[Qemu-devel] Need a way disable gPXE boot

[Theodore Ts'o]

I recently updated to the latest qemu-kvm git tree (commit c04b2ae) and
I ran into the following problem.  I want to do a direct Linux boot for
some of my testing work, using the -kernel option.  Apparently the the
gPXE boot code corrupts something in memory or other CPU state which
causes the loaded kernel to hang after the gPXE code gives up.  I can
suppress this using -net none, but of course then I don't have any
networking access.

I was ultimately able to work around the solution by deleting the
/usr/local/share/qemu/pxe-*.bin files, but that's a bit of a botch.  It
would be nice if there was a way to disable the gPXE boot option roms;
if you know you are booting off of a passed in hard drive image or
passed in a kernel for a direct boot, there's no reason why we might
want to do a gPXE boot.

It would be nice if there was a way to disable option roms automatically
if -kernel is specified, or if -boot order doesn't include 'n', or
perhaps with an explicit option to suppress all boot option roms (or all
networking options).

What sort of approach would be considered acceptable?  Did I miss
some way of making the right thing happen other than deleting the
installed pxe-*.bin files?

Thanks,

                                                - Ted