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 Exit the menu system immediately unless either the Shift or Alt
54 key is pressed, or Caps Lock or Scroll Lock is set.
59 Insert an empty line in the menu.
64 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
65 Changes the label displayed for a specific entry. This allows
66 you to have a label that isn't suitable for the command line,
71 MENU LABEL Soft Cap ^Linux 9.6.36
72 KERNEL softcap-9.6.36.bzi
75 # A very dense operating system
77 MENU LABEL ^Windows CE/ME/NT
81 The ^ symbol in a MENU LABEL statement defines a hotkey.
82 The hotkey will be highlighted in the menu and will move the
83 menu cursor immediately to that entry.
85 Reusing hotkeys is disallowed, subsequent entries will not be
86 highlighted, and will not work.
88 Keep in mind that the LABELs, not MENU LABELs, must be unique,
89 or odd things will happen to the command-line.
94 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
95 Will add "count" spaces in front of the displayed menu entry.
100 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
101 Makes the entry unselectable. This allows you to make a
102 section in your menu with different options below it.
105 # Entries for network boots
112 MENU LABEL Soft Cap ^Linux 9.6.36
114 KERNEL softcap-9.6.36.bzi
122 APPEND initrd=dos622.imz
127 # Entries for local boots
134 MENU LABEL ^Windows 2000
141 MENU LABEL Windows ^XP
148 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
149 Suppresses a particular LABEL entry from the menu.
154 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
156 Indicates that this entry should be the default for this
157 particular submenu. See also the DEFAULT directive below.
162 ... which can span multiple lines
165 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
167 Specifies a help text that should be displayed when a particular
168 selection is highlighted.
173 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
175 Sets a password on this menu entry. "passwd" can be either a
176 cleartext password or a password encrypted with one of the
177 following algorithms:
180 SHA-1 (Signature: $4$)
181 SHA-2-256 (Signature: $5$)
182 SHA-2-512 (Signature: $6$)
184 Use the included Perl scripts "sha1pass" or "md5pass" to
185 encrypt passwords. MD5 passwords are compatible with most
186 Unix password file utilities; SHA-1 passwords are probably
187 unique to Syslinux; SHA-2 passwords are compatible with very
188 recent Linux distributions. Obviously, if you don't encrypt
189 your passwords they will not be very secure at all.
191 If you are using passwords, you want to make sure you also use
192 the settings "NOESCAPE 1", "PROMPT 0", and either set
193 "ALLOWOPTIONS 0" or use a master password (see below.)
195 If passwd is an empty string, this menu entry can only be
196 unlocked with the master password.
199 MENU MASTER PASSWD passwd
201 Sets a master password. This password can be used to boot any
202 menu entry, and is required for the [Tab] and [Esc] keys to
206 MENU RESOLUTION height width
208 Requests a specific screen resolution when in graphics mode.
209 The default is "640 480" corresponding to a resolution of
210 640x480 pixels, which all VGA-compatible monitors should be
213 If the selected resolution is unavailable, the text mode menu
214 is displayed instead.
217 MENU BACKGROUND background
219 For vesamenu.c32, sets the background image. The background
220 can either be a color (see MENU COLOR) or the name of an image
221 file, which should be the size of the screen (normally 640x480
222 pixels, but see MENU RESOLUTION) and either in PNG, JPEG or
229 Begin/end a submenu. The entries between MENU BEGIN and MENU
230 END form a submenu, which is marked with a > mark on the right
231 hand of the screen. Submenus inherit the properties of their
232 parent menus, but can override them, and can thus have their
233 own backgrounds, master passwords, titles, timeouts, messages
239 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
241 This label will transfer to the named submenu instead of
242 booting anything. To transfer to the top-level menu, specify
248 (Only valid after a label statement inside MENU BEGIN ...
251 Exit to the next higher menu, or, if tagname is specified, to
257 (Only valid after a LABEL statement.)
