1 There are two menu systems included with Syslinux, the advanced menu
2 system, and the simple menu system.
5 +++ THE ADVANCED MENU SYSTEM +++
7 The advanced menu system, written by Murali Krishnan Ganapathy, is
8 located in the menu/ subdirectly. It allows the user to create
9 hierarchial submenus, dynamic options, checkboxes, and just about
10 anything you want. It requires that the menu is compiled from a
11 simple C file, see menu/simple.c and menu/complex.c for examples.
13 The advanced menu system doesn't support serial console at this time.
15 See menu/README for more information.
18 +++ THE SIMPLE MENU SYSTEM +++
20 The simple menu system is a single module located at
21 com32/modules/vesamenu.c32 (graphical) or com32/modules/menu.c32 (text
22 mode only). It uses the same configuration file as the regular
23 Syslinux command line, and displays all the LABEL statements.
25 To use the menu system, simply make sure [vesa]menu.c32 is in the
26 appropriate location for your boot medium (the same directory as the
27 configuration file for SYSLINUX, EXTLINUX and ISOLINUX, and the same
28 directory as pxelinux.0 for PXELINUX), and put the following options
29 in your configuration file:
34 There are a few menu additions to the configuration file, all starting
35 with the keywords MENU or TEXT; like the rest of the Syslinux config
36 file language, it is case insensitive:
41 Give the menu a title. The title is presented at the top of
47 Do not display the actual menu unless the user presses a key.
48 All that is displayed is a timeout message.
53 Clear the screen when exiting the menu, instead of leaving the
54 menu displayed. For vesamenu, this means the graphical
55 background is still displayed without the menu itself for as
56 long as the screen remains in graphics mode.
61 Exit the menu system immediately unless either the Shift or Alt
62 key is pressed, or Caps Lock or Scroll Lock is set.
67 Insert an empty line in the menu.
72 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
73 Changes the label displayed for a specific entry. This allows
74 you to have a label that isn't suitable for the command line,
79 MENU LABEL Soft Cap ^Linux 9.6.36
80 KERNEL softcap-9.6.36.bzi
83 # A very dense operating system
85 MENU LABEL ^Windows CE/ME/NT
89 The ^ symbol in a MENU LABEL statement defines a hotkey.
90 The hotkey will be highlighted in the menu and will move the
91 menu cursor immediately to that entry.
93 Reusing hotkeys is disallowed, subsequent entries will not be
94 highlighted, and will not work.
96 Keep in mind that the LABELs, not MENU LABELs, must be unique,
97 or odd things will happen to the command-line.
102 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
103 Will add "count" spaces in front of the displayed menu entry.
108 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
109 Makes the entry unselectable. This allows you to make a
110 section in your menu with different options below it.
113 # Entries for network boots
120 MENU LABEL Soft Cap ^Linux 9.6.36
122 KERNEL softcap-9.6.36.bzi
130 APPEND initrd=dos622.imz
135 # Entries for local boots
142 MENU LABEL ^Windows 2000
149 MENU LABEL Windows ^XP
156 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
157 Suppresses a particular LABEL entry from the menu.
162 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
164 Indicates that this entry should be the default for this
165 particular submenu. See also the DEFAULT directive below.
170 ... which can span multiple lines
173 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
175 Specifies a help text that should be displayed when a particular
176 selection is highlighted.
181 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
183 Sets a password on this menu entry. "passwd" can be either a
184 cleartext password or a password encrypted with one of the
185 following algorithms:
188 SHA-1 (Signature: $4$)
189 SHA-2-256 (Signature: $5$)
190 SHA-2-512 (Signature: $6$)
192 Use the included Perl scripts "sha1pass" or "md5pass" to
193 encrypt passwords. MD5 passwords are compatible with most
194 Unix password file utilities; SHA-1 passwords are probably
195 unique to Syslinux; SHA-2 passwords are compatible with very
196 recent Linux distributions. Obviously, if you don't encrypt
197 your passwords they will not be very secure at all.
199 If you are using passwords, you want to make sure you also use
200 the settings "NOESCAPE 1", "PROMPT 0", and either set
201 "ALLOWOPTIONS 0" or use a master password (see below.)
203 If passwd is an empty string, this menu entry can only be
204 unlocked with the master password.
207 MENU MASTER PASSWD passwd
209 Sets a master password. This password can be used to boot any
210 menu entry, and is required for the [Tab] and [Esc] keys to
214 MENU RESOLUTION height width
216 Requests a specific screen resolution when in graphics mode.
217 The default is "640 480" corresponding to a resolution of
218 640x480 pixels, which all VGA-compatible monitors should be
221 If the selected resolution is unavailable, the text mode menu
222 is displayed instead.
