Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: qdev property bug?

[Michael S. Tsirkin]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 01:59:47PM -0600, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
>> At some level this is wrong. ROM presence is a hardware feature and you
>> definitely need to select your hardware when you create a VM.  For real
>> hardware, cards with PXE are sometimes more expensive than without as
>> they need ROM memory.  People do select hardware based on this.
>>
>> Even when PXE is present in hardware, most BIOS
>> vendors will let you turn it on/off optionally,
>> for security if not for other reasons.
>>
>> What the default should be depends on whether the
>> majority of our users use PXE. I guess not,
>> and if I am right default should be off.
>>   
>
> The real way to pose this question is, what is the impact to users by  
> keeping this on to those that don't use it vs. the cost of turning it  
> off by default for users that do need it.
>
> So far, it's not clear to me that anyone has demonstrated how this is  
> harmful for people that don't want pxe booting.  Assuming we fix the bug  
> about rom loading, then there's really no impact to users.
>
> Regards,
>
> Anthony Liguori

PXE booting might have security impact. You do not want to
do this if you are on a hostile network.

-- 
MST