[Xen-devel] HVMAssist BIOS boot device problem

["Stephen Quintero" <stephen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

The xm config option boot="c" is intended to boot from the "first" harddrive; 
however, the enumeration of harddrives is independent of device enumeration 
(hda|hdb|hdc|hdd), leading to unreliable boot device selection.

Example A:  

I am building a Windows HVM appliance which performs file-system level 
operations over mounted NTFS volumes - for example a file-system level copy.

hda is the boot disk of the appliance and contains a single active (bootable) 
primary partition.  If hdb also contains a single active primary partition, 
sometimes the appliance boots from hda and properly mounts the hdb partition 
and sometimes it misfires and boots from the hdb partition, causing a disaster 
(the contents of hdb are unknown to the appliance prior to boot).

Example B:

Make three copies of a bootable Windows image and set them up as hda, hdb, and 
hdc.  "xm create" boots from the active partition of hda.  Shutdown and reorder 
the devices, switching the images for hda and hdc.  "xm create" now boots from 
the active partition of hdc.

Is there any method to cause an HVM guest to reliably boot from hda?

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Stephen Quintero

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel