Changelog - Solemn's site

Version 2.3:
- Fixed crashing caused by calling vfs_translate_path() with no disk set or passing too few arguments to 'find' command.
- Updated filename autocompletion: partial names are appended where possible and complete ones are displayed.
- Added boot_index and boot_target command line options.
- Added GRUB 2 configuration support.
- Updated to kexec-tools 2.0.2.
Version 2.2.2:
- Added chroot jail support to the VFS layer and a rootdir kernel argument to override the root directory path on the boot disk.
- Added stack trace with symbol lookup and register dump upon segfault to make debugging crashes less insanity-inducing.
- Added GRUB autodetection support.
Version 2.2.1:
- Lots of code cleanup.
- Updated list_add() to set the 'next' pointer of the new node to NULL as not setting it to NULL could cause segfaults.
- Moved disk comparison code from find_disk() to compare_disk_id().
- Wrote mount_by_id() function to replace mount_retry() and direct mount_disk() calls.
- Added filter argument to get_disks() and removed find_disk().
- Changed boot messages to be less verbose, verbose information is still sent to debug console if needed.
- Set VFS root to "rootfs" instead of "debug" it /noboot exists.
- Rewrote tarmods.pl script.
- Updated makefile to explicitly set --build to the result of config.guess if a cross compiler is used.
- Updated to kexec-tools 2.0.1.
- Added message to warn when no targets are defined.
- Updated PATH_COMMAND() macro to allow unsetting paths.
Version 2.2:
- Added 'floppy' target to automatically build floppy images.
- Updated mkinitramfs.sh to create an LZMA compressed archive.
- Cleaned up mkinitramfs.sh.
- Wrote improved VFS wrapper functions, removed some old ones.
- Added kexec-loader specific errno values for the new VFS layer.
- Added 'debug' disk for... debugging.
- Updated get_cmdline() to return values in a static buffer instead of returning a string on the heap.
- Updated modprobe code to mmap() module files instead of reading them into memory, gzipped modules are no longer supported.
- Added gzip support to TAR extractor to replace gzipped modules.
- Updated addmod.sh to accept multiple modules.
- Wrote script and make targets for generating ISO images.
- Rewrote and changed large portions of the GRUB intergration code to fix bugs and improve readability.
Version 2.1.1:
- Updated config loading code to look for kxloader.cfg if there is no kexec-loader.conf file.
- Changed behaviour of timeout directive: 0 timeout will boot instantly instead of waiting forever, use "off" to force no timeout. The default setting is "off", but will be overridden by menu.lst unless explicitly set in kexec-loader.conf.
- Fixed bug: Module loading failed due to my lack of testing.
- Changed ls command to not output timestamps or list ./.. directories.
- Fixed bug: Append option ignored and cmdline used in its place.
- Fixed bug: Error from kexec-tools dying not visible when booting menu target as alert was not set on failure.
- Added support for modules packed in TAR archives, optionally compressed with LZMA using the .tlz extension.
Version 2.1:
- Fixed a bug: grub-map caused an "Unknown directive" error.
- Added support for loading keymaps.
- Updated module loading code: kernel modules in /modules/ on the rootfs will be loaded before trying to mount the boot disk.
- Fixed bug: forgot to pass --reset-vga to kexec
- Added contextual shell autocompletion, only returns results appropriate for the current command.
- Fixed bug: skipped "chainload" GRUB targets instead of "chainloader"
- Updated menu.lst parser to skip entries with empty root devices, since some distros use this (broken?) behaviour for divider lines.
- Added check for /noboot file on rootfs to load everything from rootfs instead of searching for a boot disk.
- Implemented console_getchar() wrapper to handle terminal escapes in one place and to allow characters to be queued from processing escapes.
Version 2.0:
- Full rewrite, far more stable code.
Version 1.6.2:
- Fixed a bug: specifying filesystem type AND /dev/ for a non-existant device no longer attempts to free an invalid address.
- Rewrote the shell input code, autocompletion will be re-implemented in a later version, after some design choices are finalized.
- Updated the shell to accept arguments containing spaces without them being quoted or escaped for the kernel, initrd, cmdline and append commands.
- Updated detect_fstype() and check_magic() to correctly identify ext4 filesystems instead of identifying them as ext3.
Version 1.6.1:
- Fixed a bug: config_parse() silently ignored initrd due to a typo.
- Added reboot, halt and cat commands to shell.
- Implemented autocompletion for commands and filenames in the shell.
- Fixed a bug: pressing a key to stop searching for boot disk no longer results in an infinite loop.
- Changed behaviour of kexec_config kernel option, it now forces the boot device instead of just adding it to the top of the search list.
Version 1.6:
- Replaced unsafe mmap() code in detect_fstype() which crashed on small partitions, such as MS-DOS extended.
- Upgraded kexec-tools to version 2.0.0
- Fixed a bug: console_getsize() returned 0x0 on serial consoles, it now defaults to 80x24 if the ioctl() call returns 0x0.
- Rewrote shell input code to support decent line editing.
- Updated shell history code to not log empty lines, or repeat commands.
- Rewrote command parsing code to be more like that of a normal shell, the new parser stores arguments in argv[] and sets argc.
- Added basic shell commands (cd, ls, find, etc...)
