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. 4 5 Changes in 6.03: 6 * chain: Fix chainloading on 6.02 (Raphael S. Carvalho). 7 * core: Do not leak the __lowmem and __bss16 macros to modules; 8 hide them so modules will not use them. 9 * load_linux: Do not use size heuristic for non-relocatable 10 kernels, for zImage kernels and for non-Linux kernels. 11 * PXELINUX: Fix the SENDCOOKIES feature for HTTP 12 (Russel Santillanes). 13 * gnu-efi: Add gnu-efi as a submodule. 14 * ANSI: Support color tables with more than 256 entries 15 (James Buren). 16 * EFI: Fix displayed version; add DATE (Gene Cumm) 17 * PXELINUX, EFI: Fix bad read of file size over TFTP on EFI64 18 (Sylvain Gault). 19 * Fix hand over to kernel: 20 "Booting kernel failed: Invalid argument" error. 21 * ISOLINUX: EDX, LBA values higher than 65535; work around for 22 buggy BIOS, where the system would hang, would reboot, or 23 would show a "Disk error 01, AX=42" message. 24 * core/legacynet: Enable dot quad resolution (Gene Cumm). 25 * diag/geodsp improvements (Gene Cumm). 26 * DOS: Fix syslinux.com DOS-based installer. 27 * Improve gcc 4.3.0 compatibility. 28 * syslxint: fix compilation on non-x86 architectures. 29 * localboot: Fix "localboot 0x80" and similar cases. 30 * Add memset() calls prior to any intcall() and other mem fixes; 31 specially relevant for older hardware and/or buggy BIOS. 32 * poweroff.c32: Fixes (Gene Cumm). 33 * HDT: Fix memory leak in CLI (Felipe Pena). 34 * ACPI: Remove memset of buffer; it makes things clearer but 35 also prevents some compilation warnings (Erwan Velu). 36 * Add manpages for isohybrid, memdiskfind 37 (Peter Jones, Gene Cumm). 38 * ISOLINUX: Experimental Rock Ridge support (Thomas Schmitt). 39 * comapi: Remove the comapi interfaces. 40 * EFI: Fixes on PE files and OVMF compatibility 41 (Sylvain Gault, Gene Cumm). 42 * EFI: Updates and fixes for gnu-efi sub-module 43 (Sylvain Gault, Gene Cumm). 44 * BIOS: Fix low memory check. 45 * Filesystem UUID to SYSAPPEND bit 0x40000 for FAT and ext2 46 (Serj Kalichev). 47 * Makefiles: Export the firmware type as a cpp variable. 48 Additional improvements. Fix "make spotless". 49 * core, BIOS: Move __syslinux_shuffler_size to assembly. 50 Actually get the shuffler size sanely. Fix booting recent 51 Syslinux versions on certain hardware and on certain 52 virtualization software (e.g. QEMU 0.11.1, VirtualBox 4.1.x). 53 * lua: Upgrade to v.5.2.3 (Ferenc Wgner) and additional fixes. 54 * chainload: Fixes to chain.c32 and pxechn.c32. 55 * NTFS: Make byte_shift a constant. 56 * NTFS: Correct parsing of file runs (Andy Alex). 57 * core, BIOS: Correct detection of EDD (Andy Alex). 58 * core: Avoid initializing the cache more than once 59 (Raphael S. Carvalho). 60 * NTFS: Handle fragmented $MFT file (Andy Alex). 61 * BIOS: Use int 0x16, ah=0x02 to probe for shift flags. Attempt 62 workaround for USB keyboards not responding at boot time. 63 * kbd: Getting the keyboard shift state is now a firmware method. 64 * kbd: Fix force-prompt features. 65 * BTRFS: Fix booting on BTRFS. 66 * cache, btrfs: Provide a general cached read routine. 67 * NTFS: Correct file->offset usage in ntfs_readdir (Andy Alex). 68 * New support for UFS/FFS (UFS1/2) (Raphael S. Carvalho). 69 * adv: Remove double definition; 70 it should fix uses of the ADV, including "--once". 71 * memdump: Remove old obsolete COM16 binary. 72 * isohybrid: Numerous fixes (Thomas Schmitt). 73 * chain.c32: Add an adjustable "strict={0,1,2}" flag, improve 74 error reporting (Michal Soltys.) 75 * lpxelinux.0: Workaround for various buggy BIOSes (Gene 76 Cumm.) 77 * PXE: Fix a stack-smashing bug which broke a large number of 78 systems. 79 80 Changes in 6.02: 81 * efi64: Add support for booting 32-bit kernels. 82 * efi: Use the EFI handover protocol when booting kernels if 83 available. 84 * Fix various make targets that became broken when switching to 85 per-firmware object directories, including 'make install' and 86 'make netinstall'. 87 * efi: Improve handling of packet loss in UDP stack. 88 * tests: Introduce a new regression test framework designed to 89 ensure bugs are not reintroduced once fixed. 90 * efi: Implement localboot support. 91 92 Changes in 6.01: 93 * efi: Mark some symbols as __export otherwise libcom32.c32 and 94 vesamenu.c32 will refuse to load. 95 * bios: Wire up the bios kernel loader. It was impossible to 96 load a kernel from bios in 6.00. 97 * efi: Fix 'make installer'. There are no EFI installers so 98 don't try and build them as we run into build errors. 99 * efi: Reuse the initial TFTP client port in subsequent 100 transfers otherwise the server will send an error packet. 101 * efi: Some firmware will not set a default TTL value in IP 102 packets - we must explicitly set it ourselves otherwise a 103 value of zero may be used. 104 * bios, font: Fix a font regression affecting some VirtualBox 105 users. 106 107 Changes in 6.00: 108 * Add support for booting from EFI. 109 * EFI TCP/IP support. This allows the EFI backend to hook into 110 the generic TFTP, HTTP and FTP functionality. 111 112 Changes in 5.11: 113 * Dynamic debug support: Add new module, debug.c32, that allows 114 debug code to be dynamically enabled and disabled at runtime. 115 116 Changes in 5.10: 117 * PXELINUX: An entirely new network implementation based on 118 the lwIP embedded TCP/IP stack. As a result, plain PXELINUX 119 can now support HTTP and FTP without gPXE/iPXE. ls/readdir 120 functionality is supported over HTTP with an indexing 121 webserver, or over FTP with most common FTP servers. For the 122 new network stack use lpxelinux.0. For the legacy stack use 123 pxelinux.0. 124 * Rename the "ipappend" option to "sysappend" ("ipappend" is 125 still accepted as an alias) and make it available for all 126 derivatives. Add additional strings derived from the system 127 DMI/SMBIOS information if available. 128 * "sysappend" strings are also sent as http cookies, with the 129 prefix _Syslinux_ added, on all http transfers. This can be 130 overridden with the SENDCOOKIES configuration file command. 131 * poweroff.c32: A new module to power off a system via APM. It 132 replaces the poweroff COMBOOT module (Sebastian Herbszt). 133 * PXELINUX: Fix booting with DHCP options 209 and 210 which was 134 broken in 5.00. 135 * Handle loading kernel images with no protected mode code. A 136 legitimate kernel image can consist solely of real-mode code. 137 The support for booting such images was broken in 5.00 (Josh Triplett). 138 * Fix a regression in the .psf font file loader introduced 139 in 5.00. 140 141 Changes in 5.01: 142 * txt/: A new AsciiDoc documentation set (work-in-progress) 143 (Gene Cumm). 144 * core: Fix a bug in the realloc() implementation that caused 145 machines to appear to run out of free memory. 146 * ldlinux: Fix multiple buffer overflows in cmdline parsing 147 code that resulted in files failing to run and cmdlines 148 being truncated. 149 * core: Fix debug build by tagging __bad_SEG() with __export. 150 * com32: Restrict library filenames to 8.3 format. 151 * EXTLINUX: Fix installation and subdirectory patching. 152 * ISOLINUX: Fix booting isohybrid images that are over 32K. 153 * com32: Strip modules to reduce their size. 154 * XFS: Implement directory block cache and fix 155 shortform-directory lookup (Paulo Alcantara). 156 157 Changes in 5.00: 158 * com32: Switched from the COM32 object format to ELF as it is 159 a much more powerful format that allows undefined symbols to 160 be resolved at runtime and dynamic loading of module 161 dependencies, which means modules now become shared object 162 files instead of statically linked binaries - reducing both 163 disk space and runtime memory consumption. 164 * core: Split non-core functionality into ldlinux.c32, which 165 is an ELF module loaded by the core that contains everything 166 the core doesn't require to boot the system, e.g. config 167 parser, command-line interface, etc. 168 * Replaced __intcall() calls with direct function calls now 169 that we can resolve undefined symbols at runtime, thanks to 170 the ELF object support. Now that we no longer need to go 171 through the 16-bit interrupt mechanism we can make full use 172 of the 32-bit execution environment. This change required 173 reimplementing lots of the 16-bit assembly code from core/ 174 in C. 175 * com32: __com32.cs_bounce is gone now we always run in a 176 32-bit environment once we execute ldlinux.c32. 177 * ldlinux: A new "PATH" directive was added to the ldlinux.c32 178 config parser that specifies a colon-separated list of 179 directories to search when attempting to load modules. 180 * ALL: Delete all references to/code for 16-bit COMBOOT files. 181 COMBOOT files (.cbt and .com) are no longer supported under 182 Syslinux. 183 184 Changes in 4.07: 185 * EXTLINUX: fix crash caused by dereferencing garbage pointer. 186 * Plug memory leak in searchdir which eventually leads to an 187 observable hang (Shao Miller). 188 * ISOLINUX: fix bug triggered by isohybrid images larger than 189 32K which results in an invalid image checksum error. 190 * menugen: make it Py3k compatible (Paulo Alcantara). 191 192 Changes in 4.06: 193 * Support for NTFS, by Paulo Alcantara. 194 * EXTLINUX: more robust device detection, allow user to override. 195 * kontron_wdt.c32: Add a new module to enable the hardware 196 watchdog of some Kontron boards. It allows enabling the watchdog 197 and then booting a given image. 198 * HDT updated, and now can display images regarding some detection 199 steps. Add postexec command to run a particular entry after 200 HDT's execution, add silent option and various fixes. 201 * ifcpu.c32: Detect hypervisor presence. 202 * lua.c32: Add dhcp support and support for native Syslinux 203 functions syslinux_config(), syslinux_ipappend_strings() and 204 syslinux_reboot(). 205 * isohybrid: Workaround for various EFI systems. 206 * pxechn.c32, a PXE NBP chainloader. More versatile alternative 207 to pxechain.com and resolves the PXELINUX -> WDS issue with 208 Microsoft Windows Server 2008R2 (Gene Cumm). 209 * btrfs: Fix booting off of a subvolume. 210 * com32: Add device tree support. 211 * SYSLINUX: Fix relative paths for VFAT. The CONFIG and APPEND 212 directives now support entirely relative paths. 