offset=<> option. Useful to run SYSLINUX on an
1160 individual partition of a whole-harddisk image.
1161 * Include the source code to a Master Boot Record (MBR)
1162 functionally equivalent to the one installed DOS except it
1163 includes EBIOS support, and should be resistant to geometry
1164 changes. The MBR code is public domain.
1165 * PXELINUX: Fix "double p" bug: if the tftp prefix was null,
1166 all filenames would get a "p" preprended, e.g.
1167 "ppxelinux.cfg" and "pvmlinux".
1169 Changes in 1.48:
1170 * PXELINUX: Workaround for PXE ROMs based on the Intel PXE PDK
1171 3.0 build 071 and earlier: missing !PXE structure pointer.
1172 * PXELINUX: Handle larger BOOTP/DHCP packages.
1173 * PXELINUX: The command line passing was broken; fix.
1174 * PXELINUX: Make COMBOOT images work.
1175 * PXELINUX: Documentation on how to make booting work using
1176 the PDK 3.0-derived clients, which aren't so generous as to
1177 allow booting with only "PXEClient" specified.
1179 Changes in 1.47:
1180 * PXELINUX: RFC 1123 states that a TFTP implementation MUST
1181 use adaptive timeout, "at least an exponential backoff of
1182 retransmission timeout is necessary." Implement a very
1183 simple exponential backoff for retransmits.
1184 * PXELINUX: Updated documentation, including pointer to new
1185 TFTP server.
1186 * PXELINUX: When sending ERROR due to bad OACK, use the proper
1187 destination port number (why are TFTP port numbers so odd?)
1188 * PXELINUX: If the boot dies in the middle somewhere,
1189 eventually give up and reset the machine (unattended
1190 operation.)
1192 Changes in 1.46:
1193 * New program PXELINUX to do network booting using a
1194 PXE-compliant (Pre-Execution Environment) network booting
1195 PROM. See pxelinux.doc for details.
1197 Changes in 1.45:
1198 * Serial console support. See syslinux.doc for details.
1200 Changes in 1.44:
1201 * Change HIGHMEM_MAX to 38000000h to (hopefully) avoid the
1202 kernel stepping on it; 3f000000h was apparently a higher
1203 limit than the kernel used!
1205 Changes in 1.43:
1206 * Add sys2ansi.pl script to display the contents of a
1207 colorized SYSLINUX file.
1208 * Changed the io_delay once again, after a report that the
1209 old delay port causes hangs on some systems.
1211 Changes in 1.42:
1212 * Frob the "fast A20 gate" port as well as the keyboard
1213 controller; will this help systems with problems?
1214 * Be even more paranoid about A20, unfortunately even this
1215 seems to be not paranoid enough... what I don't understand
1216 is that if there is hardware out there *this broken*, how
1217 can it run Linux at all? Report an error message rather
1218 than hang forever if A20 is stuck.
1219 * Include some intermediate files in the distribution, plus
1220 provide a "make installer" target for distributors to relink
1221 the install programs only. I would prefer the syslinux boot
1222 loader proper to be "binary clean" for debuggablity -- use
1223 "make clean ; make installer" to rebuild the installers only.
1225 Changes in 1.41:
1226 * Don't get confused by directories, volume labels, or VFAT
1227 long names.
1228 * Use INT 15h, AX=0E801h to query memory size before trying
1229 INT 15h, AH=88h. This not only provides more headroom
1230 between the kernel and the initrd on large-memory machines,
1231 but it appears some recent BIOSes actually have started
1232 returning garbage for the AH=88h (older) call.
1233 * Trust high memory beyond the 15 MB mark if the user has
1234 specified it, or if obtained with INT 15h, AH=0E801h (with
1235 no memory holes above 1 MB.)
1237 Changes in 1.40:
1238 * Increase A20M delay and put in a test to avoid problems on
1239 certain IBM Thinkpads (thanks to Donnie Barnes of RedHat
1240 for vital info on this one.)
1241 * Support COMBOOT style boot command images.
1242 * Support chain loading (foreign operating systems, e.g. DOS).
1243 * Include a new "copybs" DOS utility to copy a boot sector to
1244 a file (under Linux, use "dd".)
1245 * Fix the DOS installer to work for disks over 32 MB.
1246 * SYSLINUX should now handle disks with more than 65536 tracks.
1248 Changes in 1.37:
1249 * Fix a bug that caused "label" statements in syslinux.cfg to
1250 not be handled properly.
1251 * Updated the documentation. Among other things, we now allow
1252 up to 128 "label" statements.
