There are two menu systems included with Syslinux, the advanced menu
system, and the simple menu system.
+++ THE ADVANCED MENU SYSTEM +++
The advanced menu system, written by Murali Krishnan Ganapathy, is
located in the menu/ subdirectly. It allows the user to create
hierarchial submenus, dynamic options, checkboxes, and just about
anything you want. It requires that the menu is compiled from a
simple C file, see menu/simple.c and menu/complex.c for examples.
The advanced menu system doesn't support serial console at this time.
See menu/README for more information.
+++ THE SIMPLE MENU SYSTEM +++
The simple menu system is a single module located at
com32/menu/vesamenu.c32 (graphical) or com32/menu/menu.c32 (text
mode only). It uses the same configuration file as the regular
Syslinux command line, and displays all the LABEL statements.
To use the menu system, simply make sure [vesa]menu.c32 is in the
appropriate location for your boot medium (the same directory as the
configuration file for SYSLINUX, EXTLINUX and ISOLINUX, and the same
directory as pxelinux.0 for PXELINUX), and put the following options
in your configuration file:
UI menu.c32
There are a few menu additions to the configuration file, all starting
with the keywords MENU or TEXT; like the rest of the Syslinux config
file language, it is case insensitive:
MENU TITLE title
Give the menu a title. The title is presented at the top of
the menu.
MENU HIDDEN
Do not display the actual menu unless the user presses a key.
All that is displayed is a timeout message.
MENU HIDDENKEY key[,key...] command...
If they key used to interrupt MENU HIDDEN is <key>, then
execute the specified command instead of displaying the menu.
Currently, the following key names are recognized:
Backspace, Tab, Enter, Esc, Space, F1..F12, Up, Down, Left,
Right, PgUp, PgDn, Home, End, Insert, Delete
... in addition to all single characters plus the syntax ^X
for Ctrl-X. Note that single characters are treated as case
sensitive, so a different command can be bound to "A" than
"a". One can bind the same command to multiple keys by giving
a comma-separated list of keys:
menu hiddenkey A,a key_a_command
MENU CLEAR
Clear the screen when exiting the menu, instead of leaving the
menu displayed. For vesamenu, this means the graphical
background is still displayed without the menu itself for as
long as the screen remains in graphics mode.
MENU SHIFTKEY
Exit the menu system immediately unless either the Shift or Alt
key is pressed, or Caps Lock or Scroll Lock is set.
MENU SEPARATOR
Insert an empty line in the menu.
MENU LABEL label
(Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
Changes the label displayed for a specific entry. This allows
you to have a label that isn't suitable for the command line,
for example:
# Soft Cap Linux
LABEL softcap
MENU LABEL Soft Cap ^Linux 9.6.36
KERNEL softcap-9.6.36.bzi
APPEND whatever
# A very dense operating system
LABEL brick
MENU LABEL ^Windows CE/ME/NT
KERNEL chain.c32
APPEND hd0 2
The ^ symbol in a MENU LABEL statement defines a hotkey.
The hotkey will be highlighted in the menu and will move the
menu cursor immediately to that entry.
Reusing hotkeys is disallowed, subsequent entries will not be
highlighted, and will not work.
Keep in mind that the LABELs, not MENU LABELs, must be unique,
or odd things will happen to the command-line.
MENU INDENT count
(Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
Will add "count" spaces in front of the displayed menu entry.
MENU DISABLE
(Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
Makes the entry unselectable. This allows you to make a
section in your menu with different options below it.
for example:
# Entries for network boots
LABEL -
MENU LABEL Network:
MENU DISABLE
# Soft Cap Linux
LABEL softcap
MENU LABEL Soft Cap ^Linux 9.6.36
MENU INDENT 1
KERNEL softcap-9.6.36.bzi
APPEND whatever
# Dos 6.22
LABEL dos
MENU LABEL ^Dos 6.22
MENU INDENT 1
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=dos622.imz
# Separator
MENU SEPARATOR
# Entries for local boots
LABEL -
MENU LABEL Local:
MENU DISABLE
# Windows 2000
LABEL w2k
MENU LABEL ^Windows 2000
MENU INDENT 1
KERNEL chain.c32
APPEND hd0 1
# Windows XP
LABEL xp
MENU LABEL Windows ^XP
MENU INDENT 1
KERNEL chain.c32
APPEND hd0 2
MENU HIDE
(Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
Suppresses a particular LABEL entry from the menu.
