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Starting with 1.47, changes marked with SYSLINUX/PXELINUX apply to
that specific program only; other changes apply to both.
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.)
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.
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