EDIT: Just adding my two more cents after this question becomes a "popular" one. I had been a great fan of grub
because it was able to boot everything that I used. However, when grub2
came, I really don't like it because it is
- humongous itself
- leave loads of junks at my
/boot
folder that 99.9% are useless to me - the "enhanced" syntax is over complicated to me
- try booting UEFI using
grub2
is really a ROYAL PITA - I was able to use
grub
as my CD boot loader, but I don't know ifgrub2
can do that or not -- I don't care any more, because I found a better alternative.
The syslinux ecosystem (including extlinux) are now booting everything that I use, CD/DVD, FAT, Ext2/3/4, and even Btrfs. Moreover, it handles MBR/PBR relay or GPT without a hitch. It's small, to the point, and maintain a universal syntax across the board. The extlinux (syslinux) is currently my chosen solution to boot anything I use.
Now back to OP.
Anyone knows how to properly boot Linux with extlinux
?
I've exhausted my google search but still unable to figure out what's the proper way to setup extlinux
to boot Linux. All hits that I found talk about editing the/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf
file directly. However, there is a big warning inside it that discourages me doing so:
## /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf
##
## IMPORTANT WARNING
##
## The configuration of this file is generated automatically.
## Do not edit this file manually, use: extlinux-update
default l0
prompt 1
timeout 50
include themes/debian/theme.cfg
I've run extlinux-update
or extlinux -update
in all sorts of ways a gazillion time but the file still remains the same. The problem is, this file won't boot anything!
If I edit it myself, and run extlinux-update
again, then BOOM, it gets back to the above boot-nothing version again.
Anyone knows how to properly setup extlinux under Ubuntu to boot it (without directly editing extlinux.conf)?
This is the extlinux from latest Ubuntu Trusty BTW:
% apt-cache policy extlinux
extlinux:
Installed: 3:4.05+dfsg-6+deb8u1
Candidate: 3:4.05+dfsg-6+deb8u1
Version table:
*** 3:4.05+dfsg-6+deb8u1 0
500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/universe amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
extlinux.conf
file directly", which doesn't help much for my situation.