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:
expose a checkbox in Run Once and Edit VM libvirt domain's: <os> <bootmenu enable='yes'/> </os>
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.
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.
until this is fixed, i suggest using a custom hook if possible
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.
Created attachment 920972 [details] VM boot device menu screenshot
oVirt 3.5 has been released and should include the fix for this issue.