MENU DEFAULT
(Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
Indicates that this entry should be the default for this
particular submenu. See also the DEFAULT directive below.
TEXT HELP
Help text ...
... which can span multiple lines
ENDTEXT
(Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
Specifies a help text that should be displayed when a particular
selection is highlighted.
MENU PASSWD passwd
(Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
Sets a password on this menu entry. "passwd" can be either a
cleartext password or a password encrypted with one of the
following algorithms:
MD5 (Signature: $1$)
SHA-1 (Signature: $4$)
SHA-2-256 (Signature: $5$)
SHA-2-512 (Signature: $6$)
Use the included Perl scripts "sha1pass" or "md5pass" to
encrypt passwords. MD5 passwords are compatible with most
Unix password file utilities; SHA-1 passwords are probably
unique to Syslinux; SHA-2 passwords are compatible with very
recent Linux distributions. Obviously, if you don't encrypt
your passwords they will not be very secure at all.
If you are using passwords, you want to make sure you also use
the settings "NOESCAPE 1", "PROMPT 0", and either set
"ALLOWOPTIONS 0" or use a master password (see below.)
If passwd is an empty string, this menu entry can only be
unlocked with the master password.
MENU MASTER PASSWD passwd
Sets a master password. This password can be used to boot any
menu entry, and is required for the [Tab] and [Esc] keys to
work.
MENU RESOLUTION height width
Requests a specific screen resolution when in graphics mode.
The default is "640 480" corresponding to a resolution of
640x480 pixels, which all VGA-compatible monitors should be
able to display.
If the selected resolution is unavailable, the text mode menu
is displayed instead.
MENU BACKGROUND background
For vesamenu.c32, sets the background image. The background
can either be a color (see MENU COLOR) or the name of an image
file, which should be the size of the screen (normally 640x480
pixels, but see MENU RESOLUTION) and either in PNG, JPEG or
LSS16 format.
MENU BEGIN [tagname]
MENU END
Begin/end a submenu. The entries between MENU BEGIN and MENU
END form a submenu, which is marked with a > mark on the right
hand of the screen. Submenus inherit the properties of their
parent menus, but can override them, and can thus have their
own backgrounds, master passwords, titles, timeouts, messages
and so forth.
MENU GOTO tagname
(Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
This label will transfer to the named submenu instead of
booting anything. To transfer to the top-level menu, specify
"menu goto .top".
MENU EXIT [tagname]
(Only valid after a label statement inside MENU BEGIN ...
MENU END)
Exit to the next higher menu, or, if tagname is specified, to
the named menu.
MENU QUIT
(Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
This label quits the menu system.
WARNING: if MENU MASTER PASSWD or ALLOWOPTIONS 0 is set, this
will still allow exiting to the CLI; however, a separate MENU
PASSWD can of course be set for this label.
MENU START
(Only valid inside MENU BEGIN ... MENU END)
Indicates that the menu system should start at the menu being
defined instead of at the top-level menu. See also the
DEFAULT directive below.
DEFAULT label
Set the global default. If "label" points into a submenu,
that menu becomes the start menu; in other words, this
directive has the same effect as both MENU DEFAULT and MENU
START.
For backwards compatibility with earlier versions of Syslinux,
this directive is ignored unless the configuration file also
contains a UI directive.
Note: the CLI accepts options after the label, or even a
non-label. The menu system does not support that.
MENU SAVE
MENU NOSAVE
Remember the last entry selected and make that the default for
the next boot. A password-protected menu entry is *not*
saved. This requires the ADV data storage mechanism, which is
currently only implemented for EXTLINUX, although the other
Syslinux derivatives will accept the command (and ignore it.)