259 This label quits the menu system.
261 WARNING: if MENU MASTER PASSWD or ALLOWOPTIONS 0 is set, this
262 will still allow exiting to the CLI; however, a separate MENU
263 PASSWD can of course be set for this label.
268 (Only valid inside MENU BEGIN ... MENU END)
270 Indicates that the menu system should start at the menu being
271 defined instead of at the top-level menu. See also the
272 DEFAULT directive below.
277 Set the global default. If "label" points into a submenu,
278 that menu becomes the start menu; in other words, this
279 directive has the same effect as both MENU DEFAULT and MENU
282 For backwards compatibility with earlier versions of Syslinux,
283 this directive is ignored unless the configuration file also
284 contains a UI directive.
286 Note: the CLI accepts options after the label, or even a
287 non-label. The menu system does not support that.
293 Remember the last entry selected and make that the default for
294 the next boot. A password-protected menu entry is *not*
295 saved. This requires the ADV data storage mechanism, which is
296 currently only implemented for EXTLINUX, although the other
297 Syslinux derivatives will accept the command (and ignore it.)
299 NOTE: MENU SAVE stores the LABEL tag of the selected entry;
300 this mechanism therefore relies on LABEL tags being unique.
301 On the other hand, it handles changes in the configuration
304 The MENU SAVE information can be cleared with
305 "extlinux --reset-adv <bootdir>".
307 A MENU SAVE or MENU NOSAVE at the top of a (sub)menu affects
308 all entries underneath that (sub)menu except those that in
309 turn have MENU SAVE or MENU NOSAVE declared. This can be used
310 to only save certain entires when selected.
313 INCLUDE filename [tagname]
314 MENU INCLUDE filename [tagname]
316 Include the contents of the configuration file filename at
319 In the case of MENU INCLUDE, the included data is only seen by
320 the menu system; the core syslinux code does not parse this
321 command, so any labels defined in it are unavailable.
323 If a tagname is included, the whole file is considered to have
324 been bracketed with a MENU BEGIN tagname ... MENU END pair,
325 and will therefore show up as a submenu.
328 MENU AUTOBOOT message
330 Replaces the message "Automatic boot in # second{,s}...". The
331 symbol # is replaced with the number of seconds remaining.
332 The syntax "{singular,[dual,]plural}" can be used to conjugate
338 Replaces the message "Press [Tab] to edit options".
341 MENU NOTABMSG message
343 Takes the place of the TABMSG message if option editing is
344 disabled. Defaults to blank.
347 MENU PASSPROMPT message
349 Replaces the message "Password required".
352 MENU COLOR element ansi foreground background shadow
354 Sets the color of element "element" to the specified color
357 screen Rest of the screen
360 unsel Unselected menu item
361 hotkey Unselected hotkey
363 hotsel Selected hotkey
364 disabled Disabled menu item
366 tabmsg Press [Tab] message
367 cmdmark Command line marker
369 pwdborder Password box border
370 pwdheader Password box header
371 pwdentry Password box contents
372 timeout_msg Timeout message
373 timeout Timeout counter
375 msgXX Message (F-key) file attribute XX
377 ... where XX is two hexadecimal digits (the "plain text" is 07).
379 "ansi" is a sequence of semicolon-separated ECMA-48 Set
380 Graphics Rendition (<ESC>[m) sequences:
382 0 reset all attributes to their defaults
384 4 set underscore (simulated with color on a color display)
387 22 set normal intensity
391 30 set black foreground
392 31 set red foreground
393 32 set green foreground
394 33 set brown foreground
395 34 set blue foreground
396 35 set magenta foreground
397 36 set cyan foreground
398 37 set white foreground
399 38 set underscore on, set default foreground color
400 39 set underscore off, set default foreground color
401 40 set black background
402 41 set red background
403 42 set green background
404 43 set brown background
405 44 set blue background
406 45 set magenta background
407 46 set cyan background
408 47 set white background
409 49 set default background color
411 These are used (a) in text mode, and (b) on the serial
414 "foreground" and "background" are color codes in #AARRGGBB
415 notation, where AA RR GG BB are hexadecimal digits for alpha
416 (opacity), red, green and blue, respectively. #00000000
417 represents fully transparent, and #ffffffff represents opaque
420 "shadow" controls the handling of the graphical console text
421 shadow. Permitted values are "none" (no shadowing), "std" or
422 "standard" (standard shadowing - foreground pixels are
423 raised), "all" (both background and foreground raised), and
424 "rev" or "reverse" (background pixels are raised.)