213 214 Changes in 4.05: 215 * HDT updated, and now supports uploading data to a TFTP 216 server. 217 * ISOLINUX: remove the .img file support; it has been broken 218 on virtually all systems since the beginning, and has been 219 totally broken since 4.00 at least. Use MEMDISK instead. 220 * chain.c32: Support chaining ReactOS' FreeLdr (Shao Miller) 221 * isohybrid: -m option to add support for Mac EFI booting. 222 * ifmemdsk.c32: Choose boot option based on presence of 223 MEMDISK. 224 * Remove bogus distributed mk-lba-img binary. 225 * The Syslinux project has a new, cool logo by Abi 226 "ixxvil" Rasheed (doc/logo/*). 227 228 Changes in 4.04: 229 * PXELINUX: Fix handling of unqualified DNS names. 230 * PXELINUX: Fix timer bug when PXELINUX might be unloaded 231 (Gene Cumm). 232 * core/writedec.inc: Fix duplicate declaration and overflow 233 (Gene Cumm). 234 * GCC 4.5 fixes. 235 * sample directory: Fix Makefile include (Gene Cumm). 236 * ver.com: New universal DOS/COMBOOT application to display 237 version information (includes DRMK) (Gene Cumm). 238 * rosh.c32: updated; Using getopt() for internal commands to aid 239 parsing options; Fix bugs in ls; add warm reboot and echo 240 (Gene Cumm). 241 * com32: fix a file descriptor leak. 242 * gfxboot.c32: handle TEXT..ENDTEXT; error out on no LABELs 243 found (Sebastian Herbszt). 244 * Fix booting on non-partitioned devices. 245 * MBR, isohybrid: Workaround for a BIOS issue on Acer 246 Travelmate and possibly other machines. 247 * COM32: Adding ACPI parsing libary 248 * HDT: Release 0.4.1 to support ACPI parsing, 249 improved mutli-core/cpu reporting 250 * LUA: Updating to 5.1.4-2 251 * SYSLINUX: core/diskstart.inc: Reset DS after checksum in case 252 it isn't 0 (Gene Cumm). 253 * win64: Script update for additional mingw compiler names 254 (Gene Cumm). 255 * diag: New directory for diagnostic-related tools. Add a 256 handoff MBR/VBR and geometry display images (Gene Cumm). 257 * MEMDISK: use "mem=" parameter to mark available memory above 258 this point as reserved (core already does alignment) (Gene Cumm). 259 * MEMDISK: Additional disk probe checks and debug output 260 (Shao Miller, Gene Cumm). 261 * gpxe: add gpxelinuxk.0, based off of undionly.kpxe + new 262 script (Gene Cumm). 263 * isohybrid: install the isohdpfx*.bin/isohdppx*.bin files to 264 make isohybrid images in one step with GNU xorriso. 265 * PXELINUX: disable a hack that would make localboot work on 266 some machines, but break just about as many. Some machines 267 which worked with "localboot 0" in previous versions may 268 need "localboot -1" in this one. If you have a machine 269 which requires "localboot -1", a copy of the dmidecode 270 or sysdump output would be appreciated. 271 * Include a set of diagnostics by Gene Cumm. 272 * Fixes for gcc 4.6 and binutils 2.21.51. 273 * chain.c32: Allow "uuid" as a synonym to "guid". 274 * Handle directory names starting with .. for vfat and 275 iso9660. 276 * New MENU HIDDENKEY command to provide a one-keystroke way to 277 activate a boot option from a hidden menu intro screen. 278 279 Changes in 4.03: 280 * Don't hang if no configuration file is found. 281 * Better support for booting from MBRs which don't pass 282 handover information. 283 * EXTLINUX: Try to be smarter about finding the partition 284 offset. 285 * chain.c32: support chainloading Dell Real Mode Kernel (Gene 286 Cumm). 287 * chain.c32: fix booting in CHS mode. 288 * rosh.c32 updated (Gene Cumm). 289 * Fix the -s option to the syslinux/extlinux installer (Arwin 290 Vosselman). 291 * isohybrid: fix padding of large images (PJ Pandit). 292 293 Changes in 4.02: 294 * SYSLINUX: correctly handle the case where the -d option is 295 specified with a non-absolute path, i.e. "syslinux -d 296 syslinux" instead of "syslinux -d /syslinux". 297 * ISOLINUX: recognize the directory names /boot/syslinux and 298 /syslinux, and the filename syslinux.cfg in addition to the 299 isolinux-specific names. Thus, "syslinux.cfg" is now a 300 generic name, whereas "isolinux.cfg" or "extlinux.conf" is 301 specific to different derivative. 302 * chain.c32: support setting alternate config filename for 303 stage2 of GRUB Legacy (Gert Hulselmans). 304 * whichsys.c32: execute specific command, based on Syslinux 305 bootloader variant (Gert Hulselmans). 306 * lua.c32: a lot of new bindings added to the "syslinux" 307 namespace: VESA, PCI, DMI, kernel loading (Marcel Ritter). 308 * btrfs: print a comprehensive error message if compressed or 309 encrypted files are encountered (neither is currently 310 supported.) 311 * SYSLINUX: mtools installer: honor TMPDIR, error out on disk 312 full. 313 * Handle fallbacks from EDD to CHS, to deal with systems which 314 announce EDD support but don't actually have it. 315 * SYSLINUX: the mtools, DOS and win32 installers now use the new 316 command line options. 317 * PXELINUX: fix the use of IP addresses in TFTP :: or tftp:// 318 host syntax. 319 * SYSLINUX: experimental Win64 installer (syslinux64.exe). 320 321 Changes in 4.01: 322 * ISOLINUX: fix initialization on systems which don't zero 323 low memory. 324 * SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: fix handing of disk read retries in 325 EDD mode. 326 * ISOLINUX: change the initialization sequence to avoid 327 problems with certain (old) BIOSes. Special thanks to 328 Helmut Hullen for invaluable debugging support. 329 * ifplop.c32: new module which detects if the PLoP Boot Loader 330 already has booted a CDROM or USB drive (Gert Hulselmans). 331 * Correct a severe memory overwrite bug, triggered primarily 332 when selecting a very long command line in the menu system. 333 * lua.c32: Lua script interpreter, currently experimental 334 (Alexey Zaytsev, Marcel Ritter, Geert Stappers). 335 * PXELINUX: new option IPAPPEND 4 to append the system UUID to 336 the kernel command line. 337 * PXELINUX: display BOOTIF and SYSUUID at startup time, and 338 when Ctrl-N is pressed on the command line. 339 340 Changes in 4.00: 341 * Major code base changes; all filesystem rewritten in C. 342 This work was done primarily by Liu Aleaxander (Yuanhan Liu). 343 * EXTLINUX: btrfs and ext4 support. btrfs support was done by 344 Alek Du of Intel. 345 * EXTLINUX is no longer a separate derivative; extlinux and 346 syslinux both install the same loader (ldlinux.sys); for the 347 Linux-based installers the extlinux binary is used for a 348 mounted filesystem; the syslinux binary for an unmounted 349 filesystem. 350 * When loading a new configuration file with the CONFIG 351 command, one can now also specify a new current directory 352 with an APPEND statement. 353 * Full ADV support for Syslinux, to boot-once and MENU SAVE 354 works. 355 * Full support of GPT-partitioned disks, including disks 356 and/or parititions larger than 2 TiB (if supported by BIOS.) 357 * The GPT handover protocol adjusted to the current T13 358 committee draft; see doc/gpt.txt. 359 * HDT: code cleanup, small bugfixes 360 * The "linux" syslinux installer (syslinux-nomtools) now has a 361 command-line syntax closer to the extlinux installer. The 362 mtools, dos and win32 installers will get this new syntax 363 eventually, but it is not implemented yet. 364 * chain.c32: support booting GPT partitions by index, GUID, label. 365 * chain.c32: support booting the Syslinux partition with "fs". 366 * chain.c32: implement gpt.txt hand-over protocol. 367 * chain.c32: support for chainloading Grub stage 2. 368 * PXELINUX: TFTP URL syntax (tftp://) supported even when not 369 running gPXE/gpxelinux. 370 * New ls.c32 module to display the contents of the disk from 371 the command line, and pwd.c32 to display the current 372 directory. 373 * rosh.c32 (read only shell) updated and hopefully usable. 374 * PXELINUX: Support "localboot -1", just like the other 375 derivatives. 376 * gfxboot.com removed in favor of gfxboot.c32. 377 * New MENU HELP statement to display fullscreen help text as a 378 result of a menu selection. 379 * memdiskfind utility that can be used with the phram driver 380 in the Linux kernel to mount a memdisk. 381 * ifcpu.c32: Adding usage when no parameters are given, 382 adding PAE support. 383 * ifcpu.c32, ifcpu64.c32: handle more than one argument per 384 target. 385 * isohybrid: C version which does not require Perl. 386 * New command MENU IMMEDIATE to permit hotkeys to activate 387 immediately without needing Enter. 388 * mdiskchk.com supports a --no-sequential (or -n) option to 389 suppress the classic all-drive-probing heuristic. Useful 390 on BIOSes who crash/hang when certain drive numbers are 391 probed. 392 * ElTorito.Sys DOS driver now scans drive numbers upwards 393 instead of downwards, in order to avoid a fairly common 394 bug on some BIOSes where probing drive 0xFF causes a 395 failure. 396 * NASM 2.03 or later required to build. 2.07 or later 397 recommended. 398 399 Changes in 3.86: 400 * chain.c32: fix chainloading the MBR of a hard disk (broken 401 in 3.85). 402 * mboot.c32: report the boot loader name in the information 403 structure. 404 * com32: set argv[0] in a com32 module. 405 * core: add a workaround for a bug in Xen HVM older than 406 version 3.3: disable halt on those platforms. 407 * Fix problems where certain operations in com32 modules would 408 cause the core to believe the system was idle. 409 * MEMDISK: fix MBR detection when used with a DOSEMU header or 410 an offset. 411 * MEMDISK: generate the mBFT checksum correctly. 412 413 Changes in 3.85: 414 * gPXELINUX: updated to gPXE 1.0.0. gPXELINUX can now do NBP 415 chainloading, and does not require a second DHCP. 416 * vesamenu.c32: unbreak the default "grey hole" background. 417 * We no longer have a built-in default of "linux auto". 418 Instead, if no DEFAULT or UI statement is found, or the 419 configuration file is missing entirely, we drop to the boot: 420 prompt with an error message (if NOESCAPE is set, we stop 421 with a "boot failed" message; this is also the case for 422 PXELINUX if the configuration file is not found.) 423 * chain.c32: support chainloading Grub4DOS; patch by Gert 424 Hulselmans. 425 * New tool: sysdump.c32, can be used to produce system 426 information for debugging via tftp or ymodem (serial port). 427 * "vga=current" on the Linux command line is now supported. 