From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1LDLkS-0001UM-Bt for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:29:16 -0500 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1LDLkR-0001TX-3y for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:29:15 -0500 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=43738 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1LDLkQ-0001TF-Rw for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:29:14 -0500 Received: from mail-qy0-f20.google.com ([209.85.221.20]:33904) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1LDLkQ-00033i-B5 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:29:14 -0500 Received: by qyk13 with SMTP id 13so1093470qyk.10 for ; Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:29:13 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <494A7A46.7040300@codemonkey.ws> Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:28:54 -0600 From: Anthony Liguori MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] x86: Manage BIOS boot menu via command line References: <494A4A55.2090700@siemens.com> <200812181620.01572.paul@codesourcery.com> In-Reply-To: <200812181620.01572.paul@codesourcery.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org List-Id: qemu-devel.nongnu.org List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org Cc: Jan Kiszka Paul Brook wrote: > On Thursday 18 December 2008, Jan Kiszka wrote: > >> When booting a guest from the command line, you normally do not need the >> interactive boot menu with its 3 s waiting that someone might press F12. >> So this patch introduces a mechanism to enable the boot menu only on >> demand, ie. when the user provided the command line switch -bootmenu. >> This reduces boot times to their original dimension. >> >> The host-guest interface used here is CMOS RAM byte 0x60. If it is >> non-zero, the guest BIOS will skip the F12 delay, keeping the previous >> behavior in case the host does not support it. -bootmenu was chosen in >> favor of -boot as the syntax of the latter is not easily and cleanly >> extensible. >> > > I'm not sure I believe this. We already support multiple options to -boot so > why not just add another one (e.g. "q") that means include the boot menu? > i.e. -boot qcad would give the current behaviour. > Or -boot cad,prompt=[on|off] > I've no particular preference whether this is communicated to the bios via the > current 0x3d region or via a new byte. It looks like there's a spare bit in > byte 0x38 that could be used. > Or firmware config since that can be shared with non-x86 targets. Regards, Anthony Liguori > Paul > > >