How to boot from DVD/CD automatically, instead of pressing a key by hand?

[Yiguang Chen]

Most time, When a vm with seabios start. The bios will display such info:
-----
Seabios (version rel-1.13-0 ......)
Machine UUID ...

IPXE ..

IPXE..

Booting from DVD/CD...
Press any key to boot from CD or DVD.
---

It means that have a bootable cdrom to boot. But If we want to boot from cdrom, we must press any key as what the warning had said. If it is possible to boot from DVD/CD automatically, instead of pressing a key by hand?

Looking forward to your feedback,
YiguangChen

[Paul Menzel]

Dear Yiguang,

Am 28.02.21 um 15:22 schrieb Yiguang Chen:
> Most time, When a vm with seabios start. The bios will display such info:
>
> Seabios (version rel-1.13-0 ......)
> Machine UUID ...
>
> IPXE ..
>
> IPXE..
>
> Booting from DVD/CD...
> Press any key to boot from CD or DVD.
>
> It means that have a bootable cdrom to boot. But If we want to boot
> from cdrom, we must press any key as what the warning had said. If it
> is possible to boot from DVD/CD automatically, instead of pressing a
> key by hand?

I assume, you are using QEMU? You can configure the boot behavior, 
including the order, with the switch `-boot` [1]. One example from the 
manual is:
> # boot from CD-ROM first, switch back to default order after reboot
> qemu-system-i386 -boot once=d

Kind regards,

Paul

[1]: 
https://manpages.debian.org/buster/qemu-system-x86/qemu-system-x86_64.1.html

[Gerd Hoffmann]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2021 at 02:22:53PM -0000, Yiguang Chen wrote:
> Most time, When a vm with seabios start. The bios will display such info:
>
> Seabios (version rel-1.13-0 ......)
> Machine UUID ...
>
> IPXE ..
>
> IPXE..
>
> Booting from DVD/CD...
> Press any key to boot from CD or DVD.
>
> It means that have a bootable cdrom to boot. But If we want to boot
> from cdrom, we must press any key as what the warning had said. If it
> is possible to boot from DVD/CD automatically, instead of pressing a
> key by hand?

This is a windows install iso, right?

This isn't seabios, the windows boot loader does that.  I think windows
does this only in case it finds a bootable hard disk.  So when booting
the guest with a fresh & blank virtual hard disk it should boot the
windows installer without asking for a key press.

HTH,
  Gerd

[Laszlo Ersek]

On 03/01/21 10:31, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 28, 2021 at 02:22:53PM -0000, Yiguang Chen wrote:
> > Most time, When a vm with seabios start. The bios will display such info:
> >
> > Seabios (version rel-1.13-0 ......)
> > Machine UUID ...
> >
> > IPXE ..
> >
> > IPXE..
> >
> > Booting from DVD/CD...
> > Press any key to boot from CD or DVD.
> >
> > It means that have a bootable cdrom to boot. But If we want to boot
> > from cdrom, we must press any key as what the warning had said. If it
> > is possible to boot from DVD/CD automatically, instead of pressing a
> > key by hand?
>
> This is a windows install iso, right?
>
> This isn't seabios, the windows boot loader does that.  I think windows
> does this only in case it finds a bootable hard disk.  So when booting
> the guest with a fresh & blank virtual hard disk it should boot the
> windows installer without asking for a key press.

This doesn't match my experience with (UEFI) Windows installs -- even if
the hard disk is blank (not even partitioned), the windows boot loader
asks for a key press. (IIRC)

Laszlo