428 * chain.c32: support for Windows Recovery Console, via the 429 "cmldr=" option. 430 * chain.c32: should now support loading NTLDR from different 431 type media than loaded from. 432 * chain.c32: support chainloading to a FAT/NTFS partition with 433 invalid "hidden sectors" via the "sethidden" option. 434 * memdisk: fix the mBFT ACPI table. 435 * vesamenu.c32: if the image is smaller than the screen, tile 436 it across the whole screen. 437 * mkdiskimage: -s option for producing a sparse image. 438 * vesamenu.c32: support arbitrary resolution setting (beyond 439 BIOS support) on some Intel-based video chipsets. This code 440 is a modified version of the "915resolution" tool by 441 Steve Tomljenovic; your mileage might vary. 442 443 Changes in 3.84: 444 * SYSLINUX: make the DOS installer work for MS-DOS 7.x/8.x 445 (Win9x/ME) again. 446 * HDT: updated to version 0.3.6 (numerous changes.) 447 * mboot.c32: now supports video mode setting if requested by 448 the image. 449 * MEMDISK: Fix floppy images of PC-DOS. 450 * MEMDISK: Add support for emulation of CD-ROM images; patch 451 by Shao Miller. 452 * MEMDISK: Comply with the Win9x "safe hook" standard, 453 allowing a protected-mode driver. 454 * MEMDISK: New "mBFT" ACPI table, by analogy with the iSCSI 455 iBFT table. This allows detection from a protected-mode 456 operating system without EDD support. 457 * 32-bit version of the gfxboot loader (gfxboot.c32), so far 458 experimental. This will replace gfxboot.com in the future. 459 * vesamenu.c32: new MENU RESOLUTION directive to set a screen 460 resolution other than 640x480. 461 * chain.c32: add support for loading isolinux.bin. 462 * chain.c32: make sure to always return to text mode. 463 * eltorito.sys: DOS driver for generic CD-ROMs; by Gary Tong 464 and Bart Lagerweij. 465 466 Changes in 3.83: 467 * PXELINUX: clear memory before handing over to a chainloaded 468 NBP. This may help avoid a bug in Windows RIS. 469 * PXELINUX: fix localboot after NBP chainloading on certain 470 BIOSes (including ASUS A8N-E, but possibly others.) 471 * chain.c32: support chainloaded bootloaders on ISOLINUX. 472 * PXELINUX: allow filenames up to 251 characters. 473 * MEMDISK: fix problems booting from USB on Thinkpads, and 474 possibly other machines or hardware combinations. 475 * isohybrid: fix the -id option. 476 * HDT: updated to version 0.3.4. 477 * MEMDISK: the stack size is now configurable, with the stack= 478 option. 479 * Simple menu: fix Ctrl-W (word erase) in command-line edit. 480 * Simple menu: fix crash on some platforms. 481 * Gfxboot: fixes to the configuration file parsing. 482 * PXELINUX: add a tool to override specific DHCP options via 483 values hardcoded in the pxelinux.0 file. These hardcoded 484 values can be either "before DHCP" (defaults if DHCP do not 485 provide values), or "after DHCP" (overrides DHCP). The tool 486 pxelinux-options can be used to set these options. This 487 feature does not apply to gpxelinux.0; when used with gPXE 488 this is better handled by modifying the embedded script. 489 490 Changes in 3.82: 491 * isohybrid: fix the -partok logic for loading from a partition. 492 * ISOLINUX: deal with systems which return from INT 13h with 493 interrupts disabled. 494 * Do not invoke the idle handler during large file loads. 495 * Simple menu: make ONTIMEOUT work with MENU HIDDEN. 496 * PXELINUX: handle TFTP servers which have extra NULs at the 497 end of an OACK packet. 498 499 Changes in 3.81: 500 * Shuffler: fix bug in real-mode entry. This affected a 501 number of modules, probably in relatively unimportant ways, 502 but it completely broke linux.c32. 503 * Improved performance. 504 * Attempt to halt the processor while idle. This can cause 505 bad reponsiveness when using a serial console especially for 506 automated input; if that ends up being a problem, use the 507 new "NOHALT 1" configuration command. 508 * linux.c32 now suppresses all messages if the "quiet" flag is 509 specified. 510 * isohybrid: add a variety of options, and a help message. 511 * ISOLINUX: fix booting in hybrid mode when CBIOS is used. 512 This unfortunately means that the isohybrid handoff protocol 513 has changed, so the isohybrid utility must version-match 514 isolinux.bin. 515 * Drop support for ACPI 3 extended memory flags. 516 * Menu system: don't set the autocr flag on the serial 517 console. 518 * altmbr: fix handling of logical partitions. 519 * altmbr: cap at 439 bytes so the partition select byte isn't 520 part of the file. 521 522 Changes in 3.80: 523 * New shuffler mechanism and API. 524 * Rewritten mboot.c32 module. 525 * The syslinux_boot_linux() function has been simplified. 526 * Don't hang trying to boot a "menu quit" label from the CLI. 527 * Fix problem with boot-once "sticking" on some BIOSes. 528 * isohybrid: fix problem with images over 2 GB in size. 529 * APM poweroff module (poweroff.com) by Sebastian Herbszt. 530 * ISOLINUX: fix the handling of large directories. Bug found 531 and fixed by Steffen Winterfeldt. 532 533 Changes in 3.75: 534 * PXELINUX: fix the "keeppxe" option, which was broken in 535 3.74. 536 * MEMDISK: correct the extraction of geometry information from 537 the MBR of a hard disk image, again broken in 3.74. 538 * extlinux(1) man page from Brian Pellin. 539 * Simple menu: MENU SAVE is now controllable on a menu-by-menu 540 or entry-by-entry basis. 541 * gPXELINUX: fix interrupt-disabling bug. 542 * HDT: fix lockup on machines with certain PCI configurations. 543 544 Changes in 3.74: 545 * New UI directive, which allows a more natural way to specify 546 a menu system (or not.) With the UI directive specifying 547 the menu system, the DEFAULT directive can be used to select 548 the default entry inside the menus. 549 * kbdmap.c32: new module to load a new keyboard map 550 dynamically. 551 * isohybrid: workaround bug in some versions of binutils. 552 * Fix issue with the placement of the initrd on some machines. 553 * ifcpu64: fix handling of less than three arguments. 554 * Fix bug in the shuffle library when dealing with a very 555 large number of fragments. 556 * Documentation fixes by Vicente Jimenez Aguilar. 557 * gPXE updated to version 0.9.7. 558 * hdt.c32: Hardware Detection Tool, an interactive hardware 559 analyzer module by Erwan Velu. 560 * MEMDISK: enable automatic determination of the disk geometry 561 for a large floppy disk image if (and only if) it is 562 formatted with a FAT filesystem. 563 * SYSLINUX: fix the handling of .bss files on FAT12/16. 564 * Suppress the Loading ... message if "quiet" is specified on 565 the kernel command line. 566 * Fix the use of "CONSOLE 0" with menu.c32. 567 * Allow COM32 modules to be aware of all memory even in the 568 presence of a memory hole. The "linux.c32" module can be 569 used to load a kernel (or memdisk) plus large initrd on 570 such a system. 571 * MBR: produce alternate MBR variants which force the drive 572 number to hd0 (_f variants), or force the drive number to 573 hd0 if the Ctrl key is pressed (_c variants.) Furthermore, 574 add an MBR variant (altmbr*.bin) which ignores the active 575 flag and instead boots the partition number specified in the 576 byte at offset 439 decimal. 577 * Add IPAPPEND strings to com32 modules, especially needed for 578 linux.c32. 579 * New MENU SAVE directive which saves the latest menu 580 selection until the next boot. Currently only implemented for 581 EXTLINUX. 582 * gfxboot.com: *experimental* interface module to Steffen 583 Winterfeldt's "gfxboot" graphical front end 584 (http://gfxboot.sourceforge.net/). Module by Sebastian Herbszt. 585 586 Changes in 3.73: 587 * Upgrade gPXE to release version 0.9.5. 588 * Fix a number of build errors on various platforms. 589 * Handle systems with E820 "extended attributes" per ACPI 3. 590 Someone "cleverly" decided to change the E820 spec in a 591 backwards-incompatible manner! 592 * MEMDISK: default to "safeint". 593 * Adopt the moniker "The Syslinux Project", standard proper 594 noun capitalization, to refer to the project as a whole. 595 Thus, reserve the all-caps "SYSLINUX" to refer to the FAT 596 loader. 597 * mboot.c32: add "-solaris" option to pass DHCP information to 598 the Solaris kernel; required for automatic Solaris boot 599 without using Solaris' pxeboot program. 600 * config.c32: trivial COM32 module to restart Syslinux with 601 another configuration file from the command line (equivalent 602 to the CONFIG command in the configuratin file.) 603 604 Changes in 3.72: 605 * Include the pxechain.com module from Jeffery Hutzelman at 606 Carnegie Mellon University. This allows chaining another 607 PXE boot program while changing the DHCP packet passed to 608 it. 609 * Reorganize the Makefile system. 610 * Major PCI core cleanups and other source cleanup. 611 * gPXE code updated. 612 * Try to avoid memory-snooping attacks on passwords. Note 613 that if someone has root on the box, they generally don't 614 need to compromise the boot loader... 615 * ISOLINUX: fix crash when given a zero-length file. 616 * sdi.c32: support gzipped SDI images. 617 * ISOLINUX: support generating images which can be either 618 a CD-ROM or a hard disk (USB disk, etc.) See 619 doc/isolinux.txt for more information. 620 * Remote gdb support for COM32 modules; patch from Stefan 621 Hajnoczi. 622 * Support beeps in F-key help in the simple menu system. 623 * Tab display of labels, based on a patch from Sebastian 624 Herbszt. Can be disabled with the NOCOMPLETE configuration 625 command. 626 * "menu default" can now be specified after "menu begin", to 627 indicate that a specific submenu should be the default entry. 628 629 Changes in 3.71: 630 * Workaround for a VESA BIOS which tries to make DOS system 631 calls(!!) 632 * Simple menu: fix navigation around disabled entries 633 (or at least try to...) 634 * EXTLINUX: proper error message when confused about mount 635 point. 636 * MEMDISK: be smarter about incompletely disabled floppies in 637 the BIOS and about being the only floppy. 638 * Optionally allow initrd to be specified on a separate line 639 rather than as part of the "append" line. This is not 640 recommended, but apparently makes life easier for some 641 tools. 