From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:43763) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1R8piY-0001pe-OI for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 28 Sep 2011 04:42:19 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1R8piX-0000Vm-Fr for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 28 Sep 2011 04:42:14 -0400 Received: from mail-yx0-f173.google.com ([209.85.213.173]:49259) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1R8piX-0000Vi-DN for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 28 Sep 2011 04:42:13 -0400 Received: by yxl11 with SMTP id 11so7850687yxl.4 for ; Wed, 28 Sep 2011 01:42:13 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <4E820CC8.6000800@alcatel-lucent.com> References: <4E80D0ED.5050101@alcatel-lucent.com> <20110927072303.GC8740@stefanha-thinkpad.localdomain> <4E820CC8.6000800@alcatel-lucent.com> Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:42:12 +0100 Message-ID: From: Stefan Hajnoczi Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Using iPXE with older qemu releases? List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Kenton Cabiness Cc: qemu-devel@nongnu.org On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Kenton Cabiness wrote: > Stefan, > > On 9/27/2011 2:23 AM, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote: >> >> On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 02:22:21PM -0500, Kenton Cabiness wrote: >>> >>> Is there a way to point an older qemu release (currently running >>> qemu-kvm-0.12.1.2-2.16) to iPXE products? >>> >>> We have built iPXE and installed the files and tested by changing >>> the symbolic links in /usr/share/qemu-kvm (RH6.1 system) to point to >>> the iPXE files. =A0We would like to package the files in an RPM for >>> installation on several machines, but since the links are owned by >>> the qemu-kvm package, we cant have the iPXE package overwrite them. >>> >>> Is there a command line argument to qemu to point to a different >>> directory for iPXE? =A0I've been looking through the code but can't >>> find what tells qemu where to pick up the files. >> >> Try -device virtio-net-pci,romfile=3D/path/to/ipxe.rom,... as part of yo= ur >> command-line. =A0If you have trouble getting this working, please post >> your full command-line. >> >> Alternatively use -option-rom /path/to/ipxe.rom. =A0Either method should >> work. > > Thanks for the reply. =A0Unfortunately, neither of these works for us. = =A0We are > using libvirt to configure and start up our VMs and it doesn't support th= e > romfile=3D option (we've got a fairly robust configuration with 16 NICs u= sing > bridges, so I don't really want to try configuring everything manually an= d > wouldn't fly with our project anyway). > > The -option-rom method works somewhat (we are using it to load sgabios, s= o I > know the arguments are being recognized). =A0 The value doesn't seem to > override the default path for the romfile for the NIC. =A0If I remove the= gpxe > rom file from the default directory (or make it 0 length), then it fires = off > the iPXE PXEboot almost immediately (much faster than normal), but it can= 't > communicate with the external DHCP server. =A0If I let it fail a couple o= f > times and then reset the VM, then it launches iPXE and everything works > correctly, so I'd say that something isn't getting initialized correctly = if > the load of the default romfile fails. This almost sounds like there is a secondary problem with network connectivity. You could try booting an ipxe.iso instead of ROM just to make sure that iPXE works reliably. One thing that comes to mind is bridges with STP and forwarding delay enabled, where the link is down for several seconds before traffic is allowed. This can cause a network bootloader to time out, may explain why you need to let it fail a couple of times. Stefan