426 If any field is set to "*" or omitted (at the end of the line)
427 then that field is left unchanged.
430 The current defaults are:
432 menu color screen 37;40 #80ffffff #00000000 std
433 menu color border 30;44 #40000000 #00000000 std
434 menu color title 1;36;44 #c00090f0 #00000000 std
435 menu color unsel 37;44 #90ffffff #00000000 std
436 menu color hotkey 1;37;44 #ffffffff #00000000 std
437 menu color sel 7;37;40 #e0000000 #20ff8000 all
438 menu color hotsel 1;7;37;40 #e0400000 #20ff8000 all
439 menu color disabled 1;30;44 #60cccccc #00000000 std
440 menu color scrollbar 30;44 #40000000 #00000000 std
441 menu color tabmsg 31;40 #90ffff00 #00000000 std
442 menu color cmdmark 1;36;40 #c000ffff #00000000 std
443 menu color cmdline 37;40 #c0ffffff #00000000 std
444 menu color pwdborder 30;47 #80ffffff #20ffffff std
445 menu color pwdheader 31;47 #80ff8080 #20ffffff std
446 menu color pwdentry 30;47 #80ffffff #20ffffff std
447 menu color timeout_msg 37;40 #80ffffff #00000000 std
448 menu color timeout 1;37;40 #c0ffffff #00000000 std
449 menu color help 37;40 #c0ffffff #00000000 std
450 menu color msg07 37;40 #90ffffff #00000000 std
453 MENU MSGCOLOR fg_filter bg_filter shadow
455 Sets *all* the msgXX colors to a color scheme derived from the
456 fg_filter and bg_filter values. Background color zero is
457 always treated as transparent. The default corresponds to:
459 menu msgcolor #90ffffff #80ffffff std
461 This directive should come before any directive that
462 customizes individual msgXX colors.
467 MENU PASSWORDMARGIN 3
475 MENU HELPMSGENDROW -1
480 These options control the layout of the menu on the screen.
481 The values above are the defaults.
483 A negative value is relative to the calculated length of the
484 screen (25 for text mode, 28 for VESA graphics mode.)
487 F1 textfile background
489 F12 textfile background
491 Displays full-screen help (also available at the command line.)
492 The same control code sequences as in the command line
493 interface are supported, although some are ignored.
495 Additionally, a second argument allows a different background
496 image (see MENU BACKGROUND for supported formats) to be displayed.
499 The menu system honours the TIMEOUT command; if TIMEOUT is specified
500 it will execute the ONTIMEOUT command if one exists, otherwise it will
501 pick the default menu option. WARNING: the timeout action will bypass
502 password protection even if one is set for the specified or default
505 Normally, the user can press [Tab] to edit the menu entry, and [Esc]
506 to return to the Syslinux command line. However, if the configuration
507 file specifies ALLOWOPTIONS 0, these keys will be disabled, and if
508 MENU MASTER PASSWD is set, they require the master password.
510 The simple menu system supports serial console, using the normal
511 SERIAL directive. However, it can be quite slow over a slow serial
512 link; you probably want to set your baudrate to 38400 or higher if
513 possible. It requires a Linux/VT220/ANSI-compatible terminal on the
517 +++ USING AN ALTERNATE CONFIGURATION FILE +++
520 It is also possible to load a secondary configuration file, to get to
521 another menu. To do that, invoke menu.c32 with the name of the
522 secondary configuration file.
525 MENU LABEL Another Menu
527 APPEND othermenu.conf
529 If you specify more than one file, they will all be read, in the order
530 specified. The dummy filename ~ (tilde) is replaced with the filename
531 of the main configuration file.
533 # The file graphics.conf contains common color and layout commands for
536 MENU LABEL Another Menu
538 APPEND graphics.conf othermenu.conf
540 # Return to the main menu
542 MENU LABEL Return to Main Menu
544 APPEND graphics.conf ~
546 See also the MENU INCLUDE directive above.