Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/2] extboot reloaded.

[Paul Brook <paul@codesourcery.com>]

> >> It would require a mechanism to do enumeration and identification
> >> though.
> >
> > Huh?  Do you want export *all* block devices via extboot?  Will IDE
> > drives show up twice then?
> 
> No, because SeaBIOS already has an ATA driver so we wouldn't want to
> expose IDE on the extboot bus.

"SeaBIOS already has an ATA driver" doesn't seem a convincing argument for 
making IDE special, because I expect the BIOS will grow support for other 
block devices.

> > I would export only one and export it only on explicit user request,
> > so it can be used for cases where seabios has no native support ...
> 
> If we expose all of the disks, then the user can choose which one they
> want to boot from without having to shut down qemu and modify the
> command line.

Either expose ever block device qemu knows about, or have extboot as a regular 
block device with no special handling. I strongly prefer the latter option.
In fact I'd much prefer to see extboot rewritten to just virtio-block.
Simple virtio clients really aren't that hard to write.

Paul