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(2006-08-06) rescue-bootcd

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Valeriano A.R.
2006-08-06 00:00:00 +02:00
parent 2f796b816a
commit decb062d20
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Starting with 1.47, changes marked with SYSLINUX/PXELINUX/ISOLINUX
apply to that specific program only; other changes apply to all of
them.
Changes in 3.09:
* gcc4 compilation fix.
* <BEL> (Ctrl-G) in message files now causes a beep.
* Reduce the command line to 511 characters; 1023 caused
memory overflows.
Changes in 3.08:
* SYSLINUX: Fix performance regression (-s mode always
enabled.)
* Add API function for idle loop.
* libutil: Add do_idle() function for idle loop, make
get_key() use it.
* libutil: Add SHA-1 and base64 functions.
* Simple menu system: add password support.
* EXTLINUX: Sparse files now handled correctly.
* EXTLINUX: Large directories now handled correctly.
* ALL: At the prompt, Ctrl-X now forces text mode.
* Fix configuration file parsing error, that could cause
hangs.
* Rewritten advanced menuing system from Murali Ganapathy.
* MEMDISK: New "bigraw" mode to work around certain broken
BIOS flash programs.
* COM32 module to boot Multiboot systems, including Xen. See
com32/modules/mboot.doc.
* Max command line changed to 1023 characters. Note that the
kernel proper still can only handle 255 characters without
patching, and COM16 binaries can only handle 125 characters.
Changes in 3.07:
* Fix chainloading (chain.c32).
* Fix zlib build problem.
* Use a private copy of <linux/ext2_fs.h>.
Changes in 3.06:
* Fix typo that caused the ramdisk to load in the wrong place.
Changes in 3.05:
* New API function "shuffle and boot"; allows COM32 modules to
load or construct (almost) arbitrarily complex objects,
e.g. a kernel and its initrd/initramfs in pieces, and have
the API core reorganize memory for booting. (A library API
for this function will be introduced in a later version.)
* The initrd= option now supports multiple filenames separated
by commas. This is mostly useful for initramfs, which can
be composed of multiple separate cpio or cpio.gz archives.
(Note: all files except the last one are zero-padded to a 4K
page boundary. This should not affect initramfs.)
* EXTLINUX: Fix API function 000Ah (get derivative-specific
info).
* libcom32/ethersel: Support PCI Config Mechanism #2 on
machines still infested with that hideous old hack.
* SYSLINUX: Fix directory-parsing bug.
Changes in 3.02:
* SYSLINUX: The "unix" installer now sets the MS-DOS
attributes (hidden, system, readonly.)
* COM32 library: build the .lnx (test modules for running
under Linux) as architecture native modules, in case
i386 devel libraries aren't installed.
* EXTLINUX: Hack for systems which don't have BLKGETSIZE64
defined in the standard header files.
* Simple menu system: minor aestetic improvements, and try to
work better over a serial console (speed, and readability on
monochrome terminal emulators.)
* New CONSOLE directive to control output on the video console
(useful for dealing with some broken serial-forwarding
BIOSes.)
* New com32 module "ethersel" for searching for an Ethernet
card and selecting the proper version of Etherboot.
* EXTLINUX: Allow the user to override the detected geometry.
Add help.
Changes in 3.01:
* EXTLINUX, SYSLINUX: Fix compile errors on some systems.
* EXTLINUX: Default to zipdrive geometry (64 heads, 32
sectors) if no other geometry can be detected.
Changes in 3.00:
* SYSLINUX: Support FAT32 and EDD. As an unfortunate
consequence, LDLINUX.SYS is no longer an ordinary file; it
is block-mapped at install time, which means it can only be
written using the syslinux installers.
* SYSLINUX: Reorganize the source code for the installers;
each one of the installers (dos, win32, unix, mtools) is now
built in its own subdirectory. In particular, "mtools" is
the unprivileged installer which uses mtools; "unix" is the
privileged installer which uses system calls.