NOTE: MENU SAVE stores the LABEL tag of the selected entry;
this mechanism therefore relies on LABEL tags being unique.
On the other hand, it handles changes in the configuration
file gracefully.
NOTE: In software RAID-1 setups MENU SAVE only stores the
default label on the actual boot disk. This may lead to
inconsistent reads from the array, or unexpectedly change the
default label after array resynchronization or disk failure.
The MENU SAVE information can be fully cleared with
"extlinux --reset-adv <bootdir>".
A MENU SAVE or MENU NOSAVE at the top of a (sub)menu affects
all entries underneath that (sub)menu except those that in
turn have MENU SAVE or MENU NOSAVE declared. This can be used
to only save certain entires when selected.
INCLUDE filename [tagname]
MENU INCLUDE filename [tagname]
Include the contents of the configuration file filename at
this point.
In the case of MENU INCLUDE, the included data is only seen by
the menu system; the core syslinux code does not parse this
command, so any labels defined in it are unavailable.
If a tagname is included, the whole file is considered to have
been bracketed with a MENU BEGIN tagname ... MENU END pair,
and will therefore show up as a submenu.
MENU AUTOBOOT message
Replaces the message "Automatic boot in # second{,s}...". The
symbol # is replaced with the number of seconds remaining.
The syntax "{singular,[dual,]plural}" can be used to conjugate
appropriately.
MENU TABMSG message
Replaces the message "Press [Tab] to edit options".
MENU NOTABMSG message
Takes the place of the TABMSG message if option editing is
disabled. Defaults to blank.
MENU PASSPROMPT message
Replaces the message "Password required".
MENU COLOR element ansi foreground background shadow
Sets the color of element "element" to the specified color
sequence:
screen Rest of the screen
border Border area
title Title bar
unsel Unselected menu item
hotkey Unselected hotkey
sel Selection bar
hotsel Selected hotkey
disabled Disabled menu item
scrollbar Scroll bar
tabmsg Press [Tab] message
cmdmark Command line marker
cmdline Command line
pwdborder Password box border
pwdheader Password box header
pwdentry Password box contents
timeout_msg Timeout message
timeout Timeout counter
help Help text
msgXX Message (F-key) file attribute XX
... where XX is two hexadecimal digits (the "plain text" is 07).
"ansi" is a sequence of semicolon-separated ECMA-48 Set
Graphics Rendition (<ESC>[m) sequences:
0 reset all attributes to their defaults
1 set bold
4 set underscore (simulated with color on a color display)
5 set blink
7 set reverse video
22 set normal intensity
24 underline off
25 blink off
27 reverse video off
30 set black foreground
31 set red foreground
32 set green foreground
33 set brown foreground
34 set blue foreground
35 set magenta foreground
36 set cyan foreground
37 set white foreground
38 set underscore on, set default foreground color
39 set underscore off, set default foreground color
40 set black background
41 set red background
42 set green background
43 set brown background
44 set blue background
45 set magenta background
46 set cyan background
47 set white background
49 set default background color
These are used (a) in text mode, and (b) on the serial
console.
"foreground" and "background" are color codes in #AARRGGBB
notation, where AA RR GG BB are hexadecimal digits for alpha
(opacity), red, green and blue, respectively. #00000000
represents fully transparent, and #ffffffff represents opaque
white.
"shadow" controls the handling of the graphical console text
shadow. Permitted values are "none" (no shadowing), "std" or
"standard" (standard shadowing - foreground pixels are
raised), "all" (both background and foreground raised), and
"rev" or "reverse" (background pixels are raised.)
If any field is set to "*" or omitted (at the end of the line)
then that field is left unchanged.
