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Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:33:16 -0700
From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
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Subject: Re: [SeaBIOS] [Qemu-devel] [RFC] Passing boot order from qemu to
	seabios
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To: Gleb Natapov <gleb@redhat.com>
Cc: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>, seabios@seabios.org, qemu-devel@nongnu.org

On 10/12/2010 01:01 AM, Gleb Natapov wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 02:15:26PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>>> I don't disagree.
>>>
>>> I think the best thing to do is to let SeaBIOS create a boot order table 
>>> that contains descriptive information and then advertise that to QEMU.
>>>
>>> QEMU can then try to associate the list of bootable devices with it's 
>>> own set of devices and select a preferred order that it can then give 
>>> back to SeaBIOS.  SeaBIOS can then present that list to the user for 
>>> additional refinement.
>>
>> Really, this kind of comes down to having a data structure that anything
>> (Qemu, SeaBIOS and if needed the guest OS) can read and modify as needed.
>>
> But then QEMU and seabios will have to have shared storage they can
> both write too. And this shared storage is part of VM now so you need
> to carry it around when you move your VM elsewhere.
>  

Yes, and it's part of real hardware, too.  It's usually called "the
CMOS", short for CMOS RAM.

	-hpa

-- 
H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center
I work for Intel.  I don't speak on their behalf.