source: bootcd/isolinux/syslinux-6.03/doc/menu.txt

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.