Syslinux menu and special characters

CaeriTech · 2026-02-08 23:55:31

I'm trying to get the syslinux menu to display special characters correctly. Specifically the '█' character.

Here is my locale.conf...

LANG=en_CA.UTF-8

I select a kernel font with the boot parameter shown below:

fbcon=font:TER16x32

and my syslinux modules...

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 161K Jan 22 22:31 hdt.c32
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 116K Jan 22 22:31 ldlinux.c32
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 164K Jan 22 22:31 libcom32.c32
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  66K Jan 22 22:31 libgpl.c32
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  24K Jan 22 22:31 libmenu.c32
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  25K Jan 22 22:31 libutil.c32
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.9K Jan 22 22:31 poweroff.c32
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.6K Jan 22 22:31 reboot.c32
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3.1K Feb  7 10:14 syslinux.cfg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3.1K Feb  7 10:13 syslinux.cfg~default~cLX
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  27K Jan 22 22:31 vesamenu.c32

What I'm get with the above configuration are garbled symbols.

Am I missing something from my configs? Have I misconfigured something or perhaps the font I'm selecting does not support special characters? If so, which font should I be selecting or what configuration changes should I make?

Lone_Wolf · 2026-02-09 12:49:46

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Syslinux#Supported_file_systems wrote:

Note
Syslinux, by itself, cannot access files from partitions other than its own. See #Chainloading on how to work around this.

Adding the font-file to the partition sysylinux is on should be doable, but you need to figure out how to get vesamenu to use it.
Check upstream documentation.

cryptearth · 2026-02-09 14:23:09

is there any hard requirement why you need to use syslinux? the last update was over 10 years ago and it's pretty much replaced by iPXE everywhere

CaeriTech · 2026-02-09 15:35:25

I'm booting with only WiFi available which doesn't seem to be supported.

cryptearth · 2026-02-09 16:40:46

it's up to the systems firmware to support PXE over other media than ethernet - syslinux and iPXE both use UNDI and therefore on top of what the firmware provides - they don't bringt thier own drivers
my question was more like: is there any hard requirement that enforces you to use old syslinux instead of upgrade to modern iPXE? as for ethernet vs wifi - that's something with your board and its firmware - out of scope of my question

Scimmia · 2026-02-09 16:55:17

Why are we talking about network booting here at all? cryptearth, what do you think the OP is doing here? They're booting a PC from disk, nothing more?

Last edited by Scimmia (2026-02-09 17:03:04)

cryptearth · 2026-02-09 23:21:22

it doesn't matter if syslinux is used for boot over network or any other media - and although even archlinux iso does use syslinux for legacy - as mentioned: syslinux is over a decade old and uefi was only ever said as experimental (although it does work) - my question is if there's any hard requirement on such an old bootloader instead of using something more recent lije ipxe or any of the typical bootloaders like grub, refind or systemd-boot
I don't know if any of the othe support this block (for whatever reason) - but it doesn't make sense for a topic over a decade old software which obviously doesn't
it ends up in a xy problem - OP want to get something done which they already figured out it doesn't - so i see it legit to hook right into that: what's the reason for stick to syslinux which doesn't work for what you try to do?
yes, syslinux often is used for removable media - less so for fixed media - but far more in form of pxelinux for network boot

seth · 2026-02-10 09:37:58

Do you actually mean the https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+2588 ?
Your immediate problem will be that the console fonts have no utf8 coverage, but custom, distinct 8-bit tables
https://adeverteuil.github.io/linux-con … inus16psfu

The next thing is that syslinux might give about one or two fucks about your locale.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Syslin … _boot_menu
What are you trying to ultimately achieve here and what does the "garbled" output exactly look like (please link a photo - don't embed huge images)

CaeriTech · Yesterday 22:40:07

The reason I've stuck with syslinx for so long is that my root is on a hard disk which is LUKS encrypted and I have the header and key files together with syslinux on a USB. Loading root to RAM is also something I have as an option. I can also compress root to a single file to significantly reduce the time it takes to load. I'm still not sure grub can automatically create a menuentry item for that and I haven't figured out how to do I manually.

I have decided to give grub another try and will chainloader into syslinux until I can get grub to nativity boot my installation. So far special characters in its menu are working as expected.

Regarding the syslinux using special characters Lat2-terminusx16 does appear to support the character I want. As per everything I've read thus far storing the uncompressed font file in the syslinux directory and setting the FONT = directive in its configuration file should be all that is necessary but I can't seem to get that to work.

None of this is mission critical. It's purely cosmetic. I'm retired - Linux is now a hobby. I'm old-school - if I can configure something manually instead of using 'tools' I will - script it once and run it forever and all that.

Last edited by CaeriTech (Yesterday 22:48:31)

cryptearth · Today 08:48:02

so you've created yourself a very fragile single-point-of-failure (I hope you have at least one proper backup and test that regular)
should be possible with any other luks capable bootloader as long it has access to required modules, headers and keys

seth · Today 09:18:33

Lat2-terminusx16 does appear to support the character I want.

seth wrote:

what does the "garbled" output exactly look like (please link a photo - don't embed huge images)

And probably correlate that w/ the config entry causing the garbling (in doubt upload the file to 0x0.st - you don't want to use UTF-8 U+2588 here)

Arch Linux

#1 2026-02-08 23:55:31

Syslinux menu and special characters

#2 2026-02-09 12:49:46

Re: Syslinux menu and special characters

#3 2026-02-09 14:23:09

Re: Syslinux menu and special characters

#4 2026-02-09 15:35:25

Re: Syslinux menu and special characters

#5 2026-02-09 16:40:46

Re: Syslinux menu and special characters

#6 2026-02-09 16:55:17

Re: Syslinux menu and special characters

#7 2026-02-09 23:21:22

Re: Syslinux menu and special characters

#8 2026-02-10 09:37:58

Re: Syslinux menu and special characters

#9 Yesterday 22:40:07

Re: Syslinux menu and special characters

#10 Today 08:48:02

Re: Syslinux menu and special characters

#11 Today 09:18:33

Re: Syslinux menu and special characters

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