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