1254 Changes in 1.36:
1255 * Fix for booting old (pre-initrd) kernels.
1256 * It seems at least some versions of OS/2 doesn't set up all
1257 the fields in the superblock correctly. Account for that.
1258 * Fix bug that caused boot failure when using the mem= option.
1260 Changes in 1.35:
1261 * Loading from partitions now should work properly. (Actually
1262 tested, this time. You should even be able to dd a floppy
1263 to a partition and boot from it.)
1264 * Removed large workaround code for an alleged ancient BIOS
1265 bug I have never actually seen. The -s option should work
1266 on those machines, anyway.
1267 * Support for simple keyboard remappings, same as used by
1268 LILO (once again to support localization.) The program
1269 keytab-lilo.pl from the LILO distribution included to
1270 generate such maps.
1271 * Added a "safe, slow and stupid" (-s) option to the
1272 installers. This option will lobotomize the boot sector to
1273 hopefully work on even very buggy BIOSes.
1275 Changes in 1.34:
1276 * Ability to load a VGA font on bootup (for localized Linux
1277 distributions.)
1279 Changes in 1.33:
1280 * Bug fix in the Linux installer.
1281 * Added a workaround for a bug in certain AMI/Intel BIOSes
1282 when booting from CD-ROM.
1283 * Documentation changes.
1285 Changes in 1.32:
1286 * FAT16 filesystems are now supported.
1288 Changes in 1.31:
1289 * Now compiles under Linux, using NASM, rather than using
1290 Turbo Assembler under DOS. See http://www.cryogen.com/Nasm
1291 for information about NASM.
1292 * Linux-hosted SYSLINUX installer, as well as a
1293 rewritten DOS installer (now is written in assembler, so we
1294 don't need Turbo C.)
1296 Changes in 1.30:
1297 * Added support for loading bzImage and initrd loading, and made
1298 SYSLINUX new-setup-code aware (SYSLINUX 1.30 id=0x31).
1299 * Added LILO-style kernel labels; see the LABEL and IMPLICIT
1300 keywords in README file.
1301 * Added support for colorization of intro and help screens.
1302 * The vga= option is now handled correctly.
1303 * Massive rewrite of large chunks of the code in order to
1304 support the first two new features.
1306 Changes in 1.20:
1307 * Added simple online help at the "boot:" prompt.
1308 * Removed 2880K image as I no longer have access to such a
1309 floppy drive. (Donations accepted!!)
1310 * Decided to distribute the source in a subdirectory rather
1311 than in a nested zipfile.
1313 Changes in 1.11:
1314 * Removed a sanity check which would cause booting to fail on
1315 Phoenix BIOS version 4.03. Apparently this BIOS is buggy.
1317 Changes in 1.10:
1318 * Added configuration file SYSLINUX.CFG. This file contains all
1319 configurable options, and can be edited from any OS which can
1320 access an MS-DOS filesystem; there is no longer a need to run
1321 SYSLINUX.EXE except to write the boot sector.
1322 * Default command line now given by "default" line in config
1323 file.
1324 * LINUXMSG.TXT and BOOTMSG.TXT hard-coded file names replaced by
1325 "display" and "prompt" lines in config file.
1326 * LILO-style option appending now supported ("append" line in
1327 config file).
1328 * Prompt timeout is now supported ("timeout" line in config
1329 file). The timeout is cancelled when anything is typed on the
1330 command line.
1331 * Pressing <ESC> or <Ctrl-C> at the Loading... stage now aborts
1332 the kernel loading in progress and returns the user to the
1333 boot: prompt.
1334 * The installer now automatically sets the READONLY flag on
1335 LDLINUX.SYS.
1336 * Added 2880K disk image.
1338 Changes in 1.03:
1339 * Fixed bug that would prevent booting from double-density
1340 floppies and other DOS filesystems with multiple sectors per
1341 cluster.
1342 * Added 720K disk image.
1343 * Changed default kernel name on disk images to LINUX.
1345 Changes in 1.02:
1346 * Fixed bug that would garble the command line on recent kernels
1347 with more than 4 sectors of setup code (this wasn't really a
1348 *bug*; rather, a kernel change broke the code. Unfortunately
1349 the Linux boot interface is still sorely undocumented).
1350 * Added BOOTMSG.TXT file support (message file which does not
1351 force display of the boot prompt).
1353 Changes in 1.01:
1354 * Fixed bug on some (most?) 386 BIOSes would require two boot
1355 attempts.