View source for Syslinux 4 Changelog

[[Category:Changelog]]
=== Status ===

<pre>
> What's the status of Syslinux 4.x (master)?
> Is it still maintained?                                                                  
> 

Critical bug fixes only.
</pre>

=== Changes in 4.07 ===

* EXTLINUX: fix crash caused by dereferencing garbage pointer.
* Plug memory leak in ''searchdir'' which eventually leads to an observable hang (Shao Miller).
* ISOLINUX: fix bug triggered by isohybrid images larger than 32K which results in an invalid image checksum error.
* menugen: make it <tt>Py3k</tt> compatible (Paulo Alcantara).

=== Changes in 4.06 ===

* Support for NTFS, by Paulo Alcantara.
* EXTLINUX: more robust device detection, allow user to override.
* kontron_wdt.c32: Add a new module to enable the hardware watchdog of some Kontron boards. It allows enabling the watchdog and then booting a given image.
* HDT updated, and now can display images regarding some detection steps. Add postexec command to run a particular entry after HDT's execution, add silent option and various fixes.
* ifcpu.c32: Detect hypervisor presence.
* lua.c32: Add dhcp support and support for native Syslinux functions syslinux_config(), syslinux_ipappend_strings() and syslinux_reboot().
* isohybrid: Workaround for various EFI systems.
* pxechn.c32, a PXE NBP chainloader.  More versatile alternative to pxechain.com and resolves the PXELINUX -> WDS issue with Microsoft Windows Server 2008R2 (Gene Cumm).
* btrfs: Fix booting off of a subvolume.
* com32: Add device tree support.
* SYSLINUX: Fix relative paths for VFAT. The CONFIG and APPEND directives now support entirely relative paths.

=== Changes in 4.05 ===

* HDT updated, and now supports uploading data to a TFTP server.
* ISOLINUX: remove the .img file support; it has been broken on virtually all systems since the beginning, and has been totally broken since 4.00 at least.  Use MEMDISK instead.
* chain.c32: Support chaining ReactOS' FreeLdr (Shao Miller)
* isohybrid: <code>-m</code> option to add support for Mac EFI booting.
* ifmemdsk.c32: Choose boot option based on presence of MEMDISK.
* Remove bogus distributed <code>mk-lba-img</code> binary.
* The Syslinux project has a new, cool logo by Abi "ixxvil" Rasheed (<code>doc/logo/*</code>).

=== Changes in 4.04 ===

* PXELINUX: Fix handling of unqualified DNS names.
* PXELINUX: Fix timer bug when PXELINUX might be unloaded (Gene Cumm).
* core/writedec.inc: Fix duplicate declaration and overflow (Gene Cumm).
* GCC 4.5 fixes.
* sample directory: Fix Makefile include (Gene Cumm).
* ver.com: New universal DOS/COMBOOT application to display version information (includes DRMK) (Gene Cumm).
* rosh.c32: updated; Using getopt() for internal commands to aid parsing options; Fix bugs in ls; add warm reboot and echo (Gene Cumm).
* com32: fix a file descriptor leak.
* gfxboot.c32: handle TEXT..ENDTEXT; error out on no LABELs found (Sebastian Herbszt).
* Fix booting on non-partitioned devices.
* MBR, isohybrid: Workaround for a BIOS issue on Acer Travelmate and possibly other machines.
* COM32: Adding ACPI parsing library
* HDT: Release 0.4.1 to support ACPI parsing, improved mutli-core/cpu reporting 
* LUA: Updating to 5.1.4-2
* SYSLINUX: core/diskstart.inc: Reset DS after checksum in case it isn't 0 (Gene Cumm).
* win64: Script update for additional mingw compiler names (Gene Cumm).
* diag: New directory for diagnostic-related tools.  Add a handoff MBR/VBR and geometry display images (Gene Cumm).
* MEMDISK: use "mem=" parameter to mark available memory above this point as reserved (core already does alignment) (Gene Cumm).
* MEMDISK: Additional disk probe checks and debug output (Shao Miller, Gene Cumm).
* gpxe: add gpxelinuxk.0, based off of undionly.kpxe + new script (Gene Cumm).
* isohybrid: install the isohdpfx*.bin/isohdppx*.bin files to make isohybrid images in one step with GNU xorriso.
* PXELINUX: disable a hack that would make localboot work on some machines, but break just about as many.  Some machines which worked with "localboot 0" in previous versions may need "localboot -1" in this one.  If you have a machine which requires "localboot -1", a copy of the dmidecode or sysdump output would be appreciated.
* Include a set of diagnostics by Gene Cumm.
* Fixes for gcc 4.6 and binutils 2.21.51.
* chain.c32: Allow "uuid" as a synonym to "guid".
* Handle directory names starting with .. for vfat and iso9660.
* New MENU HIDDENKEY command to provide a one-keystroke way to activate a boot option from a hidden menu intro screen.

=== Changes in 4.03 ===

* Don't hang if no configuration file is found.
* Better support for booting from MBRs which don't pass handover information.
* EXTLINUX: Try to be smarter about finding the partition offset.
* chain.c32: support chainloading Dell Real Mode Kernel (Gene Cumm).
* chain.c32: fix booting in CHS mode.
* rosh.c32 updated (Gene Cumm).
* Fix the <code>-s</code> option to the syslinux/extlinux installer (Arwin Vosselman).
* isohybrid: fix padding of large images (PJ Pandit).