642 * SYSLINUX: if no config file is present, set the current 643 directory to the root directory (Sebastian Herbszt). 644 * chain.c32: option "hide" to support hiding and unhiding of 645 primary partitions on the boot drive with DOS, Win, or OS/2 646 partition types (01, 04, 06, 07, 0b, 0c, 0e). 647 * Unbreak the KBDMAP command (broken in 3.70). 648 * EXTLINUX: fix the handling of the ADV when using CBIOS. 649 * ifcpu64.c32: simple COM32 module to select a 32- or 64-bit 650 kernel (and optionally 32-bit kernels with or without PAE.) 651 Eventually we want a scripting language for this 652 kind of stuff; a Lua module is under development. 653 * Fix parsing of the SERIAL command without a baud rate 654 specified. 655 * chain.c32: error out when try to boot an unbootable 656 partition. 657 * SYSLINUX: when building the Win32 installer, search for 658 MinGW under a large number of possible names. 659 660 Changes in 3.70: 661 * PXELINUX: Support enhanced capabilities when running on top 662 of gPXE (http://www.etherboot.org/). In particular, support 663 URL-style syntax for filenames, and any protocol that gPXE 664 supports (except, currently, iSCSI and AoE.) This feature 665 is currently highly experimental. 666 * Substantial infrastructure changes to support files whose 667 length aren't known at open time (typically network 668 connections.) Please note that the semantics of some of the 669 comboot APIs have changed slightly; please see doc/comboot.txt. 670 * PXELINUX: We no longer require a TFTP server which supports 671 the tsize option for all transfers. 672 * PXELINUX: Integrate with the gPXE source base; unified image 673 now included as "gpxelinux.0". 674 * The source tree has been restructured; files that were 675 previously in the root have moved into the core, dos, gpxe, 676 and utils directories. 677 * "make install", "make netinstall", and "make extbootinstall" 678 have been updated massively. "make install-all" now installs 679 all three. 680 * Change default dir for auxiliary files from 681 /usr/lib/syslinux to /usr/share/syslinux. 682 * SYSLINUX: VFAT long filename support. 683 * MEMDISK: Any image less than 4096K (4 MB) is treated as a 684 floppy disk. The geometry-guessing code will recognize all 685 common extended formats, but it is still possible some very 686 exotic formats need geometry specification. Large floppies 687 and very small harddisks still need explicit specification. 688 * chain.c32: option "swap" to support swapping of BIOS drive 689 numbers. This is necessary to boot certain operating systems 690 (DOS, Windows) from a secondary drive. 691 * chain.c32: option "file=" to support loading a boot file from 692 the SYSLINUX filesystem instead of loading the boot sector 693 from the drive. 694 * chain.c32: option "seg=" to control the load location. 695 * chain.c32: option "ntldr=" as a shorthand for "seg=0x2000 696 file="; use this to load one of WinNT's loaders: 697 698 chain.c32 hd0 1 ntldr=/MiniNT/setupldr.bin 699 700 Note that the file needs to be in the SYSLINUX filesystem. 701 * chain.32: options "freedos=" and "msdos="/"pcdos=" as 702 shorthands for "seg=0x60 file=" and "seg=0x70 file=" 703 respectively; use this to load FreeDOS's kernel.sys, MS-DOS's 704 io.sys or PC-DOS's ibmbio.sys. 705 * Change to the A20 algorithm which *MIGHT* help systems that 706 have systems which freeze when Syslinux is used with USB 707 keyboards. Note that this has been hard do verify, so I 708 would greatly appreciate feedback on it. 709 * Complex menu system: unbreak menus which has unnamed 710 submenus, like complex.c. 711 * Fix newline on the serial port for some com32 modules. 712 * chain.c32: support "boot" as the drive specification, 713 indicating the drive from which it was booted 714 (for syslinux/extlinux). 715 * SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: support "localboot" with the same feature 716 set as ISOLINUX. 717 * Add an experimental MBR for GPT partition tables. 718 * Use $(CC) when determining compile flags. 719 * chain.c32: fix booting from logical partitions (Sergey 720 Vlasov.) 721 722 Changes in 3.63: 723 * Fix errors in the PCI and DMI detection modules (Erwan Velu, 724 Sebastian Herbszt). 725 * Fix host dependencies and other issues in the build system. 726 * PXELINUX: Allow class E addresses as unicast. 727 * sdi.c32: module to load Microsoft System Deployment Images. 728 For additional information, please see: 729 http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms838543.aspx 730 * EXTLINUX: Correct reading directories with deleted entries. 731 * Shuffle library: correct the handling of certain geometries 732 (an upward move with source material blocking the move); as 733 required by sdi.c32 but theoretically possible for other 734 formats as well. 735 * Add "make netinstall" to install /tftpboot. 736 * Fix some documentation files that didn't get moved/renamed. 737 738 Changes in 3.62: 739 * Clean up garbage after "aborted." message. 740 * Clean up memdump.com filenames. 741 * Support SHA256 and SHA512 encrypted passwords. 742 * The shuffle library now can generate chained descriptors, 743 thus allowing pretty much arbitrarily complex memory maps. 744 * Handle command lines up to 2047 characters, the current 745 Linux kernel limit. 746 * vesamenu: support systems without linear framebuffer support 747 (sigh, what is this, 1993?) and 15-bit RGB modes. 748 * Move the label storage (for the command-line interface) to 749 high memory, removing the size limit and freeing up 64K of 750 low memory. 751 * Get rid of 4096-entry limit in the simple menu system. 752 * New hierarchial submenu support: see MENU BEGIN, MENU END, 753 MENU GOTO in doc/menu.txt. 754 * MENU QUIT allows creating a menu entry for returning to the 755 command line. 756 * ISOLINUX: Work around bug in certain Adaptec BIOSes, 757 patch by Bruce Robson. 758 * pngtopnm dependency removed from samples/ directory. 759 * Text documentation files (in doc/) renamed *.doc -> *.txt. 760 761 Changes in 3.61: 762 * EXTLINUX: fix crash when accessing an empty file. 763 * elf.c32: If a PHDR segment is present, load it. 764 * Fix SHA-1 and MD5 passwords. 765 * ISOLINUX: fix booting when mastered without 766 mkisofs -boot-info-table (broken since 3.50, sigh...) 767 * Handle BIOSes which emit multiple contiguous valid 768 memory regions in the e820 map. 769 770 Changes in 3.60: 771 * Support for "auxilliary data vector", a small amount of 772 writable storage. Currently only supported for EXTLINUX, 773 but the infrastructure is there for the other derivatives, 774 assuming a suitable storage location can be found. 775 * EXTLINUX: boot-once support (--once, --clear-once, and 776 --reset-adv). 777 * A command is now required to the EXTLINUX installer, i.e. at 778 least one of --install, --update, --once, --clear-once, or 779 --reset-adv. 780 781 Changes in 3.55: 782 * PXELINUX: as per RFC 5071, PXELINUX no longer requires the 783 use of the magic cookie option (208) for unencapsulated 784 options. Currently it does not require it for 785 vendor-encapsulated options (vendor-option-space) either, 786 but that MAY be reverted in the future if it causes 787 problems. 788 * Documentation text files moved to a common "doc" directory; 789 man pages from the Debian project added to the "man" 790 directory. 791 * Correct bug with self-overlapping memory areas when using 792 the shuffle interface. 793 794 Changes in 3.54: 795 * Add "menu separator", "menu indent", "menu disabled" 796 (see README.menu). 797 * vesamenu: fix handing of VESA modes with noncontiguous 798 memory buffers. In particular, Qemu/KVM sets up such a mode 799 when Cirrus Logic emulation is enabled (which is the 800 default.) 801 * Support for calling real mode functions using far calls, 802 with argument on the stack. This was implemented to support 803 the BIOS BBS specification, but subsequent experiments show 804 that the at least one of the most common BIOS cores, Award, 805 passes the presence check but doesn't actually implement the 806 functionality. 807 808 Changes in 3.53: 809 * Fix bugs related to the $PnP BIOS functionality on some 810 platforms. 811 * PXELINUX: Fix the "naked" version of :: (suppress prefix.) 812 * elf.c32: better error messages. 813 * Faster operation under Intel VT virtualization. 814 * PXELINUX: Fix DHCP bootfile option. 815 * mkdiskimage: Support more than 1024 cylinders. 816 * (Hopefully) fix installer on non-x86 platforms. 817 * Fix shuffle_and_boot_rm, used by linux.c32. 818 * Fix shuffle_and_boot_pm on 386/486. 819 * ISOLINUX (at least): fix bss memory overwrite hang. 820 * MBR: Fix booting from logical partitions. 821 * Code cleanups. 822 823 Changes in 3.52: 824 * Handle capitalized F-key commands in the menu system. 825 * Fix padding error when loading multiple ramdisks. 826 * Workaround for VMware crashing when trying to print a 827 message during early kernel boot (does not seem to work, 828 consider deleting.) 829 * chain.c32: add the ability to search for a specific MBR 830 signature at runtime. 831 * Fall back to the server identity option if the siaddr field 832 in the DHCP header isn't set. This seems to match the 833 behaviour of most PXE stacks. 834 * mkdiskimage: give the generated disk image an MBR signature. 835 * MEMDISK: Fix failures on some BIOSes. 836 * Simple menu system: new "MENU HIDDEN" option to not display 837 the menu unless the user presses a key. 838 * Simple menu system: support MD5-encrypted passwords (modern 839 Unix standard style, with "$1$" prefixes.) 840 * pcitest.c32: now functions as a full "lspci". Thanks to 841 Erwan Velu for this work. 842 * MEMDISK: Make EDD actually work. 843 * ISOLINUX: Fix for certain broken CD-ROM BIOSes which 844 randomly corrupted register FS. 845 * Simple menu system: fix memory overwrite bug that caused 846 some systems to lock up or behave weirdly. 847 * Fix building on 64-bit systems without a 32-bit libc installed. 848 849 Changes in 3.51: 850 * EXTLINUX: Fix failure to find the configuration file. 851 852 Changes in 3.50: 853 * New keywords allow the type of file to be specified in the 854 configuration file. 855 * It is now supported to load a different configuration file 856 with the CONFIG keyword. 857 * Fix API call 0x0019 (Read Disk.) 858 * MENU AUTOBOOT, MENU TABMSG, MENU PASSPROMPT allows 859 internationalization of menu messages. 