[Mageia-dev] Syslinux integration roadmap

Maarten Vanraes maarten at rmail.be
Thu Oct 6 21:06:35 CEST 2011


Op donderdag 06 oktober 2011 20:18:30 schreef Erwan Velu:
> Hi fellows,
> 
> I should have started by writting this email, but later is better that
> never.
> I'd like to share  with you the work I started on syslinux : I
> registered myself of maintainer of it.
> 
> Under Mandriva, we were running Syslinux 3.8x with the following
> configuration
> - gfxboot patch (unsupported upstream as very intrusive)
> - isohybrid patch from pterjan
> - a remplacement of the built-in pnglib
> - a packaging with 3 versions of isolinux to load a different
> configuration file regarding the processor capabilities (x86/x64)
> 
> I did upgrade to 4.04 for
> - using the gfxboot com32 module which is now upsteam
> - using a single version of isolinux
> - simplifying the integration of upstream releases into mga
> - an up to date version of HDT
> 
> Gfxboot module requested an update of the gfxboot tools & theme. This
> work is already done and works properly.
> 
> The pnglib patch management is under discussions in another thread.
> 
> The isohybrid patch have to be reworked as isohybrid is now named
> isohybrid.pl, a C version of isohybrid now exists also. Rework of this
> patch should be quite easy to do once we'll have understood all the
> tricks inside ;) That's shouldn't be a big deal though.
> 
> My plan for using a single version of isolinux is the following :
> Using syslinux's capability to load various kernel & configuration files
> regarding some hw capabilites (the cpu in this case). I'm ending a
> prototype that will simulate the loading of different entries regarding
> the cpu arch. This will greatly simplify the management of the boot
> procedure and especially for the dual arch isos.
> 
> I'm also working for having some specific entries for the virtualized
> world like kvm or virtualbox (cf bug 44).
> 
> 4.04 is also now providing a new package called extlinux which provides
> extlinux & the mbr file needed to make a very powerful bootloader for
> ext* & btrfs filesystems (more to come).
> 
> Switching to this new scheme will ease updates by using upstream's
> version of syslinux.
> This will also require working on BCD to integrate this new
> configuration files. That shouldn't be hard neither.
> 
> I'm part of the upstream project, so if some more features/ideas are
> coming, I'll be more than happy to help you.
> 
> Cheers,
> Erwan

nice work!


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