* SYSLINUX: Completely rewritten DOS installer in C.
* ALL: "label" statement information is now stored in a
compressed format, which means that a lot more labels are
permitted (500-1000 in a typical configuration, but depends
on the complexity.)
* EXTLINUX: New derivative, which boots from an ext2/ext3
filesystem.
* SYSLINUX: The DOS and Win32 installers can now optionally
write the boot sector to a file instead of the real boot
sector. This is not supported in the Linux installers,
however.
* ALL: New NOESCAPE command, disables the "hold down the Shift
key to display the prompt" behaviour.
* New simple menu system, as an alternative to the advanced
menu system already present. See README.menu for details.
* PXELINUX: Filenames can now be prefixed with an IP address
or DNS name plus :: (e.g. 192.0.2.1::filename or
server.domain.com::filename), which downloads a file from an
alternate TFTP server, or just a :: (e.g. ::filename), which
suppresses the common pathname prefix. See pxelinux.doc.
* SYSLINUX: Add an -m option to the DOS and Win32 installers
to write an MBR and -a to mark the partition SYSLINUX is
being installed on active.
* MEMDISK: Give a way to query the boot loader type while
running MEMDISK; see memdisk/memdisk.doc and
sample/mdiskchk.c.
* mkdiskimage: substantially improved mkdiskimage which, among
other things, can now be used to initialize USB keys as
zipdrives; see README.usbkey for more information.
Changes in 2.13:
* MEMDISK: Fix command-line parsing "brown paper bag" class
bug.
* MEMDISK: Add "raw" mode to support the DOS boot disk from
WinME/XP, which seems to deliberately crash the system
when someone uses the "INT 15h mover" highmem API.
* Make "make install" do something sane for the com32
development environment.
* In the spec file, create a separate -devel RPM for the com32
development environment.
Changes in 2.12:
* Simple C library, based on klibc, for writing COM32
programs.
* Fix the handling of file length in loading of COM32
programs.
* MEMDISK: Work around a linker bug by rearranging the code to
not use the linker for the 16-bit code.
* SYSLINUX: If we're building on a machine without a Win32
(mingw) compiler, just skip building syslinux.exe.
* ISOLINUX: Support non-mkisofs mastering programs, at least
as long as the image is single-session. For best results,
ISOLINUX should be the only boot loader installed.
* MEMDISK: Allow the user to specify that the simulated disk
should be write-protected.
Changes in 2.11:
* ALL: Add an API call to get the configuration file name.
* SYSLINUX: Fix bug in 2.10 that prevented it from working
correctly for a lot of people.
* SYSLINUX: In the installer, make mtools a bit less fussy.
* Make the menu system compile with newer gcc's.
Changes in 2.10:
* MEMDISK: Handle images compressed with zip as well as with
gzip. Some Windows-based image tools apparently generate
these kinds of images by default. Patch by Patrick
LoPresti.
* Major menu improvement from Murali Ganapathy.
* ISOLINUX: Wonderfully sick and brilliant workaround for
severe bugs in certain Award BIOSes; from Knut Petersen.
* SYSLINUX: Fix for the nomtools installed, from Frederic
Pasteleurs.
* PXELINUX: Fix handling of IP numbers in the ranges
100-109 and 200-209.
* ALL: New option "allowoptions" (defaults to 1), which
controls if options are allowed on the command line or not.
* SYSLINUX: Support building under klibc (see the klibc
distribution for details.)
Changes in 2.09:
* SYSLINUX: Remove residual setuid crap from
syslinux-nomtools.
* Handle video pages correctly when using the API functions.
* Handle compiling on an x86-64 platform correctly.
* Menu system from Murali Krishnan Ganapathy; see the menu
directory for information.
* COMBOOT: Allow COMBOOT programs to change screen text mode.
* COMBOOT: Correct the documentation of how to detect
SYSLINUX from COMBOOT!!!!
* COMBOOT: Fix "get key without echo" API function.