860 * A new feature, TEXT HELP, allows the administrator to set 861 a multi-line help message for individual selections. 862 * Fix API call 0x0012 (Cleanup, shuffle and boot.) 863 * New API call "Cleanup, shuffle and boot to flat protected mode" 864 * New API call "Cleanup, shuffle and boot to real mode", 865 similar to API call 0x0012 but allows arbitrary register setting. 866 * Introduce a library interface for loading arbitrary binary 867 formats with relatively easily understood code. See 868 the elf.c32 module for an example on how to use it. 869 * New module "elf.c32", to load a protected-mode ELF kernel. 870 * MBR (old and new): Fix bug in CHS mode when LBA > 871 65535*sectors. 872 * vesamenu: fix decoding of palettized PNG images. 873 * Update the Linux kernel boot protocol. 874 * PXELINUX: Press Ctrl-N at the boot prompt to read out the 875 network info. 876 * Instead of the (non-existent) MAC, use the client identifier 877 for networks like Infiniband and Firewire/1394. 878 * Add a new INCLUDE command to the core syslinux parser. 879 * Allow binding help text to F11 and F12. 880 * F-key help now available in the simple menu system. 881 * Disabled the polling for ARP during idle. It is simply too 882 slow on some (broken!) PXE stacks. 883 * PXELINUX: also try to fetch the config file based on UUID. 884 * SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: New RAID mode (-r) which calls the BIOS 885 to load the next device (typically the next drive) on boot 886 failure. 887 888 Changes in 3.36: 889 * MEMDISK: Disable EDD by default on floppy disks. EDD can be 890 enabled with the "edd" option and disabled with "noedd". 891 This (hopefully) should make Ghost work again. 892 * SYSLINUX: "unix" installer now uses Linux ioctls instead of 893 using libfat. 894 * New MBR which can boot from logical partitions. 895 * SYSLINUX: Fix bug in detecting special extensions which was 896 introduced in 3.35 :( 897 * PXELINUX: Unbreak chainbooting FreeBSD (and possibly others.) 898 899 Changes in 3.35: 900 * MEMDISK: New "safeint" mode. 901 * MEMDISK: Be more compliant with the PnP BIOS spec. 902 * MEMDISK: Turn on EDD support by default. 903 * MEMDISK: Try to work on some machines on which it would not 904 work when there was no floppy drive in the system. 905 * Simple menu system: fix serial console support (broken in 906 3.30). 907 * SYSLINUX: Support subdirectories. Like ISOLINUX, the 908 "current directory" is the directory in which syslinux.cfg 909 is found; this is searched for in the sequence 910 /boot/syslinux, /syslinux, /. As a side benefit, label names 911 like "linux-2.6.18" and "linux-2.6.19" are now supported. 912 913 To install ldlinux.sys in a subdirectory, pass the -d 914 directory option to the SYSLINUX installer. 915 916 This work was sponsored by slax.org (thanks, Tomas!) 917 * New API call: read disk. 918 * Invoke ONERROR on initrd load failure. 919 920 Changes in 3.31: 921 * The simple menu system (menu.c32 and vesamenu.c32) now 922 support loading more than one configuration file at a time, 923 using MENU INCLUDE or by specifying multiple filenames. 924 * The MENU COLOR statement can now control the shadowing mode. 925 926 Changes in 3.30: 927 * libcom32 extended to support graphics mode and graphical console. 928 * vesamenu.c32, new graphical version of the Simple 929 Menu System, see README.menu. 930 * New com32 modules by Erwan Velu do selection based on CPUID 931 or PCI devices present. 932 * RPM spec: add syslinux-tftpboot module; move syslinux by 933 default to the /usr/share/syslinux directory. 934 * RPM spec: extlinux is now a separate package. 935 936 Changes in 3.20: 937 * EXTLINUX: New options --install (-i) and --update (-U), to 938 make it clear if a boot loader should be installed or 939 updated. For now, defaults to --install for compatibility; 940 a future version will require one of these options. 941 * New library functions to load and place files in memory. 942 * mboot.c32 bug fixes. 943 * Remove 8 MB kernel size restriction. 944 * Add "klibc" target for building unix/syslinux and 945 extlinux/extlinux with klcc (klibc-1.4.27 or later.) 946 * PXELINUX: Fail (and eventually reboot) if no configuration 947 file was found. 948 * COM32 module by Erwan Velu to make decisions based on DMI 949 info. 950 * Fix issue where going back and forth between menus a lot 951 would cause a hang. 952 * ISOLINUX: Fix bug which made "cd boot sectors" not work. 953 954 Changes in 3.11: 955 * MEMDISK: Fix bug by which accessing the real floppy disk 956 as B: in MS-DOS was broken. 957 * Simple menu system: allow tweaking of the screen layout. 958 * Simple menu system: better command-line editing, correctly 959 handle command lines above 256 characters. 960 * PXELINUX: revert memory allocation change that caused 961 problems on some network cards. 962 * MEMDISK: Try work around a bug on some BIOSes when no 963 physical floppy disk is present in the system. 964 * Enable the 16550A FIFOs, if present, when doing serial 965 console. 966 * New "totaltimeout" command establishes a timeout without 967 regard for any user input. 968 * Simple menu system: timeout behaviour now more in line with 969 user expectations. 970 * Simple menu system: "ontimeout" should now work correctly. 971 972 Changes in 3.10: 973 * gcc 4.0.1 compilation fixes. 974 * Add support for querying the PCI BIOS in libcom32 975 (used by ethersel et al.) 976 * Fix PCI handing (ethersel etc) on several old chipsets (and 977 VMWare.) 978 * Try to deal with systems with broken EBIOS. 979 * New API call to do "localboot". 980 * New API call to query features. 981 * New API call to run kernel image, a lower-level call than 982 "run command". See comboot.doc. 983 * Fix for bug in EBIOS code discovered by Arwin Vosselman. 984 * NOESCAPE security fix. 985 * Comments are now recognized even without a space following #. 986 * Fix incorrect handling of mixes of entries with and without 987 MENU PASSWD. 988 * The idle API call now harmlessly returns failure if it is a 989 no-op. That way the caller can decide whether or not to 990 bother invoking it again. 991 * Temporarily disable the idle API call on PXELINUX, due to 992 some platforms on which the idle API call seems to hang; this 993 problem has not yet been debugged. 994 * MEMDISK: the handling of DOSEMU-headered images was broken; 995 fix it. 996 * EXTLINUX: symlinks are now supported. 997 * Simple menu system: N and P now work correctly as hotkeys. 998 * MEMDISK: more BIOS bug workarounds. 999 1000 Changes in 3.09: 1001 * gcc4 compilation fix. 1002 * <BEL> (Ctrl-G) in message files now causes a beep. 1003 * Reduce the command line to 511 characters; 1023 caused 1004 memory overflows. 1005 1006 Changes in 3.08: 1007 * SYSLINUX: Fix performance regression (-s mode always 1008 enabled.) 1009 * Add API function for idle loop. 1010 * libutil: Add do_idle() function for idle loop, make 1011 get_key() use it. 1012 * libutil: Add SHA-1 and base64 functions. 1013 * Simple menu system: add password support. 1014 * EXTLINUX: Sparse files now handled correctly. 1015 * EXTLINUX: Large directories now handled correctly. 1016 * ALL: At the prompt, Ctrl-X now forces text mode. 1017 * Fix configuration file parsing error, that could cause 1018 hangs. 1019 * Rewritten advanced menuing system from Murali Ganapathy. 1020 * MEMDISK: New "bigraw" mode to work around certain broken 1021 BIOS flash programs. 1022 * COM32 module to boot Multiboot systems, including Xen. See 1023 com32/modules/mboot.doc. 1024 * Max command line changed to 1023 characters. Note that the 1025 kernel proper still can only handle 255 characters without 1026 patching, and COM16 binaries can only handle 125 characters. 1027 1028 Changes in 3.07: 1029 * Fix chainloading (chain.c32). 1030 * Fix zlib build problem. 1031 * Use a private copy of <linux/ext2_fs.h>. 1032 1033 Changes in 3.06: 1034 * Fix typo that caused the ramdisk to load in the wrong place. 1035 1036 Changes in 3.05: 1037 * New API function "shuffle and boot"; allows COM32 modules to 1038 load or construct (almost) arbitrarily complex objects, 1039 e.g. a kernel and its initrd/initramfs in pieces, and have 1040 the API core reorganize memory for booting. (A library API 1041 for this function will be introduced in a later version.) 1042 * The initrd= option now supports multiple filenames separated 1043 by commas. This is mostly useful for initramfs, which can 1044 be composed of multiple separate cpio or cpio.gz archives. 1045 (Note: all files except the last one are zero-padded to a 4K 1046 page boundary. This should not affect initramfs.) 1047 * EXTLINUX: Fix API function 000Ah (get derivative-specific 1048 info). 1049 * libcom32/ethersel: Support PCI Config Mechanism #2 on 1050 machines still infested with that hideous old hack. 1051 * SYSLINUX: Fix directory-parsing bug. 1052 1053 Changes in 3.02: 1054 * SYSLINUX: The "unix" installer now sets the MS-DOS 1055 attributes (hidden, system, readonly.) 1056 * COM32 library: build the .lnx (test modules for running 1057 under Linux) as architecture native modules, in case 1058 i386 devel libraries aren't installed. 1059 * EXTLINUX: Hack for systems which don't have BLKGETSIZE64 1060 defined in the standard header files. 1061 * Simple menu system: minor aestetic improvements, and try to 1062 work better over a serial console (speed, and readability on 1063 monochrome terminal emulators.) 1064 * New CONSOLE directive to control output on the video console 1065 (useful for dealing with some broken serial-forwarding 1066 BIOSes.) 1067 * New com32 module "ethersel" for searching for an Ethernet 1068 card and selecting the proper version of Etherboot. 1069 * EXTLINUX: Allow the user to override the detected geometry. 1070 Add help. 1071 1072 Changes in 3.01: 1073 * EXTLINUX, SYSLINUX: Fix compile errors on some systems. 1074 * EXTLINUX: Default to zipdrive geometry (64 heads, 32 1075 sectors) if no other geometry can be detected. 1076 1077 Changes in 3.00: 1078 * SYSLINUX: Support FAT32 and EDD. As an unfortunate 1079 consequence, LDLINUX.SYS is no longer an ordinary file; it 1080 is block-mapped at install time, which means it can only be 1081 written using the syslinux installers. 