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Message-ID: <20111102084708.GA2096@openwall.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2011 12:47:08 +0400
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: owl-dev@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: syslinux
Michael,
Thank you for your comments!
Would you possibly provide a patch to our syslinux.spec implementing
your suggested changes?
On Wed, Nov 02, 2011 at 12:19:13AM +0400, Michael Tokarev wrote:
> The extlinux package isn't needed anymore in 4.x versions of
> syslinux.
Why didn't HPA update the included spec file accordingly, then?
(OK, maybe this question shouldn't be addressed to you.)
> But syslinux installer is a bit problematic: under linux
> it uses mtools package to deal with fat-based filesystems,
> so to be fair, it depends on mtools (or else needs to be
> slightly patched to produce a nice error message in case
> mtools is not installed).
I am confused. If we merely want to let our users (Owl admins) use
syslinux as an alternative to LILO, on ext4 filesystems, then should we
care about mtools (which we currently don't package)? I think not.
Or is it weird/wrong to package syslinux specifically, yet not care
about FAT?
> But the thing is: at this stage, it isn't really
> interesting to support iso9669 at all. hybrid boot
> images is what should be used - just IMHO. There,
> any filesystem may be used, without restrictions
> on filenames and symlinks, and you get usb booting
> for free too. That's probably the main reason this
> restriction does not pop up around syslinux - neither
> in the mailinglist nor in wiki nor in irc.
>
> Hybrid images may not work on some old hardware, but
> I'm not sure it is worth the effort to support or
> even use such a hardware - it is energy-inefficient
> compared with current systems. But may be working
> just fine anyway... :)
I am totally unfamiliar with hybrid images and what kind of machines do
and don't support them.
It'd be nice to support CD/DVD and USB flash sticks at once, but I
notice that major distros still provide ISOs separately - perhaps for
good reasons.
> One more note: if you want to experiment chainloading
> syslinux from windows bootloader, a small patch for
> extlinux (if that's the installer of choice) needed
> to record default boot partition properly in ldlinux.sys
> proper, or else it wont find itself from bootsec.dos
> file loaded by ntldr.
Sounds like a patch you'd want to submit upstream, if it's yours and not
yet submitted.
Thanks again,
Alexander
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