[SeaBIOS] [PATCH v2 0/6] add F11 shortcut for network boot

Kevin O'Connor kevin at koconnor.net
Sun Oct 28 02:37:45 CEST 2012


On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 09:50:49AM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> Il 18/10/2012 01:32, Kevin O'Connor ha scritto:
> > On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 06:23:42PM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> >> This series adds a shortcut for network boot, similar to what is present
> >> on bare-metal machines.  F11 will prioritize BCV/BEV entries for network
> >> devices over all the other items of the boot list.
> >>
> >> After testing with a more recent QEMU I found that it deploys a BCV ROM
> >> that breaks network boot.  So this series has two extra patches that
> >> track the PCI class for boot entries; this is then used to filter boot
> >> entries for network boot.  A better choice of priorities for BCV and
> >> BEV is also implemented (patch 3).
> >>
> >> After Peter Stuge's prod, I reorganized interactive_bootmenu to use a
> >> switch statement, and split the reindentation away in a separate patch.
> > 
> > Hi Paolo,
> > 
> > Can you give a high-level overview of why this functionality is
> > needed?  For QEMU users, wouldn't they just add "-boot net" to their
> > command line?
> 
> Good question. :)  This came in as a feature request from a RH customer,
> and it took a while to understand that this was the feature they wanted.
>  My only guess is the user is someone else than the administrator, so
> they cannot control the QEMU command-line.

Okay.  I guess hitting F12 and then selecting the network card was too
complex.  :-)

> I'm not sure how much of this code is used by Coreboot, but I figured
> this would be somewhat useful on bare-metal systems too.

It's the same menu on coreboot.  Indeed, having the ability to select
a boot device is critical when working on real hardware.

Thanks.
-Kevin



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