* SYSLINUX: Fix bug that affected the API open function.
* ALL: Improve the E820 memory parser, to work around some
buggy BIOSes.
Changes in 2.08:
* Add new configuration command "ontimeout" to allow timeout
to have a different action than just pressing Enter.
* Add new configuration command "onerror" to allow a custom
command to be executed in case the kernel image is not found.
* Fix bugs in the COMBOOT/COM32 command-line parsing. APPEND
now works with COMBOOT/COM32 images.
* PXELINUX: Poll for ARP requests while sitting at the
prompt. This makes some boot servers a lot less unhappy.
* PXELINUX: Actually free sockets when we get a failure
(including file not found.) This bug would cause us to run
out of sockets and thus "go deaf" after a while.
* MEMDISK: Add an API to query for the existence of MEMDISK.
* SYSLINUX: Fix loading boot sectors (.bs/.bss) from floppy
disk.
* .c32 is now one of the extensions searched for
automatically.
* PXELINUX: RFBG.exe seems to randomly overwrite memory
location 0x5700. Thus, don't use it!
* PXELINUX: Change pathname length max from 63 to 127; change
max vkernels from 128 to 64.
* Support Ctrl-U -> kill entire command line input.
* The "samples" directory contains a (barely at all tested)
chain loading example, chain.c32, which may be used to
chainload local floppy disks and hard disks. Use with
"chain fdN" or "chain hdN [partition]"; N = 0 for the first
drive of each type.
Changes in 2.07:
* MEMDISK: Workaround for BIOSes which go into a snit when
they get a RESET command for the floppy system when there is
no floppy in the system.
* PXELINUX: Add "ipappend 2", which passes the hardware
address of the boot interface to the kernel as a
command-line option.
* mkdiskimage: fix the generation of the end limit.
* PXELINUX: Fix multiple bugs in chainloading of other NBPs.
* MEMDISK: Fix bug that would occationally cause "ran out of
input data" when using compressed disk images.
* SYSLINUX: Updates for the win32 installer (from Lars Munch.)
* PXELINUX: PXELINUX-specific options are now recognized both
in a vendor-option-space (a.k.a. type 43 encapsulated) as
well as in a site-option-space (unencapsulated.)
* COM32: Don't crash when DS != 0.
* COMBOOT/COM32: Make file reading work correctly. Thanks to
Phung Chi Kien for submitting a test program.
Changes in 2.06:
* ALL: Fix problem that would occationally cause a
boot failure, depending on the length of the kernel.
* ISOLINUX: Fix problem that would occationally cause a
boot failure, depending on the length of directories.
* SYSLINUX: Win32 installer now flushes buffers.
* ppmtolss16: Be fully compliant with the PNM spec;
actually process comments in the header and odd
alignments of the various parameters, as well as
"plain" (not raw) files and PBM and PGM files.
* PXELINUX: Lower the default MTU to 1472 in order to deal
with systems with slightly nonstandard MTUs, and PXE
stacks which don't defragment correctly. Unfortunately this
is very hard to test dynamically.
Changes in 2.05:
* PXELINUX: Add a default query based on the hardware address
of the boot device. This is in lower case hexadecimal form
separated by dashes and including the hardware type, for
example, the Ethernet (type 1) address 88:99:AA:BB:CC:DD
would query the file pxelinux.cfg/01-88-99-aa-bb-cc-dd.
* PXELINUX: Fix bug involving non-IP-based config file names.
* SYSLINUX: New installer for WinNT-based systems, from Lars
Munch.
* MEMDISK: Fix handling of memory region overlap when
decompressing. Thanks to Mikhail Kupchik for identifying
the problem.
Changes in 2.04:
* ALL: Reclaim even more low memory by observing that
comboot_seg == real_mode_seg is perfectly fine, and by the
fact that the 1000h segment managed to get unused in all
derivatives...