225 MENU BACKGROUND background
227 For vesamenu.c32, sets the background image. The background
228 can either be a color (see MENU COLOR) or the name of an image
229 file, which should be the size of the screen (normally 640x480
230 pixels, but see MENU RESOLUTION) and either in PNG, JPEG or
237 Begin/end a submenu. The entries between MENU BEGIN and MENU
238 END form a submenu, which is marked with a > mark on the right
239 hand of the screen. Submenus inherit the properties of their
240 parent menus, but can override them, and can thus have their
241 own backgrounds, master passwords, titles, timeouts, messages
247 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
249 This label will transfer to the named submenu instead of
250 booting anything. To transfer to the top-level menu, specify
256 (Only valid after a label statement inside MENU BEGIN ...
259 Exit to the next higher menu, or, if tagname is specified, to
265 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
267 This label quits the menu system.
269 WARNING: if MENU MASTER PASSWD or ALLOWOPTIONS 0 is set, this
270 will still allow exiting to the CLI; however, a separate MENU
271 PASSWD can of course be set for this label.
276 (Only valid inside MENU BEGIN ... MENU END)
278 Indicates that the menu system should start at the menu being
279 defined instead of at the top-level menu. See also the
280 DEFAULT directive below.
285 Set the global default. If "label" points into a submenu,
286 that menu becomes the start menu; in other words, this
287 directive has the same effect as both MENU DEFAULT and MENU
290 For backwards compatibility with earlier versions of Syslinux,
291 this directive is ignored unless the configuration file also
292 contains a UI directive.
294 Note: the CLI accepts options after the label, or even a
295 non-label. The menu system does not support that.
301 Remember the last entry selected and make that the default for
302 the next boot. A password-protected menu entry is *not*
303 saved. This requires the ADV data storage mechanism, which is
304 currently only implemented for EXTLINUX, although the other
305 Syslinux derivatives will accept the command (and ignore it.)
307 NOTE: MENU SAVE stores the LABEL tag of the selected entry;
308 this mechanism therefore relies on LABEL tags being unique.
309 On the other hand, it handles changes in the configuration
312 The MENU SAVE information can be cleared with
313 "extlinux --reset-adv <bootdir>".
315 A MENU SAVE or MENU NOSAVE at the top of a (sub)menu affects
316 all entries underneath that (sub)menu except those that in
317 turn have MENU SAVE or MENU NOSAVE declared. This can be used
318 to only save certain entires when selected.
321 INCLUDE filename [tagname]
322 MENU INCLUDE filename [tagname]
324 Include the contents of the configuration file filename at
327 In the case of MENU INCLUDE, the included data is only seen by
328 the menu system; the core syslinux code does not parse this
329 command, so any labels defined in it are unavailable.
331 If a tagname is included, the whole file is considered to have
332 been bracketed with a MENU BEGIN tagname ... MENU END pair,
333 and will therefore show up as a submenu.
336 MENU AUTOBOOT message
338 Replaces the message "Automatic boot in # second{,s}...". The
339 symbol # is replaced with the number of seconds remaining.
340 The syntax "{singular,[dual,]plural}" can be used to conjugate
346 Replaces the message "Press [Tab] to edit options".
349 MENU NOTABMSG message
351 Takes the place of the TABMSG message if option editing is
352 disabled. Defaults to blank.
355 MENU PASSPROMPT message
357 Replaces the message "Password required".
360 MENU COLOR element ansi foreground background shadow
362 Sets the color of element "element" to the specified color
365 screen Rest of the screen
368 unsel Unselected menu item
369 hotkey Unselected hotkey
371 hotsel Selected hotkey
372 disabled Disabled menu item
374 tabmsg Press [Tab] message
375 cmdmark Command line marker
377 pwdborder Password box border
378 pwdheader Password box header
379 pwdentry Password box contents
380 timeout_msg Timeout message
381 timeout Timeout counter
383 msgXX Message (F-key) file attribute XX
385 ... where XX is two hexadecimal digits (the "plain text" is 07).