1082 * SYSLINUX: Reorganize the source code for the installers; 1083 each one of the installers (dos, win32, unix, mtools) is now 1084 built in its own subdirectory. In particular, "mtools" is 1085 the unprivileged installer which uses mtools; "unix" is the 1086 privileged installer which uses system calls. 1087 * SYSLINUX: Completely rewritten DOS installer in C. 1088 * ALL: "label" statement information is now stored in a 1089 compressed format, which means that a lot more labels are 1090 permitted (500-1000 in a typical configuration, but depends 1091 on the complexity.) 1092 * EXTLINUX: New derivative, which boots from an ext2/ext3 1093 filesystem. 1094 * SYSLINUX: The DOS and Win32 installers can now optionally 1095 write the boot sector to a file instead of the real boot 1096 sector. This is not supported in the Linux installers, 1097 however. 1098 * ALL: New NOESCAPE command, disables the "hold down the Shift 1099 key to display the prompt" behaviour. 1100 * New simple menu system, as an alternative to the advanced 1101 menu system already present. See README.menu for details. 1102 * PXELINUX: Filenames can now be prefixed with an IP address 1103 or DNS name plus :: (e.g. 192.0.2.1::filename or 1104 server.domain.com::filename), which downloads a file from an 1105 alternate TFTP server, or just a :: (e.g. ::filename), which 1106 suppresses the common pathname prefix. See pxelinux.doc. 1107 * SYSLINUX: Add an -m option to the DOS and Win32 installers 1108 to write an MBR and -a to mark the partition SYSLINUX is 1109 being installed on active. 1110 * MEMDISK: Give a way to query the boot loader type while 1111 running MEMDISK; see memdisk/memdisk.doc and 1112 sample/mdiskchk.c. 1113 * mkdiskimage: substantially improved mkdiskimage which, among 1114 other things, can now be used to initialize USB keys as 1115 zipdrives; see README.usbkey for more information. 1116 1117 Changes in 2.13: 1118 * MEMDISK: Fix command-line parsing "brown paper bag" class 1119 bug. 1120 * MEMDISK: Add "raw" mode to support the DOS boot disk from 1121 WinME/XP, which seems to deliberately crash the system 1122 when someone uses the "INT 15h mover" highmem API. 1123 * Make "make install" do something sane for the com32 1124 development environment. 1125 * In the spec file, create a separate -devel RPM for the com32 1126 development environment. 1127 1128 Changes in 2.12: 1129 * Simple C library, based on klibc, for writing COM32 1130 programs. 1131 * Fix the handling of file length in loading of COM32 1132 programs. 1133 * MEMDISK: Work around a linker bug by rearranging the code to 1134 not use the linker for the 16-bit code. 1135 * SYSLINUX: If we're building on a machine without a Win32 1136 (mingw) compiler, just skip building syslinux.exe. 1137 * ISOLINUX: Support non-mkisofs mastering programs, at least 1138 as long as the image is single-session. For best results, 1139 ISOLINUX should be the only boot loader installed. 1140 * MEMDISK: Allow the user to specify that the simulated disk 1141 should be write-protected. 1142 1143 Changes in 2.11: 1144 * ALL: Add an API call to get the configuration file name. 1145 * SYSLINUX: Fix bug in 2.10 that prevented it from working 1146 correctly for a lot of people. 1147 * SYSLINUX: In the installer, make mtools a bit less fussy. 1148 * Make the menu system compile with newer gcc's. 1149 1150 Changes in 2.10: 1151 * MEMDISK: Handle images compressed with zip as well as with 1152 gzip. Some Windows-based image tools apparently generate 1153 these kinds of images by default. Patch by Patrick 1154 LoPresti. 1155 * Major menu improvement from Murali Ganapathy. 1156 * ISOLINUX: Wonderfully sick and brilliant workaround for 1157 severe bugs in certain Award BIOSes; from Knut Petersen. 1158 * SYSLINUX: Fix for the nomtools installed, from Frederic 1159 Pasteleurs. 1160 * PXELINUX: Fix handling of IP numbers in the ranges 1161 100-109 and 200-209. 1162 * ALL: New option "allowoptions" (defaults to 1), which 1163 controls if options are allowed on the command line or not. 1164 * SYSLINUX: Support building under klibc (see the klibc 1165 distribution for details.) 1166 1167 Changes in 2.09: 1168 * SYSLINUX: Remove residual setuid crap from 1169 syslinux-nomtools. 1170 * Handle video pages correctly when using the API functions. 1171 * Handle compiling on an x86-64 platform correctly. 1172 * Menu system from Murali Krishnan Ganapathy; see the menu 1173 directory for information. 1174 * COMBOOT: Allow COMBOOT programs to change screen text mode. 1175 * COMBOOT: Correct the documentation of how to detect 1176 SYSLINUX from COMBOOT!!!! 1177 * COMBOOT: Fix "get key without echo" API function. 1178 * SYSLINUX: Fix bug that affected the API open function. 1179 * ALL: Improve the E820 memory parser, to work around some 1180 buggy BIOSes. 1181 1182 Changes in 2.08: 1183 * Add new configuration command "ontimeout" to allow timeout 1184 to have a different action than just pressing Enter. 1185 * Add new configuration command "onerror" to allow a custom 1186 command to be executed in case the kernel image is not found. 1187 * Fix bugs in the COMBOOT/COM32 command-line parsing. APPEND 1188 now works with COMBOOT/COM32 images. 1189 * PXELINUX: Poll for ARP requests while sitting at the 1190 prompt. This makes some boot servers a lot less unhappy. 1191 * PXELINUX: Actually free sockets when we get a failure 1192 (including file not found.) This bug would cause us to run 1193 out of sockets and thus "go deaf" after a while. 1194 * MEMDISK: Add an API to query for the existence of MEMDISK. 1195 * SYSLINUX: Fix loading boot sectors (.bs/.bss) from floppy 1196 disk. 1197 * .c32 is now one of the extensions searched for 1198 automatically. 1199 * PXELINUX: RFBG.exe seems to randomly overwrite memory 1200 location 0x5700. Thus, don't use it! 1201 * PXELINUX: Change pathname length max from 63 to 127; change 1202 max vkernels from 128 to 64. 1203 * Support Ctrl-U -> kill entire command line input. 1204 * The "samples" directory contains a (barely at all tested) 1205 chain loading example, chain.c32, which may be used to 1206 chainload local floppy disks and hard disks. Use with 1207 "chain fdN" or "chain hdN [partition]"; N = 0 for the first 1208 drive of each type. 1209 1210 Changes in 2.07: 1211 * MEMDISK: Workaround for BIOSes which go into a snit when 1212 they get a RESET command for the floppy system when there is 1213 no floppy in the system. 1214 * PXELINUX: Add "ipappend 2", which passes the hardware 1215 address of the boot interface to the kernel as a 1216 command-line option. 1217 * mkdiskimage: fix the generation of the end limit. 1218 * PXELINUX: Fix multiple bugs in chainloading of other NBPs. 1219 * MEMDISK: Fix bug that would occationally cause "ran out of 1220 input data" when using compressed disk images. 1221 * SYSLINUX: Updates for the win32 installer (from Lars Munch.) 1222 * PXELINUX: PXELINUX-specific options are now recognized both 1223 in a vendor-option-space (a.k.a. type 43 encapsulated) as 1224 well as in a site-option-space (unencapsulated.) 1225 * COM32: Don't crash when DS != 0. 1226 * COMBOOT/COM32: Make file reading work correctly. Thanks to 1227 Phung Chi Kien for submitting a test program. 1228 1229 Changes in 2.06: 1230 * ALL: Fix problem that would occationally cause a 1231 boot failure, depending on the length of the kernel. 1232 * ISOLINUX: Fix problem that would occationally cause a 1233 boot failure, depending on the length of directories. 1234 * SYSLINUX: Win32 installer now flushes buffers. 1235 * ppmtolss16: Be fully compliant with the PNM spec; 1236 actually process comments in the header and odd 1237 alignments of the various parameters, as well as 1238 "plain" (not raw) files and PBM and PGM files. 1239 * PXELINUX: Lower the default MTU to 1472 in order to deal 1240 with systems with slightly nonstandard MTUs, and PXE 1241 stacks which don't defragment correctly. Unfortunately this 1242 is very hard to test dynamically. 1243 1244 Changes in 2.05: 1245 * PXELINUX: Add a default query based on the hardware address 1246 of the boot device. This is in lower case hexadecimal form 1247 separated by dashes and including the hardware type, for 1248 example, the Ethernet (type 1) address 88:99:AA:BB:CC:DD 1249 would query the file pxelinux.cfg/01-88-99-aa-bb-cc-dd. 1250 * PXELINUX: Fix bug involving non-IP-based config file names. 1251 * SYSLINUX: New installer for WinNT-based systems, from Lars 1252 Munch. 1253 * MEMDISK: Fix handling of memory region overlap when 1254 decompressing. Thanks to Mikhail Kupchik for identifying 1255 the problem. 1256 1257 Changes in 2.04: 1258 * ALL: Reclaim even more low memory by observing that 1259 comboot_seg == real_mode_seg is perfectly fine, and by the 1260 fact that the 1000h segment managed to get unused in all 1261 derivatives... 1262 * PXELINUX: Attempt to negotiate full Ethernet-sized blocks 1263 (1468 bytes) using the blksize option. 1264 * SYSLINUX: Resurrect the old no-mtools version of the 1265 installer, although as a root-only tool. Some distributors 1266 have indicated that they need a small standalone installer. 1267 * MEMDISK: Fix a memory offset computation error when 1268 installing compressed disks which generally would cause 1269 1 MB of memory to be wasted. 1270 * MEMDISK: Fix installing the E820 memory map. Calling 1271 INT 15h AX=0E820h with MEMDISK 2.03 loaded would give a 1272 completely corrupt memory map. 1273 * SYSLINUX: Make libsyslinux a dynamic library, so that it can 1274 be updated separately from client programs. The whole idea, 1275 after all, is to enable alternate programs to become 1276 syslinux installers. 1277 * Include an rpm spec file in the distribution, so rpmbuild 1278 -ta works. 1279 1280 Changes in 2.03: 1281 * Actually support comment lines in the configuration file. 1282 * PXELINUX: Try to resolve some problems with stack switches. 1283 * PXELINUX: Handle PXE stacks with broken routing. 1284 With these workarounds, the remote install PXE boot floppy 1285 (rbfg.exe) from Argon Technologies should work correctly. 1286 * Fix problems with Perl scripts in UTF-8 locales. 1287 * You probably need NASM 0.98.34 or later to compile this 1288 version. 0.98.36 is recommended. 