* PXELINUX: Attempt to negotiate full Ethernet-sized blocks
(1468 bytes) using the blksize option.
* SYSLINUX: Resurrect the old no-mtools version of the
installer, although as a root-only tool. Some distributors
have indicated that they need a small standalone installer.
* MEMDISK: Fix a memory offset computation error when
installing compressed disks which generally would cause
1 MB of memory to be wasted.
* MEMDISK: Fix installing the E820 memory map. Calling
INT 15h AX=0E820h with MEMDISK 2.03 loaded would give a
completely corrupt memory map.
* SYSLINUX: Make libsyslinux a dynamic library, so that it can
be updated separately from client programs. The whole idea,
after all, is to enable alternate programs to become
syslinux installers.
* Include an rpm spec file in the distribution, so rpmbuild
-ta works.
Changes in 2.03:
* Actually support comment lines in the configuration file.
* PXELINUX: Try to resolve some problems with stack switches.
* PXELINUX: Handle PXE stacks with broken routing.
With these workarounds, the remote install PXE boot floppy
(rbfg.exe) from Argon Technologies should work correctly.
* Fix problems with Perl scripts in UTF-8 locales.
* You probably need NASM 0.98.34 or later to compile this
version. 0.98.36 is recommended.
* MEMDISK: Now supports gzip compressed images.
Changes in 2.02:
* SYSLINUX: Security flaws have been found in the SYSLINUX
installer when running setuid root. Rewrite the SYSLINUX
installer so it uses mtools instead. It therefore now
requires mtools (specifically mcopy and mattrib) to exist on
your system, but it will not require root privileges and
SHOULD NOT be setuid.
Changes in 2.01:
* MEMDISK: Fix memory sizing bug when the ramdisk crosses the
16 MB boundary.
* MEMDISK: Add a "pause" option to stop immediately before
booting, to read off the messages.
* MEMDISK: Support disk images with DOSEMU headers.
* Update the mkdiskimage script to handle newer mtools
versions, and be able to generate disk images with DOSEMU
headers (controlled by the -d option).
* Fix the COM32 sample program.
* PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Fix some COMBOOT API calls.
* PXELINUX: Doc fix.
* Build SYSLINUX into a small library for encapsulation into
other programs (however, please keep in mind this is a GPL'd
library.)
* SYSLINUX: Make installer work with "owner" in /etc/fstab.
* SYSLINUX: Fix issue with working on nonpartitioned hard disk
devices. THIS CONFIGURATION IS NOT RECOMMENDED.
Changes in 2.00:
* ALL: Add support for "COM32" (32-bit COMBOOT) images.
* ALL: Add an API for COMBOOT/COM32 images. See comboot.doc
for details. There is a C development environment for
COM32 being created; it should be ready at some point in
the future.
* Fix mbr.asm so that it actually works.
* SYSLINUX: The syslinux installer *SHOULD* now be safe to
run setuid root.
* PXELINUX: Fix bug where PXELINUX would override random
chunks of the UNDI code segment! Thanks to Kevin Tran for
finding this bug.
* ISOLINUX: Fix a bug related to slashes in pathnames.
* ISOLINUX: Fix a bug in handling initrds over 128 MB.
* ALL: Make the <Ctrl-V> key print out the version; this is
to help debugging.
* Add a small script, mkdiskimage, to create a DOS-formatted
hard disk image using mtools. This may be useful in
conjunction with MEMDISK.
* ISOLINUX: Search for a /boot/isolinux directory as well as
/isolinux.
* ALL: Fix a bug related to very long configuration files.
* PXELINUX: Work around a NASM bug which would result in no
delay before reset if an error occurs.
Changes in 1.76:
* ISOLINUX: Remove code no longer used which caused hangs on
some Toshiba laptops.
Changes in 1.75:
* ALL: NASM 0.98.32 or later is now required to build
SYSLINUX from sources.
* SYSLINUX: put back in the workaround for the BIOS floppy
table. This seems to be a requirement for "extended" floppy
formats to work correctly.
