RE: [Xen-devel] HVMAssist BIOS boot device problem

["Stephen Quintero" <stephen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Keir,

Thank you for your reply.

I agree it should be deterministic, according to the enumeration of the
devices (hda-hdd), but, alas, it is not.

See example B in my original post where hda|hdb|hdc all contain active
partitions but the guest boots from hdc.

See also example A in my post where hda is always a bootable image but
sometimes the guest boots from hdb (you may not easily recreate this
scenario yourself, but example B is simple to reproduce).

Stephen


-----Original Message-----
From: Keir Fraser [mailto:keir.fraser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 2:12 AM
To: Stephen Quintero; xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Apoorva Kulkarni; Minh Quach; Eric Tessler
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] HVMAssist BIOS boot device problem

On 8/7/08 01:24, "Stephen Quintero" <stephen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Is there any method to cause an HVM guest to reliably boot from hda?
> 
> Any insight would be appreciated.

Reading the BIOS code, my understanding is that 'boot from hard disk'
means
to boot from the first connected hard drive enumerated in the following
order: primary master, primary slave, secondary master, secondary slave
(i.e., hda-hdd). I confirmed this with a few simple tests -- attach a
bootable image to hdd boots fine, but if I connect a non-bootable image
on
any of hha-hdc then the system fails to boot. This is all entirely
deterministic. Selection of boot device should not be random, nor change
across reboots.

 -- Keir



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