- Changed module loading behaviour: All files in /modules/ named *.ko are loaded automatically, options may be set in /modules/modules.conf
Version 1.5:
- Rewrote code which finds the boot disk.
- Removed capability to reload configuration by pressing R at the main menu.
- Added support for loading Linux modules and inserting them into the kernel, gzip compressed modules are also supported.
- Fixed a bug: nptr->mpoint was not set to the return value of str_append() in config_add_mount(), which could cause a segfault depending on state of OS memory management code.
- Updated styling of status messages to make them more consistant.
- Rewrote detect_fstype() to use mmap() instead of reading MAGIC_BUF_SIZE bytes of into stack memory.
- Updated mount code to create device nodes from /proc/diskstats and removed hdx/sdx mknod code from mkinitramfs.sh
Version 1.4.3:
- Fixed bug caused by my stupidity and lack of testing:
  grub_loadcfg() incorrectly checked that grub_root was set, why does this seem so familiar? Oh yeah! Version 1.3.1!
Version 1.4.2:
- Replaced malloc() calls with allocate() calls for simplicity.
- Replaced most fixed-length strings with dynamic strings in order to save memory.
- Replaced kl_target.modules array with a linked-list to remove the limit on multiboot modules.
- Added multiboot module support for GRUB configuration files.
Version 1.4.1:
- Added support for ISO-9660 to detect_fstype().
- Added command history, scrolls through previous commands on up/down arrow keys, by default the history size is 32 commands.
- Added nano-like scrolling for editing commands which are longer then the screen, otherwise backspacing before column 1 deletes characters from the command buffer, but not from the screen.
- Added module command and configuration directive to support loading multiboot modules.
Version 1.4:
- Added cmdline configuration directive.
- Updated load_kernel() to take a kl_target as its argument and store the argument strings in dynamic memory.
- Removed STACK_BUF macro and replaced it with fixed buffers of smaller sizes since 2048 is overkill for any of them.
- Fixed a bug: unmount_list() now returns if mounts = NULL instead of getting stuck in an infinite loop.
- Wrote shell for interactively configuring and booting targets, will be improved a lot over the next versions.
- Added reset-vga directive/command which passes kexec the --reset-vga argument when loading the kernel.
- Updated the kexec-tools merge patch to make die() output error messages in the same style as kexec-loader.
- Implemented free_targets(), fixed a memory leak in config_load() and used value2 in config_parse() to get rid of a warning.
Version 1.3.1:
- Updated makefile structure and added new targets.
- Updated run_kexec() to directly call kexec_main() in the child process instead of calling itself with argv[0]="kexec" via execv().
- Fixed bug: grub_loadcfg() now checks that grub_root is set before attempting to mount it, how the hell did I overlook this?!
- Fixed bug: load_menu() now correctly handles the 'default' directive in menu.lst.
Version 1.3:
- Created mount_dev() function to cut down on duplicate mounting code.
- Added support for reading GRUB menu.lst and device.map files.
Version 1.2:
- Rewrote fatal() function and removed pointless calls to it.
- Fixed bug: main_menu() no longer crashes if you have zero targets.
- Fixed bug: Timeout is no longer displayed after a one second delay.
- Rewrote a lot of code used for loading configuration.
- Removed obsolete mount_add(), mount_copy(), mount_free(), target_add() and target_free() functions.
- Added STACK_LIMIT and STACK_BUF macros which configure the maximum stack size and the size of auto buffers.
- Wrote check_device() function for checking that devices exist before attempting to mount, determine FS type, etc.
- Updated config_add_mount() to prepend /mnt/ to kl_mount.mpoint so that an extra buffer isn't required in mount_list() or unmount_list().
- Updated config_mount() to retry finding the configuration disk upto 3 times upon failure with delay increasing with each attempt.
- Optimised some of the screen drawing code to not write pointless characters to the console.
- Implemented new console output API: printm(), printM(), printd() and printD() which are macro wrappers around print2().
- Improved status messages displayed while loading a target.
- Updated list_devices() to display the filesystem type of all devices found in /proc/diskstats.
- Updated build system to download and patch kexec-tools then build the kexec program into kexec-loader like busybox to save space.
- Removed HOST and CC variables from root Makefile and added ifdef to set the CC and configure options as required if a HOST variable is passed in the environment.
- Updated mount_config() to check for the kernel option kexec_config and insert the supplied device at the start of the devices list.
- Updated mount_config() to detect the filesystem type using detect_fstype() instead of using the hardcoded BOOTFS_TYPE macro.
Version 1.1:
- Removed directives for creating devices, all devices inodes should be included with the initramfs.
- Redesigned mkinitramfs.sh to create a CPIO archive and to use fakeroot if the script is not being run as root.
- Updated configuration file parser.
- Added seperate debug console and /proc/kmsg monitor.
- Rewrote code which deals with mounting/unmounting the disk containing CONFIG_FILE.
- Rewrote mount_list() to be more effecient by ordering the mounts in order of depth.
- Replaced unmount_tree() function with unmount_list().
- Added support for detecting ext2, ext3, XFS, ReiserFS, minix, FAT and NTFS filesystem types.
- Rewrote menu code, it's slightly more sane now.
- Implemented list_devices() function, pressing L at the menu displays a list of all devices listed in /proc/diskstats.
Version 1.0:
- Initial release.

Last modified on 07 Jan 2012 at 23:39 UTC