* SYSLINUX: No longer warn if one is trying to boot on a 286
or older. The above BIOS workaround no longer fits if the
requirement to use only 8086-compatible code in the early
boot is maintained. It made sense in 1994, but in 2002 a
286 or older is a museum object.
* SYSLINUX: Use a downright bizarre, stateful algorithm to try
to guess the maximum transfer size. I am *hoping* this will
cut down on the number of systems for which -s is required
to work at any acceptable speed.
* ISOLINUX: Add a few more workarounds for various broken El
Torito BIOSes.
* Make sure .depend files aren't accidentally packed...
* ALL: Fix bugs in the extension-detect code; this caused
files like COMBOOT images and CD boot sectors to be
mis-identified as Linux kernels and rejected.
* ALL: Fix the return from COMBOOT.
* ALL: Do some of the early groundwork for supporting DOS
system calls in COMBOOT.
* Get rid of unnecessary "near" directives, making the code
bigger.
* PXELINUX: Put the PXE stack back in the init state before
invoking a chain-loaded NBP.
* PXELINUX: Actually found the combination of calls that
allows some (most?) PXE 2+ stacks to be unloaded from memory
properly.
* PXELINUX: Add "keeppxe" command-line option to disable
the standard unloading of the PXE stack.
Changes in 1.74:
* SYSLINUX: fix bug that would cause valid kernel images to be
labelled "invalid".
Changes in 1.73:
* Work on removing gratuitous differences between modules.
* Break up the source in common and module-specific files.
* PXELINUX: Allow chaining of other PXE NBPs.
* ISOLINUX: Allow loading "CD-ROM boot sectors".
* ALL: generalize the definition of a boot sector/NBP.
Changes in 1.72:
* PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Fix bugs in the new core code.
Changes in 1.71:
* Fix a "brown paper bag" class bug in the new core code.
Changes in 1.70:
* Major code restructuring.
* Relax the conventional memory limits somewhat.
* MEMDISK: Set up the "version number string" pointer in the
header correctly.
* SYSLINUX: Fix, again, "the bug that won't die": the use of
the offset parameter with the SYSLINUX installer.
* SYSLINUX: Fix possible superblock corruption problem in the
SYSLINUX installer.
Changes in 1.67:
* Handle bug in the location of initrd.
Changes in 1.66:
* MEMDISK: Make compile with newer versions of gcc.
Changes in 1.65:
* ISOLINUX: Support booting disk image files (to boot DOS or
other non-Linux operating systems), *IF* the BIOS works
correctly; unfortunately many BIOSes apparently don't.
* Support Linux boot protocol version 2.03 (explicitly
specify the initrd address limit.)
* Handle small "pseudo-kernels"; images that use the Linux
kernel boot protocols but are less than 64K in size.
* MEMDISK: New subsystem; this is a driver which allows
legacy OSes to boot using an in-memory simulated disk.
See memdisk/memdisk.doc for more info.
* PXELINUX, ISOLINUX: Correctly handle files larger than 65535
blocks (32 MB for PXELINUX, 128 MB for ISOLINUX.)
* PXELINUX: Make a best-effort attempt at freeing all memory
claimed. From the looks of it, it will fail on most PXE
stacks.
Changes in 1.64:
* Limited support for hardware flow control when using a
serial port console.
* Support specifying the serial port I/O address explicitly.
* Make DOS installer hopefully behave more nicely when used on
recent Windows versions.
* Fix returning to text mode when a font has been specified.
* Attempt to detect missing serial port hardware and disable
the serial port if there is nothing there.
Changes in 1.63:
* Make the ppmtolss16 program handle color conversion more
correctly.
* Clean up "make install" target, honour INSTALLROOT if it
exists.
* SYSLINUX: Fix stack-smash bug identified by Steffen
Winterfeldt.
* Hopefully fix return-to-text-mode on some graphics cards.
