Re: [Qemu-devel] feature request: changing boot device in the monitor

[Gildas <gildas.ml@gmail.com>]

2007/12/3, Daniel P. Berrange <berrange@redhat.com>:
> On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 01:34:16PM +0000, Gildas wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I don't know whether this is an easy one or not and if it will apply
> > to all archs, but I'd like to see an option in the monitor to
> > change/override the value given for -boot.
> >
> > This way, for instance if you install a VM from a CDROM using "-boot
> > d", you would be able to restart it on the hard-drive from the monitor
> > with something like "boot c" followed by "system_reset".
> >
> > I know there is still the workaround of stopping the emulation and
> > restarting it with a different set of commands, but when remotely
> > accessing a VM with a lots of redirection/connection, it's not very
> > handy.
> >
> > Of course there is also an orthogonal way of doing this consisting in
> > adding a boot menu to the BIOS. Implementing both ways would of course
> > be nice, but the monitor solution would have my preference :)
>
> There's a patch for this floating around.
>
> http://www.mail-archive.com/kvm-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg06675.html
>
> We use it in KVM / Xen on Fedora. Not sure offhand if Bochs project ever
> accepted the patch in their upstream for the BIOS.
>
> Dan.
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Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the link. I somehow managed not to see it.

For the record, there's a later version of the patch in the same thread:
http://www.mail-archive.com/kvm-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg07058.html
Which version do you include in Fedora?

As far as I can tell, none of the patches were applied to the
mainstream bochs rombios.c.

Since qemu is shipped with a binary bios image and a diff set for
bochs' bios, can this patch be added to qemu's diff set and included
in the default bios?

Regards,
Gildas