387 "ansi" is a sequence of semicolon-separated ECMA-48 Set
388 Graphics Rendition (<ESC>[m) sequences:
390 0 reset all attributes to their defaults
392 4 set underscore (simulated with color on a color display)
395 22 set normal intensity
399 30 set black foreground
400 31 set red foreground
401 32 set green foreground
402 33 set brown foreground
403 34 set blue foreground
404 35 set magenta foreground
405 36 set cyan foreground
406 37 set white foreground
407 38 set underscore on, set default foreground color
408 39 set underscore off, set default foreground color
409 40 set black background
410 41 set red background
411 42 set green background
412 43 set brown background
413 44 set blue background
414 45 set magenta background
415 46 set cyan background
416 47 set white background
417 49 set default background color
419 These are used (a) in text mode, and (b) on the serial
422 "foreground" and "background" are color codes in #AARRGGBB
423 notation, where AA RR GG BB are hexadecimal digits for alpha
424 (opacity), red, green and blue, respectively. #00000000
425 represents fully transparent, and #ffffffff represents opaque
428 "shadow" controls the handling of the graphical console text
429 shadow. Permitted values are "none" (no shadowing), "std" or
430 "standard" (standard shadowing - foreground pixels are
431 raised), "all" (both background and foreground raised), and
432 "rev" or "reverse" (background pixels are raised.)
434 If any field is set to "*" or omitted (at the end of the line)
435 then that field is left unchanged.
438 The current defaults are:
440 menu color screen 37;40 #80ffffff #00000000 std
441 menu color border 30;44 #40000000 #00000000 std
442 menu color title 1;36;44 #c00090f0 #00000000 std
443 menu color unsel 37;44 #90ffffff #00000000 std
444 menu color hotkey 1;37;44 #ffffffff #00000000 std
445 menu color sel 7;37;40 #e0000000 #20ff8000 all
446 menu color hotsel 1;7;37;40 #e0400000 #20ff8000 all
447 menu color disabled 1;30;44 #60cccccc #00000000 std
448 menu color scrollbar 30;44 #40000000 #00000000 std
449 menu color tabmsg 31;40 #90ffff00 #00000000 std
450 menu color cmdmark 1;36;40 #c000ffff #00000000 std
451 menu color cmdline 37;40 #c0ffffff #00000000 std
452 menu color pwdborder 30;47 #80ffffff #20ffffff std
453 menu color pwdheader 31;47 #80ff8080 #20ffffff std
454 menu color pwdentry 30;47 #80ffffff #20ffffff std
455 menu color timeout_msg 37;40 #80ffffff #00000000 std
456 menu color timeout 1;37;40 #c0ffffff #00000000 std
457 menu color help 37;40 #c0ffffff #00000000 std
458 menu color msg07 37;40 #90ffffff #00000000 std
461 MENU MSGCOLOR fg_filter bg_filter shadow
463 Sets *all* the msgXX colors to a color scheme derived from the
464 fg_filter and bg_filter values. Background color zero is
465 always treated as transparent. The default corresponds to:
467 menu msgcolor #90ffffff #80ffffff std
469 This directive should come before any directive that
470 customizes individual msgXX colors.
475 MENU PASSWORDMARGIN 3
483 MENU HELPMSGENDROW -1
488 These options control the layout of the menu on the screen.
489 The values above are the defaults.
491 A negative value is relative to the calculated length of the
492 screen (25 for text mode, 28 for VESA graphics mode.)
495 F1 textfile background
497 F12 textfile background
499 Displays full-screen help (also available at the command line.)
500 The same control code sequences as in the command line
501 interface are supported, although some are ignored.
503 Additionally, a second argument allows a different background
504 image (see MENU BACKGROUND for supported formats) to be displayed.
507 The menu system honours the TIMEOUT command; if TIMEOUT is specified
508 it will execute the ONTIMEOUT command if one exists, otherwise it will
509 pick the default menu option. WARNING: the timeout action will bypass
510 password protection even if one is set for the specified or default
513 Normally, the user can press [Tab] to edit the menu entry, and [Esc]
514 to return to the Syslinux command line. However, if the configuration
515 file specifies ALLOWOPTIONS 0, these keys will be disabled, and if
516 MENU MASTER PASSWD is set, they require the master password.
518 The simple menu system supports serial console, using the normal
519 SERIAL directive. However, it can be quite slow over a slow serial
520 link; you probably want to set your baudrate to 38400 or higher if
521 possible. It requires a Linux/VT220/ANSI-compatible terminal on the
525 +++ USING AN ALTERNATE CONFIGURATION FILE +++
528 It is also possible to load a secondary configuration file, to get to
529 another menu. To do that, invoke menu.c32 with the name of the
530 secondary configuration file.
533 MENU LABEL Another Menu
535 APPEND othermenu.conf
537 If you specify more than one file, they will all be read, in the order
538 specified. The dummy filename ~ (tilde) is replaced with the filename
539 of the main configuration file.
541 # The file graphics.conf contains common color and layout commands for
544 MENU LABEL Another Menu
546 APPEND graphics.conf othermenu.conf
548 # Return to the main menu
550 MENU LABEL Return to Main Menu
552 APPEND graphics.conf ~
554 See also the MENU INCLUDE directive above.