* ISOLINUX: Bug workaround for Award BIOS 4.51, and perhaps
other buggy BIOSes as well.
Changes in 1.62:
* PXELINUX: Allow the DHCP server to override the
configuration file name and pathname prefix, using
"site-specific" DHCP options.
* PXELINUX: Documentation fixes.
* PXELINUX: Fix the "ipappend" option; the last two values
were reversed vs. what the kernel expected.
* Introduce a way to return to text mode once we are already
in graphics mode. This may be useful for F-key help
screens.
* Fix several bugs in the way return to text mode was handled.
Changes in 1.61:
* ISOLINUX: Support full pathname searches. Max length for a
pathname is 255 characters. As a result, only 64 "label"
statements are supported in ISOLINUX.
* PXELINUX: Max filename length extended to 63 characters.
Changes in 1.60:
* Add support for graphical splash screens.
* Add mode control characters, which allows you to control
message display output depending on output mode (text,
graphics, or serial port.)
* ISOLINUX: New program, which boots Linux from a CD-ROM
without using floppy emulation mode. See isolinux.doc for
more details.
* PXELINUX: Don't search for boot sector file types, since
they don't work anyway.
* SYSLINUX: Document the LOCK command for Win9x, and the error
dialog box for WinNT/2K.
Changes in 1.54:
* PXELINUX: Fix code for finding !PXE from PXENV+. This was
due to a spec bug; match the most recent spec since that
seems to be what implementations actually do.
* SYSLINUX: Add some smarts to the boot sector, which
hopefully should reduce the number of systems which require
stupid mode ("syslinux -s").
* PXELINUX: Document further some of the pathologies with old
PXE stacks.
* When specifying a "default" command line, no longer
automatically appent "auto". See the "DEFAULT" command in
syslinux.doc for more information.
* PXELINUX: Clean up the allocation of local socket numbers.
Changes in 1.53:
* PXELINUX: Rename pxelinux.bin to pxelinux.0, to match what
most PXE servers seem to expect.
* PXELINUX: Update the DHCP/boot server setup documentation.
* PXELINUX: Support new "localboot" option for "label"
sections.
* PXELINUX: More robust parsing of DHCP/boot server packets.
* PXELINUX: Include a small utility program "gethostip" to
compute hexadecimal IP addresses.
Changes in 1.52:
* PXELINUX: Fix bugs introduced by new A20 code. (SYSLINUX
has also been changed for code consistency reasons, but I'm
pretty sure the changes are don't care on SYSLINUX.)
* Documentation updates.
* PXELINUX: Add "ipappend" option to generate an ip= option to
the kernel.
Changes in 1.51:
* PXELINUX: Not all PXE stacks fill in the IP address for a
type 3 cached info query. Use a type 2 cached info query
for this information (only.)
* Yet another attempt at A20 coding. Now support BIOS call
15:2401 as well, and handle machines which always have A20
on separately.
* Support memory detection using INT 15h, AX=0E820h. BIOS
manufacturers have apparently gotten sloppy about keeping
INT 15h, AX=0E801h working properly.
* Don't issue <CR><LF> onto the serial port when we're doing
screen wraparound.
Changes in 1.50:
* Yet another A20-code update. It seems some "legacy-free"
machines and embedded gear simply don't have a KBC to talk
to, and that waiting for one will wait forever. Sigh.
Changes in 1.49:
* SYSLINUX: Implement a hack for BIOS drivers which hog significant
chunks of low memory during boot. (Note: PXELINUX already
had this modification. SYSLINUX does still require that the
low 512K is available; PXELINUX requires 384K. Machines
with a physical memory hole in the low 640K cannot boot
Linux no matter what.) Depending what the reason is for the
memory hole, a new kernel (2.4.0-test3-pre3 or later) may be
required.
* SYSLINUX: Default installer binary now compiled against
glibc 2.1. If this is inappropriate for your system and you
still want to use the offical version of SYSLINUX, please
follow the instructions in "distrib.doc" to rebuild the
installer.