=== Changes in 4.02 ===

* SYSLINUX: correctly handle the case where the <code>-d</code> option is specified with a non-absolute path, i.e. <code>syslinux -d syslinux</code> instead of <code>syslinux -d /syslinux</code>.
* ISOLINUX: recognize the directory names <tt>/boot/syslinux</tt> and <tt>/syslinux</tt>, and the filename <tt>syslinux.cfg</tt> in addition to the isolinux-specific names.  Thus, <tt>syslinux.cfg</tt> is now a generic name, whereas <tt>isolinux.cfg</tt> or <tt>extlinux.conf</tt> is specific to different derivatives.
* chain.c32: support setting alternate config filename for stage2 of GRUB Legacy (Gert Hulselmans).
* whichsys.c32: execute a specific command, based on the Syslinux bootloader variant (Gert Hulselmans).
* lua.c32: a lot of new bindings added to the "syslinux" namespace: VESA, PCI, DMI, kernel loading (Marcel Ritter).
* btrfs: print a comprehensive error message if compressed or encrypted files are encountered (neither is currently supported.)
* SYSLINUX: mtools installer: honor <code>TMPDIR</code>, error out on disk full.
* Handle fallbacks from EDD to CHS, to deal with systems which announce EDD support but don't actually have it.
* SYSLINUX: the mtools, DOS and win32 installers now use the new command line options.
* PXELINUX: fix the use of IP addresses in TFTP <code>::</code> or <code>tftp://</code> host syntax.
* SYSLINUX: experimental Win64 installer (<tt>syslinux64.exe</tt>).

=== Changes in 4.01 ===

* ISOLINUX: fix initialization on systems which don't zero low memory.
* SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: fix handing of disk read retries in EDD mode.
* ISOLINUX: change the initialization sequence to avoid problems with certain (old) BIOSes.  Special thanks to Helmut Hullen for invaluable debugging support.
* ifplop.c32: new module which detects if the [http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html PLoP Boot Manager] already has booted a CDROM or USB drive (Gert Hulselmans).
* Correct a severe memory overwrite bug, triggered primarily when selecting a very long command line in the menu system.
* lua.c32: Lua script interpreter, currently experimental.
* PXELINUX: new option IPAPPEND 4 to append the system UUID to the kernel command line.
* PXELINUX: display BOOTIF and SYSUUID at startup time, and when Ctrl-N is pressed on the command line.

=== Changes in 4.00 ===

* Major code base changes; all filesystem rewritten in C.  This work was done primarily by Liu Aleaxander (Yuanhan Liu).
* EXTLINUX: btrfs and ext4 support.  btrfs support was done by Alek Du of Intel.
* EXTLINUX is no longer a separate derivative; <tt>extlinux</tt> and <tt>syslinux</tt> both install the same loader (<tt>ldlinux.sys</tt>); for the Linux-based installers the <tt>extlinux</tt> binary is used for a mounted filesystem; the <tt>syslinux</tt> binary for an unmounted filesystem.
* When loading a new configuration file with the <code>CONFIG</code> command, one can now also specify a new current directory with an <code>APPEND</code> statement.
* Full ADV support for Syslinux, so boot-once and <code>MENU SAVE</code> works.
* Full support of GPT-partitioned disks, including disks and/or parititions larger than 2 TiB (if supported by BIOS.)
* The GPT handover protocol adjusted to the current T13 committee draft; see <tt>doc/gpt.txt</tt>.
* HDT: code cleanup, small bugfixes
* The "linux" syslinux installer (<tt>syslinux-nomtools</tt>) now has a command-line syntax closer to the <tt>extlinux</tt> installer.  The mtools, dos and win32 installers will get this new syntax eventually, but it is not implemented yet.
* chain.c32: support booting GPT partitions by index, GUID, label.
* chain.c32: support booting the Syslinux partition with "fs".
* chain.c32: implement gpt.txt hand-over protocol.
* chain.c32: support for chainloading Grub stage 2.
* PXELINUX: TFTP URL syntax (<code>tftp://</code>) supported even when not running gPXE/gpxelinux.
* New ls.c32 module to display the contents of the disk from the command line, and pwd.c32 to display the current directory.
* rosh.c32 (read only shell) updated and hopefully usable.
* PXELINUX: Support "localboot -1", just like the other derivatives.
* gfxboot.com removed in favor of gfxboot.c32.
* New MENU HELP statement to display fullscreen help text as a result of a menu selection.
* <tt>memdiskfind</tt> utility that can be used with the phram driver in the Linux kernel to mount a memdisk.
* ifcpu.c32: Adding usage when no parameters are given, adding PAE support.
* ifcpu.c32, ifcpu64.c32: handle more than one argument per target.
* isohybrid: C version which does not require Perl.
* New command <code>MENU IMMEDIATE</code> to permit hotkeys to activate immediately without needing Enter.
* mdiskchk.com supports a <code>--no-sequential</code> (or <code>-n</code>) option to suppress the classic all-drive-probing heuristic.  Useful on BIOSes who crash/hang when certain drive numbers are probed.
* ElTorito.Sys DOS driver now scans drive numbers upwards instead of downwards, in order to avoid a fairly common bug on some BIOSes where probing drive 0xFF causes a failure.