Booting with syslinux - where's TheFullManual?

[reticent]

Where can I find documentation on booting Mageia with the syslinux bootloader?
I've used syslinux before; please don't refer me to generic syslinux docs.

[doktor5000]

Please provide some more information, e.g. where is syslinux installed, where is Mageia installed and so on.
And also why you want to use syslinux. Extensive documentation is available at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Syslinux

[reticent]

Extensive documentation is available at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Syslinux

Nothing there about Mageia. Why are you avoiding answering the question?

[doktor5000]

You could just take a look at the bootable mageia media, but with that attitude you put up you lost your chances of support from me.

[reticent]

... but with that attitude you put up you lost your chances of support from me.

Sorry, but your list of questions reads like you intend to argue against using syslinux to boot Mageia. Perhaps I misunderstood your intent. I'm just looking for such documentation - if it exists.

[doktor5000]

If it would exist, don't you think i would have pointed you towards it?
As you didn't provide any context information why you want to use syslinux, can't help you further.


Only things i've found which may be remotely helpful:

http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Auto_install_methods
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Auto_instal ... bootloader
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Auto_instal ... F_isolinux
http://lordikc.free.fr/wordpress/?page_id=158

[reticent]

If it would exist, don't you think i would have pointed you towards it?

OhMyGoodness, I see what you mean: not kept up-to-date! Still, your links gave me some encouragement. Thank you. (Looks like a market opportunity for a little development?)

Currently, few here use plastic discs, as portable flash storage devices (mostly via usb) are cheap and quick.
I would like to have both 32-bit and 64-bit live systems, preferably with all available desktop environments, available from one partition on one device, in a simple tree. Editing syslinux cfg files is fairly Short & Simple, as I like to Keep It; FAT32 is a simple and portable file-system format. I usually find some boot parameters help this.

[doktor5000]

Well, then you have some alternatives. You could try to use YUMI, and play with some of the configurations it creates,
or use grub4dos - maybe use Hiren's BootCD setup as an example (i've done this before to add some custom diskette/cd images to Hiren, and used it from a flash drive)
and you can also use grub directly for that IIRC - you just need to extract the iso images, and reference the kernel/initrd directly.

Hence my question at the beginning, why do you want to use syslinux, and what's the intended use case.

[reticent]

YUMI lists Mandriva 2011, no Mageia. I'll try that first: format, download+unpack, tweak cfg's, use syslinux.
Oh, it's Windows-only. I have an XP-boot around here somewhere. Haven't learned to use Wine/PlayOn/... yet.
(I used to use MultiBootISOs, which used grub4dOS; IIRC loading an ISO increased minimum RAM.)
I may eventually learn to use grub2; it's seemed too fancy for me ... so far.
(Oh, I recently ran across http://live.learnfree.eu/ ... (Bulgarian?) ... doesn't look aggressively up-to-date ... and I suspect it only uses dd for some distros. But it does list Mageia 1 and Mandriva 2010.)

Thanks!