The current defaults are:
menu color screen 37;40 #80ffffff #00000000 std
menu color border 30;44 #40000000 #00000000 std
menu color title 1;36;44 #c00090f0 #00000000 std
menu color unsel 37;44 #90ffffff #00000000 std
menu color hotkey 1;37;44 #ffffffff #00000000 std
menu color sel 7;37;40 #e0000000 #20ff8000 all
menu color hotsel 1;7;37;40 #e0400000 #20ff8000 all
menu color disabled 1;30;44 #60cccccc #00000000 std
menu color scrollbar 30;44 #40000000 #00000000 std
menu color tabmsg 31;40 #90ffff00 #00000000 std
menu color cmdmark 1;36;40 #c000ffff #00000000 std
menu color cmdline 37;40 #c0ffffff #00000000 std
menu color pwdborder 30;47 #80ffffff #20ffffff std
menu color pwdheader 31;47 #80ff8080 #20ffffff std
menu color pwdentry 30;47 #80ffffff #20ffffff std
menu color timeout_msg 37;40 #80ffffff #00000000 std
menu color timeout 1;37;40 #c0ffffff #00000000 std
menu color help 37;40 #c0ffffff #00000000 std
menu color msg07 37;40 #90ffffff #00000000 std
MENU MSGCOLOR fg_filter bg_filter shadow
Sets *all* the msgXX colors to a color scheme derived from the
fg_filter and bg_filter values. Background color zero is
always treated as transparent. The default corresponds to:
menu msgcolor #90ffffff #80ffffff std
This directive should come before any directive that
customizes individual msgXX colors.
MENU WIDTH 80
MENU MARGIN 10
MENU PASSWORDMARGIN 3
MENU ROWS 12
MENU TABMSGROW 18
MENU CMDLINEROW 18
MENU ENDROW -1
MENU PASSWORDROW 11
MENU TIMEOUTROW 20
MENU HELPMSGROW 22
MENU HELPMSGENDROW -1
MENU HIDDENROW -2
MENU HSHIFT 0
MENU VSHIFT 0
These options control the layout of the menu on the screen.
The values above are the defaults.
A negative value is relative to the calculated length of the
screen (25 for text mode, 28 for VESA graphics mode.)
F1 textfile [background]
...
F12 textfile [background]
Displays full-screen help (also available at the command line.)
The same control code sequences as in the command line
interface are supported, although some are ignored.
Additionally, a optional second argument allows a different
background image (see MENU BACKGROUND for supported formats)
to be displayed.
MENU HELP textfile [background]
Creates a menu entry which, when selected, displays
full-screen help in the same way as the F-key help.
The menu system honours the TIMEOUT command; if TIMEOUT is specified
it will execute the ONTIMEOUT command if one exists, otherwise it will
pick the default menu option. WARNING: the timeout action will bypass
password protection even if one is set for the specified or default
entry!
Normally, the user can press [Tab] to edit the menu entry, and [Esc]
to return to the Syslinux command line. However, if the configuration
file specifies ALLOWOPTIONS 0, these keys will be disabled, and if
MENU MASTER PASSWD is set, they require the master password.
The simple menu system supports serial console, using the normal
SERIAL directive. However, it can be quite slow over a slow serial
link; you probably want to set your baudrate to 38400 or higher if
possible. It requires a Linux/VT220/ANSI-compatible terminal on the
other end.
+++ USING AN ALTERNATE CONFIGURATION FILE +++
It is also possible to load a secondary configuration file, to get to
another menu. To do that, invoke menu.c32 with the name of the
secondary configuration file.
LABEL othermenu
MENU LABEL Another Menu
KERNEL menu.c32
APPEND othermenu.conf
If you specify more than one file, they will all be read, in the order
specified. The dummy filename ~ (tilde) is replaced with the filename
of the main configuration file.
# The file graphics.conf contains common color and layout commands for
# all menus.
LABEL othermenu
MENU LABEL Another Menu
KERNEL vesamenu.c32
APPEND graphics.conf othermenu.conf
# Return to the main menu
LABEL mainmenu
MENU LABEL Return to Main Menu
KERNEL vesamenu.c32
APPEND graphics.conf ~
See also the MENU INCLUDE directive above.