1289 * MEMDISK: Now supports gzip compressed images. 1290 1291 Changes in 2.02: 1292 * SYSLINUX: Security flaws have been found in the SYSLINUX 1293 installer when running setuid root. Rewrite the SYSLINUX 1294 installer so it uses mtools instead. It therefore now 1295 requires mtools (specifically mcopy and mattrib) to exist on 1296 your system, but it will not require root privileges and 1297 SHOULD NOT be setuid. 1298 1299 Changes in 2.01: 1300 * MEMDISK: Fix memory sizing bug when the ramdisk crosses the 1301 16 MB boundary. 1302 * MEMDISK: Add a "pause" option to stop immediately before 1303 booting, to read off the messages. 1304 * MEMDISK: Support disk images with DOSEMU headers. 1305 * Update the mkdiskimage script to handle newer mtools 1306 versions, and be able to generate disk images with DOSEMU 1307 headers (controlled by the -d option). 1308 * Fix the COM32 sample program. 1309 * PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Fix some COMBOOT API calls. 1310 * PXELINUX: Doc fix. 1311 * Build SYSLINUX into a small library for encapsulation into 1312 other programs (however, please keep in mind this is a GPL'd 1313 library.) 1314 * SYSLINUX: Make installer work with "owner" in /etc/fstab. 1315 * SYSLINUX: Fix issue with working on nonpartitioned hard disk 1316 devices. THIS CONFIGURATION IS NOT RECOMMENDED. 1317 1318 Changes in 2.00: 1319 * ALL: Add support for "COM32" (32-bit COMBOOT) images. 1320 * ALL: Add an API for COMBOOT/COM32 images. See comboot.doc 1321 for details. There is a C development environment for 1322 COM32 being created; it should be ready at some point in 1323 the future. 1324 * Fix mbr.asm so that it actually works. 1325 * SYSLINUX: The syslinux installer *SHOULD* now be safe to 1326 run setuid root. 1327 * PXELINUX: Fix bug where PXELINUX would override random 1328 chunks of the UNDI code segment! Thanks to Kevin Tran for 1329 finding this bug. 1330 * ISOLINUX: Fix a bug related to slashes in pathnames. 1331 * ISOLINUX: Fix a bug in handling initrds over 128 MB. 1332 * ALL: Make the <Ctrl-V> key print out the version; this is 1333 to help debugging. 1334 * Add a small script, mkdiskimage, to create a DOS-formatted 1335 hard disk image using mtools. This may be useful in 1336 conjunction with MEMDISK. 1337 * ISOLINUX: Search for a /boot/isolinux directory as well as 1338 /isolinux. 1339 * ALL: Fix a bug related to very long configuration files. 1340 * PXELINUX: Work around a NASM bug which would result in no 1341 delay before reset if an error occurs. 1342 1343 Changes in 1.76: 1344 * ISOLINUX: Remove code no longer used which caused hangs on 1345 some Toshiba laptops. 1346 1347 Changes in 1.75: 1348 * ALL: NASM 0.98.32 or later is now required to build 1349 SYSLINUX from sources. 1350 * SYSLINUX: put back in the workaround for the BIOS floppy 1351 table. This seems to be a requirement for "extended" floppy 1352 formats to work correctly. 1353 * SYSLINUX: No longer warn if one is trying to boot on a 286 1354 or older. The above BIOS workaround no longer fits if the 1355 requirement to use only 8086-compatible code in the early 1356 boot is maintained. It made sense in 1994, but in 2002 a 1357 286 or older is a museum object. 1358 * SYSLINUX: Use a downright bizarre, stateful algorithm to try 1359 to guess the maximum transfer size. I am *hoping* this will 1360 cut down on the number of systems for which -s is required 1361 to work at any acceptable speed. 1362 * ISOLINUX: Add a few more workarounds for various broken El 1363 Torito BIOSes. 1364 * Make sure .depend files aren't accidentally packed... 1365 * ALL: Fix bugs in the extension-detect code; this caused 1366 files like COMBOOT images and CD boot sectors to be 1367 mis-identified as Linux kernels and rejected. 1368 * ALL: Fix the return from COMBOOT. 1369 * ALL: Do some of the early groundwork for supporting DOS 1370 system calls in COMBOOT. 1371 * Get rid of unnecessary "near" directives, making the code 1372 bigger. 1373 * PXELINUX: Put the PXE stack back in the init state before 1374 invoking a chain-loaded NBP. 1375 * PXELINUX: Actually found the combination of calls that 1376 allows some (most?) PXE 2+ stacks to be unloaded from memory 1377 properly. 1378 * PXELINUX: Add "keeppxe" command-line option to disable 1379 the standard unloading of the PXE stack. 1380 1381 Changes in 1.74: 1382 * SYSLINUX: fix bug that would cause valid kernel images to be 1383 labelled "invalid". 1384 1385 Changes in 1.73: 1386 * Work on removing gratuitous differences between modules. 1387 * Break up the source in common and module-specific files. 1388 * PXELINUX: Allow chaining of other PXE NBPs. 1389 * ISOLINUX: Allow loading "CD-ROM boot sectors". 1390 * ALL: generalize the definition of a boot sector/NBP. 1391 1392 Changes in 1.72: 1393 * PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Fix bugs in the new core code. 1394 1395 Changes in 1.71: 1396 * Fix a "brown paper bag" class bug in the new core code. 1397 1398 Changes in 1.70: 1399 * Major code restructuring. 1400 * Relax the conventional memory limits somewhat. 1401 * MEMDISK: Set up the "version number string" pointer in the 1402 header correctly. 1403 * SYSLINUX: Fix, again, "the bug that won't die": the use of 1404 the offset parameter with the SYSLINUX installer. 1405 * SYSLINUX: Fix possible superblock corruption problem in the 1406 SYSLINUX installer. 1407 1408 Changes in 1.67: 1409 * Handle bug in the location of initrd. 1410 1411 Changes in 1.66: 1412 * MEMDISK: Make compile with newer versions of gcc. 1413 1414 Changes in 1.65: 1415 * ISOLINUX: Support booting disk image files (to boot DOS or 1416 other non-Linux operating systems), *IF* the BIOS works 1417 correctly; unfortunately many BIOSes apparently don't. 1418 * Support Linux boot protocol version 2.03 (explicitly 1419 specify the initrd address limit.) 1420 * Handle small "pseudo-kernels"; images that use the Linux 1421 kernel boot protocols but are less than 64K in size. 1422 * MEMDISK: New subsystem; this is a driver which allows 1423 legacy OSes to boot using an in-memory simulated disk. 1424 See memdisk/memdisk.doc for more info. 1425 * PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Correctly handle files larger than 65535 1426 blocks (32 MB for PXELINUX, 128 MB for ISOLINUX.) 1427 * PXELINUX: Make a best-effort attempt at freeing all memory 1428 claimed. From the looks of it, it will fail on most PXE 1429 stacks. 1430 1431 Changes in 1.64: 1432 * Limited support for hardware flow control when using a 1433 serial port console. 1434 * Support specifying the serial port I/O address explicitly. 1435 * Make DOS installer hopefully behave more nicely when used on 1436 recent Windows versions. 1437 * Fix returning to text mode when a font has been specified. 1438 * Attempt to detect missing serial port hardware and disable 1439 the serial port if there is nothing there. 1440 1441 Changes in 1.63: 1442 * Make the ppmtolss16 program handle color conversion more 1443 correctly. 1444 * Clean up "make install" target, honour INSTALLROOT if it 1445 exists. 1446 * SYSLINUX: Fix stack-smash bug identified by Steffen 1447 Winterfeldt. 1448 * Hopefully fix return-to-text-mode on some graphics cards. 1449 * ISOLINUX: Bug workaround for Award BIOS 4.51, and perhaps 1450 other buggy BIOSes as well. 1451 1452 Changes in 1.62: 1453 * PXELINUX: Allow the DHCP server to override the 1454 configuration file name and pathname prefix, using 1455 "site-specific" DHCP options. 1456 * PXELINUX: Documentation fixes. 1457 * PXELINUX: Fix the "ipappend" option; the last two values 1458 were reversed vs. what the kernel expected. 1459 * Introduce a way to return to text mode once we are already 1460 in graphics mode. This may be useful for F-key help 1461 screens. 1462 * Fix several bugs in the way return to text mode was handled. 1463 1464 Changes in 1.61: 1465 * ISOLINUX: Support full pathname searches. Max length for a 1466 pathname is 255 characters. As a result, only 64 "label" 1467 statements are supported in ISOLINUX. 1468 * PXELINUX: Max filename length extended to 63 characters. 1469 1470 Changes in 1.60: 1471 * Add support for graphical splash screens. 1472 * Add mode control characters, which allows you to control 1473 message display output depending on output mode (text, 1474 graphics, or serial port.) 1475 * ISOLINUX: New program, which boots Linux from a CD-ROM 1476 without using floppy emulation mode. See isolinux.doc for 1477 more details. 1478 * PXELINUX: Don't search for boot sector file types, since 1479 they don't work anyway. 1480 * SYSLINUX: Document the LOCK command for Win9x, and the error 1481 dialog box for WinNT/2K. 1482 1483 Changes in 1.54: 1484 * PXELINUX: Fix code for finding !PXE from PXENV+. This was 1485 due to a spec bug; match the most recent spec since that 1486 seems to be what implementations actually do. 1487 * SYSLINUX: Add some smarts to the boot sector, which 1488 hopefully should reduce the number of systems which require 1489 stupid mode ("syslinux -s"). 1490 * PXELINUX: Document further some of the pathologies with old 1491 PXE stacks. 1492 * When specifying a "default" command line, no longer 1493 automatically appent "auto". See the "DEFAULT" command in 1494 syslinux.doc for more information. 1495 * PXELINUX: Clean up the allocation of local socket numbers. 1496 1497 Changes in 1.53: 1498 * PXELINUX: Rename pxelinux.bin to pxelinux.0, to match what 1499 most PXE servers seem to expect. 1500 * PXELINUX: Update the DHCP/boot server setup documentation. 1501 * PXELINUX: Support new "localboot" option for "label" 1502 sections. 1503 * PXELINUX: More robust parsing of DHCP/boot server packets. 1504 * PXELINUX: Include a small utility program "gethostip" to 1505 compute hexadecimal IP addresses. 1506 1507 Changes in 1.52: 1508 * PXELINUX: Fix bugs introduced by new A20 code. (SYSLINUX 1509 has also been changed for code consistency reasons, but I'm 1510 pretty sure the changes are don't care on SYSLINUX.) 1511 * Documentation updates. 1512 * PXELINUX: Add "ipappend" option to generate an ip= option to 1513 the kernel. 