ironic/releasenotes/notes/deprecate-syslinux-support-98d327c67607fc8e.yaml
Julia Kreger c8be82c525 Deprecate syslinux
Syslinux is a functionally abandoned Legacy BIOS boot mode bootloader
which has not seen updates since 2019, and is starting to see
discussion amongst linux distributions to remove explicit support
and packaging for Syslinux. Syslinux's relevance is also disappearing
as UEFI booting is becoming the standard. While syslinux did go ahead
and ensure their bootloader *could* be built and support UEFI,
distributions also didn't uniformly adopt packaging and support for
this bootloader.

This change proposes to deprecate it and notates the areas in which
functionality is deprecated.

Change-Id: Ic52007fa4f207561d282eb5ae54273885c0ab0c0
2022-07-13 06:50:55 -07:00

27 lines
1.7 KiB
YAML

---
deprecations:
- |
Support for the `syslinux <https://wiki.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Syslinux_6_Changelog#Changes_in_6.04>`_
and the often separately package `isolinux <https://wiki.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=ISOLINUX>`_
and `pxelinux <https://wiki.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=PXELINUX>`_.
Legacy BIOS boot loaders, is deprecated and will be removed the future.
This is for two reasons. The first is because it is a BIOS mode bootloader,
and the shift to UEFI booting has reduced the need for these packages.
The second reason is a lack of maintenance, which is ultimately the same
reason Linux distributions are discussing dropping support and packaging.
Syslinux has not been updated since `2019 <https://repo.or.cz/syslinux.git/shortlog>`_.
Incidently, the file format it utilizes *is* supported by Power hardware,
and that may result in the configuration template remaining in Ironic for
the forseeable future.
- Support for use of `pxelinux <https://wiki.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=PXELINUX>`_
is deprecated due to the deprecation of support for Syslinux.
- Support for virtual media booting with x86 Hardware in Legacy BIOS mode is
deprecated due to the dependency upon
`isolinux <https://wiki.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=ISOLINUX>`_
for use of Legacy BIOS boot mode. ``isolinux`` is from the ``syslinux``
package and source tree.
- Deprecation of ``pxelinux``, as a result of the deprecation of ``syslinux``,
does ultimately mean the default for the ``pxe`` boot_interface to carry
defaults for the use of grub based network booting, specifically for
for operators who are unable to use iPXE.