[libvirt-users] how to load different bios into qemu

[David Mansfield]

On Wed, 2010-08-11 at 13:17 +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 12:20:57PM +0200, Daniel Veillard wrote:
> > On Sun, Aug 08, 2010 at 06:19:09PM +0200, Martin Kraus wrote:
> > > Hello. I'm using debian squeeze with libvirt and kvm and I need to load a
> > > newer version of seabios into qemu. I'd like to do it without overwriting
> > > seabios in the debian package because that might be overwritten on the next
> > > update. I hopend that the <loader> directive in the config would work but it
> > > doesn't.
> > 
> >   As far as I know, the BIOS used by QEmu is completely hidden from
> > libvirt (this can actually be a problem as some corner cases of virtio
> > boot support are dependant on the seabios version), so unfortunately
> > there is nothing which can be done at the libvirt level I think,
> 
> I believe there is a command line parameter that could let libvirt point
> QEMU at a different bios, but it certainly isn't part of libvirt yet,
> and I've not tried how it works
> 

You can fudge this by using a shell script as the "emulator", e.g.
 <emulator>/path/to/start.sh</emulator>

For my use case I had the following requirements, which are working
successfully in the attached start.sh scirpt:

- supply smbios type 0 and 1 files
- supply an additional ACPI table
- use a customized rebuilt seabios bin file

For the first req. you must not allow the -uuid arg to be passed or it
won't allow the smbios to be applied

For the second, you must trim the apci header data from a binary acpi,
because that data is given in the command line option.

For the third, the path cannot be specified, so the file must be
in /usr/share/kvm directory and path must not be given.

Attached is my start.sh, you must correct the details as required for
your use case.

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