Bug 1047624

Summary: OVIRT35 - [RFE] support BIOS boot device menu
Product: [Retired] oVirt Reporter: Blaster <blaster>
Component: ovirt-engine-coreAssignee: Martin Betak <mbetak>
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE QA Contact: Pavel Novotny <pnovotny>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 3.3CC: fromani, iheim, mavital, michal.skrivanek, pnovotny, rbalakri, s.kieske, tjelinek, yeylon
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: FutureFeature, Triaged
Target Release: 3.5.0   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard: virt
Fixed In Version: ovirt-3.5.0-alpha1 Doc Type: Enhancement
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2014-10-17 12:34:11 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: Virt RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 955235    
Attachments:
Description Flags
VM boot device menu screenshot none

Description Blaster 2014-01-01 06:32:07 UTC 
Description of problem:

When you boot a physical PC or an ESXi VM you are provided the opportunity to press F2 to select a boot device (disk, CD, PXE, removable storage, etc) or F12 to boot from the network (PXE).

Ovirt does not provide this functionality.  It boots from the BIOS boot order and thats it.

You can select a Run Once and it will boot in the order you specify for that Run session.  But if you select PXE first and do an automated Kickstart install that does an automatic reboot after the install completes, this will result in a never ending install -> reboot cycle.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:



Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Actual results:


Expected results:

Ovirt SEA BIOS should behave like physical Phoenix or AMI BIOS and provide the user with a run-time-one-time-only opportunity to select the boot device.  This selection is reset to the BIOS default on the next reboot, whether it be a soft or hard(power off/on) reboot.


Additional info:
Comment 1 Michal Skrivanek 2014-01-07 11:45:51 UTC 
expose a checkbox in Run Once and Edit VM libvirt domain's:
<os>
    <bootmenu enable='yes'/>
</os>
Comment 2 Blaster 2014-01-07 16:07:24 UTC 
This feature should not only be exposed in Run Once, but at any/all type of power on/boot/reboot methods.  Ie, just like a physical PC BIOS.

There should also be some type of configurable boot delay so that the user has an opportunity to see the message and react.  Virtual BIOSes move faster than physical BIOSes so a configurable delay of some sort is required.  The user may also need an opportunity to start the Spice console if necessary, so again the configurable delay is useful.

This is the way ESXi handles it and it works quite well.
Comment 3 Michal Skrivanek 2014-01-07 16:09:45 UTC 
we have the "start in pause mode" you can use to stop booting at the beginning so you can start the console.

on reboot…hm…we had patch for engine-side reboot which would allow for this but it got refused so far, so it will take some time to get it in.
Comment 4 Itamar Heim 2014-01-12 09:05:20 UTC 
until this is fixed, i suggest using a custom hook if possible
Comment 5 Pavel Novotny 2014-07-25 12:31:29 UTC 
Verified in ovirt-engine-3.5.0-0.0.master.20140722232058.git8e1babc.el6.noarch (beta2).

Verification steps:
1. Create a VM with Boot Options -> "Enable boot menu" checked.
2. Start VM (to "catch" the default 5 seconds timeout, it helps to run the VM in paused mode).
3. Open VM console right after the VM is started.

Results:
After initial SeaBIOS and gPXE driver initialization, message "Press F12 for boot menu." appears. After pressing F12, boot device menu is displayed and waits for user input, see attached screenshot.
Comment 6 Pavel Novotny 2014-07-25 12:32:22 UTC 
Created attachment 920972 [details]
VM boot device menu screenshot
Comment 7 Sandro Bonazzola 2014-10-17 12:34:11 UTC 
oVirt 3.5 has been released and should include the fix for this issue.