* SYSLINUX: Linux installer program now supports -o <offset>
option which does a loopback mount with the
-o loop,offset=<> option. Useful to run SYSLINUX on an
individual partition of a whole-harddisk image.
* Include the source code to a Master Boot Record (MBR)
functionally equivalent to the one installed DOS except it
includes EBIOS support, and should be resistant to geometry
changes. The MBR code is public domain.
* PXELINUX: Fix "double p" bug: if the tftp prefix was null,
all filenames would get a "p" preprended, e.g.
"ppxelinux.cfg" and "pvmlinux".
Changes in 1.48:
* PXELINUX: Workaround for PXE ROMs based on the Intel PXE PDK
3.0 build 071 and earlier: missing !PXE structure pointer.
* PXELINUX: Handle larger BOOTP/DHCP packages.
* PXELINUX: The command line passing was broken; fix.
* PXELINUX: Make COMBOOT images work.
* PXELINUX: Documentation on how to make booting work using
the PDK 3.0-derived clients, which aren't so generous as to
allow booting with only "PXEClient" specified.
Changes in 1.47:
* PXELINUX: RFC 1123 states that a TFTP implementation MUST
use adaptive timeout, "at least an exponential backoff of
retransmission timeout is necessary." Implement a very
simple exponential backoff for retransmits.
* PXELINUX: Updated documentation, including pointer to new
TFTP server.
* PXELINUX: When sending ERROR due to bad OACK, use the proper
destination port number (why are TFTP port numbers so odd?)
* PXELINUX: If the boot dies in the middle somewhere,
eventually give up and reset the machine (unattended
operation.)
Changes in 1.46:
* New program PXELINUX to do network booting using a
PXE-compliant (Pre-Execution Environment) network booting
PROM. See pxelinux.doc for details.
Changes in 1.45:
* Serial console support. See syslinux.doc for details.
Changes in 1.44:
* Change HIGHMEM_MAX to 38000000h to (hopefully) avoid the
kernel stepping on it; 3f000000h was apparently a higher
limit than the kernel used!
Changes in 1.43:
* Add sys2ansi.pl script to display the contents of a
colorized SYSLINUX file.
* Changed the io_delay once again, after a report that the
old delay port causes hangs on some systems.
Changes in 1.42:
* Frob the "fast A20 gate" port as well as the keyboard
controller; will this help systems with problems?
* Be even more paranoid about A20, unfortunately even this
seems to be not paranoid enough... what I don't understand
is that if there is hardware out there *this broken*, how
can it run Linux at all? Report an error message rather
than hang forever if A20 is stuck.
* Include some intermediate files in the distribution, plus
provide a "make installer" target for distributors to relink
the install programs only. I would prefer the syslinux boot
loader proper to be "binary clean" for debuggablity -- use
"make clean ; make installer" to rebuild the installers only.
Changes in 1.41:
* Don't get confused by directories, volume labels, or VFAT
long names.
* Use INT 15h, AX=0E801h to query memory size before trying
INT 15h, AH=88h. This not only provides more headroom
between the kernel and the initrd on large-memory machines,
but it appears some recent BIOSes actually have started
returning garbage for the AH=88h (older) call.
* Trust high memory beyond the 15 MB mark if the user has
specified it, or if obtained with INT 15h, AH=0E801h (with
no memory holes above 1 MB.)
Changes in 1.40:
* Increase A20M delay and put in a test to avoid problems on
certain IBM Thinkpads (thanks to Donnie Barnes of RedHat
for vital info on this one.)
* Support COMBOOT style boot command images.
* Support chain loading (foreign operating systems, e.g. DOS).
* Include a new "copybs" DOS utility to copy a boot sector to
a file (under Linux, use "dd".)
* Fix the DOS installer to work for disks over 32 MB.
* SYSLINUX should now handle disks with more than 65536 tracks.
