Gerd Hoffmann wrote: > On 09/08/09 15:47, Jan Kiszka wrote: > >> Before setting this definitely useful feature in stone, I have two >> questions though: >> >> - -drive ...,boot=on is logically in conflict with -boot. Yes, -boot >> for x86 currently cannot differentiate between multiple disks, only >> between boot media types. Still, this two-stage configuration is >> rather unintuitive and looks like a patchwork. Given that we have >> full control over all components, is it really the preferred >> approach? I already thought about, e.g., -boot c2 to select the >> second disk. Not that nice, but I would rather vote for a consistent >> configuration than a scattered one. > > Disk numbers are bad. Define "second hard disk". Especially for a > system with different kinds of disks (say one scsi and one virtio).
One could use the specification order, but I agree it's not very handy. > > Drives have names though which can be used to reference the disks, so we > could use that instead. -boot cmd line syntax becomes a bit tricky then > though, we somehow have to figure whenever the user gave us names or > old-style letters. Something like this ... > > -drive if=virtio,id=sys,file=/path/to/disk.img > -cdrom /path/to/install.iso > -boot order=[sys],once=d,menu=off Yes, this looks powerful and clean. One could even still define probe orders like "-boot order=[sys][backup]d". > > ... might work out nicely. I suspect the libvirt folks will hate us for > that though. Does anyone from libvirt want to comment on this? > >> - This is just an implementation detail: Do we really need to implement >> booting from virtio and scsi via an extension rom? Isn't it possible >> to merge the corresponding support into the main bios? > > Well. There are quite a few. bochs pcbios, seabios, coreboot ... Ok, but that's only an argument to have extboot as a workaround for bioses not yet supporting scsi and virtio natively, isn't it? I'm thinking long-term here, not arguing against a extboot-based short-term solution. Jan -- Siemens AG, Corporate Technology, CT SE 2 Corporate Competence Center Embedded Linux -- Libvir-list mailing list Libvir-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvir-list