1514 1515 Changes in 1.51: 1516 * PXELINUX: Not all PXE stacks fill in the IP address for a 1517 type 3 cached info query. Use a type 2 cached info query 1518 for this information (only.) 1519 * Yet another attempt at A20 coding. Now support BIOS call 1520 15:2401 as well, and handle machines which always have A20 1521 on separately. 1522 * Support memory detection using INT 15h, AX=0E820h. BIOS 1523 manufacturers have apparently gotten sloppy about keeping 1524 INT 15h, AX=0E801h working properly. 1525 * Don't issue <CR><LF> onto the serial port when we're doing 1526 screen wraparound. 1527 1528 Changes in 1.50: 1529 * Yet another A20-code update. It seems some "legacy-free" 1530 machines and embedded gear simply don't have a KBC to talk 1531 to, and that waiting for one will wait forever. Sigh. 1532 1533 Changes in 1.49: 1534 * SYSLINUX: Implement a hack for BIOS drivers which hog significant 1535 chunks of low memory during boot. (Note: PXELINUX already 1536 had this modification. SYSLINUX does still require that the 1537 low 512K is available; PXELINUX requires 384K. Machines 1538 with a physical memory hole in the low 640K cannot boot 1539 Linux no matter what.) Depending what the reason is for the 1540 memory hole, a new kernel (2.4.0-test3-pre3 or later) may be 1541 required. 1542 * SYSLINUX: Default installer binary now compiled against 1543 glibc 2.1. If this is inappropriate for your system and you 1544 still want to use the offical version of SYSLINUX, please 1545 follow the instructions in "distrib.doc" to rebuild the 1546 installer. 1547 * SYSLINUX: Linux installer program now supports -o <offset> 1548 option which does a loopback mount with the 1549 -o loop,offset=<> option. Useful to run SYSLINUX on an 1550 individual partition of a whole-harddisk image. 1551 * Include the source code to a Master Boot Record (MBR) 1552 functionally equivalent to the one installed DOS except it 1553 includes EBIOS support, and should be resistant to geometry 1554 changes. The MBR code is public domain. 1555 * PXELINUX: Fix "double p" bug: if the tftp prefix was null, 1556 all filenames would get a "p" preprended, e.g. 1557 "ppxelinux.cfg" and "pvmlinux". 1558 1559 Changes in 1.48: 1560 * PXELINUX: Workaround for PXE ROMs based on the Intel PXE PDK 1561 3.0 build 071 and earlier: missing !PXE structure pointer. 1562 * PXELINUX: Handle larger BOOTP/DHCP packages. 1563 * PXELINUX: The command line passing was broken; fix. 1564 * PXELINUX: Make COMBOOT images work. 1565 * PXELINUX: Documentation on how to make booting work using 1566 the PDK 3.0-derived clients, which aren't so generous as to 1567 allow booting with only "PXEClient" specified. 1568 1569 Changes in 1.47: 1570 * PXELINUX: RFC 1123 states that a TFTP implementation MUST 1571 use adaptive timeout, "at least an exponential backoff of 1572 retransmission timeout is necessary." Implement a very 1573 simple exponential backoff for retransmits. 1574 * PXELINUX: Updated documentation, including pointer to new 1575 TFTP server. 1576 * PXELINUX: When sending ERROR due to bad OACK, use the proper 1577 destination port number (why are TFTP port numbers so odd?) 1578 * PXELINUX: If the boot dies in the middle somewhere, 1579 eventually give up and reset the machine (unattended 1580 operation.) 1581 1582 Changes in 1.46: 1583 * New program PXELINUX to do network booting using a 1584 PXE-compliant (Pre-Execution Environment) network booting 1585 PROM. See pxelinux.doc for details. 1586 1587 Changes in 1.45: 1588 * Serial console support. See syslinux.doc for details. 1589 1590 Changes in 1.44: 1591 * Change HIGHMEM_MAX to 38000000h to (hopefully) avoid the 1592 kernel stepping on it; 3f000000h was apparently a higher 1593 limit than the kernel used! 1594 1595 Changes in 1.43: 1596 * Add sys2ansi.pl script to display the contents of a 1597 colorized SYSLINUX file. 1598 * Changed the io_delay once again, after a report that the 1599 old delay port causes hangs on some systems. 1600 1601 Changes in 1.42: 1602 * Frob the "fast A20 gate" port as well as the keyboard 1603 controller; will this help systems with problems? 1604 * Be even more paranoid about A20, unfortunately even this 1605 seems to be not paranoid enough... what I don't understand 1606 is that if there is hardware out there *this broken*, how 1607 can it run Linux at all? Report an error message rather 1608 than hang forever if A20 is stuck. 1609 * Include some intermediate files in the distribution, plus 1610 provide a "make installer" target for distributors to relink 1611 the install programs only. I would prefer the syslinux boot 1612 loader proper to be "binary clean" for debuggablity -- use 1613 "make clean ; make installer" to rebuild the installers only. 1614 1615 Changes in 1.41: 1616 * Don't get confused by directories, volume labels, or VFAT 1617 long names. 1618 * Use INT 15h, AX=0E801h to query memory size before trying 1619 INT 15h, AH=88h. This not only provides more headroom 1620 between the kernel and the initrd on large-memory machines, 1621 but it appears some recent BIOSes actually have started 1622 returning garbage for the AH=88h (older) call. 1623 * Trust high memory beyond the 15 MB mark if the user has 1624 specified it, or if obtained with INT 15h, AH=0E801h (with 1625 no memory holes above 1 MB.) 1626 1627 Changes in 1.40: 1628 * Increase A20M delay and put in a test to avoid problems on 1629 certain IBM Thinkpads (thanks to Donnie Barnes of RedHat 1630 for vital info on this one.) 1631 * Support COMBOOT style boot command images. 1632 * Support chain loading (foreign operating systems, e.g. DOS). 1633 * Include a new "copybs" DOS utility to copy a boot sector to 1634 a file (under Linux, use "dd".) 1635 * Fix the DOS installer to work for disks over 32 MB. 1636 * SYSLINUX should now handle disks with more than 65536 tracks. 1637 1638 Changes in 1.37: 1639 * Fix a bug that caused "label" statements in syslinux.cfg to 1640 not be handled properly. 1641 * Updated the documentation. Among other things, we now allow 1642 up to 128 "label" statements. 1643 1644 Changes in 1.36: 1645 * Fix for booting old (pre-initrd) kernels. 1646 * It seems at least some versions of OS/2 doesn't set up all 1647 the fields in the superblock correctly. Account for that. 1648 * Fix bug that caused boot failure when using the mem= option. 1649 1650 Changes in 1.35: 1651 * Loading from partitions now should work properly. (Actually 1652 tested, this time. You should even be able to dd a floppy 1653 to a partition and boot from it.) 1654 * Removed large workaround code for an alleged ancient BIOS 1655 bug I have never actually seen. The -s option should work 1656 on those machines, anyway. 1657 * Support for simple keyboard remappings, same as used by 1658 LILO (once again to support localization.) The program 1659 keytab-lilo.pl from the LILO distribution included to 1660 generate such maps. 1661 * Added a "safe, slow and stupid" (-s) option to the 1662 installers. This option will lobotomize the boot sector to 1663 hopefully work on even very buggy BIOSes. 1664 1665 Changes in 1.34: 1666 * Ability to load a VGA font on bootup (for localized Linux 1667 distributions.) 1668 1669 Changes in 1.33: 1670 * Bug fix in the Linux installer. 1671 * Added a workaround for a bug in certain AMI/Intel BIOSes 1672 when booting from CD-ROM. 1673 * Documentation changes. 1674 1675 Changes in 1.32: 1676 * FAT16 filesystems are now supported. 1677 1678 Changes in 1.31: 1679 * Now compiles under Linux, using NASM, rather than using 1680 Turbo Assembler under DOS. See http://www.cryogen.com/Nasm 1681 for information about NASM. 1682 * Linux-hosted SYSLINUX installer, as well as a 1683 rewritten DOS installer (now is written in assembler, so we 1684 don't need Turbo C.) 1685 1686 Changes in 1.30: 1687 * Added support for loading bzImage and initrd loading, and made 1688 SYSLINUX new-setup-code aware (SYSLINUX 1.30 id=0x31). 1689 * Added LILO-style kernel labels; see the LABEL and IMPLICIT 1690 keywords in README file. 1691 * Added support for colorization of intro and help screens. 1692 * The vga= option is now handled correctly. 1693 * Massive rewrite of large chunks of the code in order to 1694 support the first two new features. 1695 1696 Changes in 1.20: 1697 * Added simple online help at the "boot:" prompt. 1698 * Removed 2880K image as I no longer have access to such a 1699 floppy drive. (Donations accepted!!) 1700 * Decided to distribute the source in a subdirectory rather 1701 than in a nested zipfile. 1702 1703 Changes in 1.11: 1704 * Removed a sanity check which would cause booting to fail on 1705 Phoenix BIOS version 4.03. Apparently this BIOS is buggy. 1706 1707 Changes in 1.10: 1708 * Added configuration file SYSLINUX.CFG. This file contains all 1709 configurable options, and can be edited from any OS which can 1710 access an MS-DOS filesystem; there is no longer a need to run 1711 SYSLINUX.EXE except to write the boot sector. 1712 * Default command line now given by "default" line in config 1713 file. 1714 * LINUXMSG.TXT and BOOTMSG.TXT hard-coded file names replaced by 1715 "display" and "prompt" lines in config file. 1716 * LILO-style option appending now supported ("append" line in 1717 config file). 1718 * Prompt timeout is now supported ("timeout" line in config 1719 file). The timeout is cancelled when anything is typed on the 1720 command line. 1721 * Pressing <ESC> or <Ctrl-C> at the Loading... stage now aborts 1722 the kernel loading in progress and returns the user to the 1723 boot: prompt. 1724 * The installer now automatically sets the READONLY flag on 1725 LDLINUX.SYS. 1726 * Added 2880K disk image. 1727 1728 Changes in 1.03: 1729 * Fixed bug that would prevent booting from double-density 1730 floppies and other DOS filesystems with multiple sectors per 1731 cluster. 1732 * Added 720K disk image. 1733 * Changed default kernel name on disk images to LINUX. 1734 1735 Changes in 1.02: 1736 * Fixed bug that would garble the command line on recent kernels 1737 with more than 4 sectors of setup code (this wasn't really a 1738 *bug*; rather, a kernel change broke the code. Unfortunately 1739 the Linux boot interface is still sorely undocumented). 1740 * Added BOOTMSG.TXT file support (message file which does not 1741 force display of the boot prompt). 1742 1743 Changes in 1.01: 1744 * Fixed bug on some (most?) 386 BIOSes would require two boot 1745 attempts. 1746