Changes in 1.37:
* Fix a bug that caused "label" statements in syslinux.cfg to
not be handled properly.
* Updated the documentation. Among other things, we now allow
up to 128 "label" statements.
Changes in 1.36:
* Fix for booting old (pre-initrd) kernels.
* It seems at least some versions of OS/2 doesn't set up all
the fields in the superblock correctly. Account for that.
* Fix bug that caused boot failure when using the mem= option.
Changes in 1.35:
* Loading from partitions now should work properly. (Actually
tested, this time. You should even be able to dd a floppy
to a partition and boot from it.)
* Removed large workaround code for an alleged ancient BIOS
bug I have never actually seen. The -s option should work
on those machines, anyway.
* Support for simple keyboard remappings, same as used by
LILO (once again to support localization.) The program
keytab-lilo.pl from the LILO distribution included to
generate such maps.
* Added a "safe, slow and stupid" (-s) option to the
installers. This option will lobotomize the boot sector to
hopefully work on even very buggy BIOSes.
Changes in 1.34:
* Ability to load a VGA font on bootup (for localized Linux
distributions.)
Changes in 1.33:
* Bug fix in the Linux installer.
* Added a workaround for a bug in certain AMI/Intel BIOSes
when booting from CD-ROM.
* Documentation changes.
Changes in 1.32:
* FAT16 filesystems are now supported.
Changes in 1.31:
* Now compiles under Linux, using NASM, rather than using
Turbo Assembler under DOS. See http://www.cryogen.com/Nasm
for information about NASM.
* Linux-hosted SYSLINUX installer, as well as a
rewritten DOS installer (now is written in assembler, so we
don't need Turbo C.)
Changes in 1.30:
* Added support for loading bzImage and initrd loading, and made
SYSLINUX new-setup-code aware (SYSLINUX 1.30 id=0x31).
* Added LILO-style kernel labels; see the LABEL and IMPLICIT
keywords in README file.
* Added support for colorization of intro and help screens.
* The vga= option is now handled correctly.
* Massive rewrite of large chunks of the code in order to
support the first two new features.
Changes in 1.20:
* Added simple online help at the "boot:" prompt.
* Removed 2880K image as I no longer have access to such a
floppy drive. (Donations accepted!!)
* Decided to distribute the source in a subdirectory rather
than in a nested zipfile.
Changes in 1.11:
* Removed a sanity check which would cause booting to fail on
Phoenix BIOS version 4.03. Apparently this BIOS is buggy.
Changes in 1.10:
* Added configuration file SYSLINUX.CFG. This file contains all
configurable options, and can be edited from any OS which can
access an MS-DOS filesystem; there is no longer a need to run
SYSLINUX.EXE except to write the boot sector.
* Default command line now given by "default" line in config
file.
* LINUXMSG.TXT and BOOTMSG.TXT hard-coded file names replaced by
"display" and "prompt" lines in config file.
* LILO-style option appending now supported ("append" line in
config file).
* Prompt timeout is now supported ("timeout" line in config
file). The timeout is cancelled when anything is typed on the
command line.
* Pressing <ESC> or <Ctrl-C> at the Loading... stage now aborts
the kernel loading in progress and returns the user to the
boot: prompt.
* The installer now automatically sets the READONLY flag on
LDLINUX.SYS.
* Added 2880K disk image.
Changes in 1.03:
* Fixed bug that would prevent booting from double-density
floppies and other DOS filesystems with multiple sectors per
cluster.
* Added 720K disk image.
* Changed default kernel name on disk images to LINUX.
Changes in 1.02:
* Fixed bug that would garble the command line on recent kernels
with more than 4 sectors of setup code (this wasn't really a
*bug*; rather, a kernel change broke the code. Unfortunately
the Linux boot interface is still sorely undocumented).
* Added BOOTMSG.TXT file support (message file which does not
force display of the boot prompt).
Changes in 1.01:
* Fixed bug on some (most?) 386 BIOSes would require two boot
attempts.