[noob] assumptions when updating syslinux (the suite)

Greetings,
Since the Wiki is down, I'm hoping you can confirm some assumptions I'm making.

I've been using Syslinux 3.86 happily for a year or so, and am comfortable installing the bootloader. However, this is the first time that I've actually updated a system's version of the Syslinux suite of apps on Linux (Ubuntu 10.04), to Syslinux ver 4.04.

I cd into the Syslinux distro subdir, and then run
% make local-install

which installs /usr/share/syslinux, /usr/bin/syslinux, and /sbin/extilnux, so I can then run
% rm -rf /usr/lib/syslinux
% rm /usr/bin/extlinux

Is there any other cleanup that I should be doing at this point?

Also, to set up a device for installing the bootloader, I am copying the entire /usr/share/syslinux tree to the device's /boot/syslinux subdir. Is this all necessary, or should/could I be excluding some stuff.
Thanks,

FYI: I tried installing 4.05 this morning, but the 'make local-install' won't complete. Here's a log file with the errors. My environment's changed, so just to make sure it's not my system, I reran a clean 'make local-install' for 4.04, and that still works fine. Here's the log file for that to compare.

Use the "wayback" machine to access the wiki. Not sure why it is taking so long to get this back on line somewhere!

http://web.archive.o...yslinux_Project

as for the other stuff, I can't help, since as a windows guy (for use of this), I just get the pre-compiled stuff.

Oh, good, thanks for that link. The binaries are already built, and included in the tar file, and I'm not trying to rebuild any of those -- just the install stuff. Wading through the Makefile, it seemed like the thing to do was 'make local-install', but in the docs you pointed me to, looks like I'm supposed to 'make installer' -- I'm certainly no Makefile expert, so not sure what the difference is.

One other thing that I hope someone can help me with. A big reason I liked Syslinux 3.86 so much was that I could stuff the two syslinux executables, a setup.bat, and a setup.sh into /boot/syslinux, package it all up in a .ZIP file, and have a very nice, portable package that would run on both Windows and Lilnux to easily configure a new Live USB memory stick. It didn't depend on, or conflict with, any Syslilnux version installed on the system where it was run.

Unfortunately, my first experience with 4.04 suggests that Syslinux now must be installed correctly in /usr/share/syslinux or things don't work. Is there some environment variable I can set, or some other trick to let syslinux find its components in a non-standard location? Otherwise this is a show stopper for me. I get odd results when attempting to run syslinux from the /boot/syslinux subdir. The 'ldlinux.sys' file is created, but I get a strange message, and a mount point is left dangling:

> cd /media/LIVEUSB/

> sudo ./syslinux -d /boot/syslinux /dev/sdb1

./syslinux: no previous syslinux boot sector found



/dev/sdb1			  3937648   3290764	646884  84% /media/LIVEUSB

/dev/sdb1			  3937648   3290764	646884  84% /tmp/syslinux.mnt.3901.0



> ls -l /media/LIVEUSB/boot/syslinux/ldlinux.sys

-rwxr-xr-x 1 custom custom 32256 2011-12-10 15:30 /media/LIVEUSB/boot/syslinux/ldlinux.sys*

Thank you,

Edited by c.cobb, 10 December 2011 - 10:35 PM.

Your install commando is wrong.

You can install SYSLINUX in different ways.

Personally I use the extlinux installer, which works on a directory path:

sudo ./extlinux/extlinux --install /media/LIVEUSB/boot/syslinux

The syslinux installer command must be executed after /dev/sdb1 is unmounted:

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

sudo /syslinux/syslinux --install -d /boot/syslinux /dev/sdb1

Okay, but that's for ext{234} file systems, no? The example was for FAT32.

Either way, can you answer my questions?

. Is it possible to run Syslinux 4.04 commands from a non-standard location when maybe a different version is installed on a Linux system and, if so, how?

. Is there a subset of stuff from /usr/share/syslinux that needs to be copied to /boot/syslinux and, if so, what?

Thank you,

Okay, but that's for ext{234} file systems, no? The example was for FAT32.

It works for FAT12/16/32, ext2/3/, brtfs (and in the future for NTFS) in Syslinux 4.xx.

Is it possible to run Syslinux 4.04 commands from a non-standard location when maybe a different version is installed on a Linux system and, if so, how?

Yes, I always do that.

Is there a subset of stuff from /usr/share/syslinux that needs to be copied to /boot/syslinux and, if so, what?

I never use the version of Syslinux, installed by the distro, but always use the last Syslinux version.
Running the installer should be enough, if you don't need (vesa)menu.c32 or other com32 modules or MEMDISK.