Created attachment 1012008 [details]
screenshot_for_qemu-kvm-1.5.3-87.el7.x86_64

host info:
# uname -r&& rpm -q qemu-kvm
3.10.0-232.el7.x86_64
qemu-kvm-1.5.3-87.el7.x86_64
guest info:
# rpm -q virtio-win
virtio-win-1.7.2-2.el6.noarch
/usr/share/virtio-win/virtio-win-1.7.2_amd64.vfd

The problem is caused by QEMU's usage of the 1.44MB FDrive type as a default when no floppy is inserted. Our virtio-win drivers ship on a 2.88MB floppy drive image. There is currently no CLI interface to specify that a 2.88MB drive is desired, except by having an image present at boot.

I am delaying this BZ because it needs to be worked on upstream and will likely involve more research before a proper fix is identified.

I recommend releasing documentation informing users that it would be best to boot their machine with a 2.88MB FD image if they desire that functionality. In this particular case, this image is generally only useful at boot during a new VM installation, so impact is expected to be minimal.

This bug is likely to only affect customers looking to install Windows XP, which hit EOL on April 8 2014, prior to the release of RHEL 7.1. As RHEL 7.0 is already EOL, there are currently no RHEL 7 releases supported that were released before XP EOL, so...

(1) This bug is likely to only affect people trying to use our 2.88MB virtio-win floppy driver image
(2) The floppy driver image is only useful for versions of Windows that do not support loading drivers from ISOs
(3) The last version of windows to not do this was Windows XP,
(4) We no longer support Windows XP as a guest
(5) The backport is too risky for too little benefit given the fragility and difficulty of testing Floppy Drive code
(6) There are sufficient workarounds available.

Therefore, closing this as wontfix, but recommending a docfix.

This behavior was fixed upstream in 2.6.0 and will be present in downstream qemu-kvm-rhev 2.6.0 based products.

Looks good, thank you!