[SLOF] [PATCH] Fix ugly boot menu if devices have been specified with bootindex

[Nikunj A Dadhania]

Thomas Huth <thuth at redhat.com> writes:

> On 05.04.2017 10:26, Nikunj A Dadhania wrote:
>> Nikunj A Dadhania <nikunj at linux.vnet.ibm.com> writes:
>> 
>>> Thomas Huth <thuth at redhat.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> If the user has started with some devices that have the bootindex
>>>> parameter set, these devices show up in a very ugly way in the boot
>>>> menu of SLOF. For example, if you start QEMU with:
>>>>
>>>>  qemu-system-ppc64 ... -boot menu=on -device spapr-vscsi,id=scsi0 \
>>>>   -drive file=distro.iso,if=none,media=cdrom,readonly=on,id=img0 \
>>>>   -device scsi-cd,drive=img0,bootindex=1
>>>
>>> From distant memory, I understand that "-boot" and bootindex are
>>> mutually exclusive. bootindex was introduced to qemu to get rid of
>>> restrictive -boot option.
>> 
>> For example, with "-boot order=cd" if we have 2disks, there is no way to specify
>> which one to boot from. SLOF will boot from the first disk alias.
>> 
>> If a selection is needed: menu=on is added, and we can then press F12 to
>> get to menu and select the second disk.
>> 
>> While for bootindex, I can use qemu command-line(bootindex=1) or libvirt
>> xml tag "<boot order='1'/>" for the second disk. So with bootindex,
>> there is no need for "-boot menu=on,order=cd"
>
> Agreed, but it is still possible to enable the boot menu if you're also
> using "bootindex" ...

True, unfortunately :(

> so please ignore my original patch, but I think
> the boot menu code should also not take the devices in $bootdev into
> account that have been specified with bootindex.
> So likely the right solution is to simply skip all entries there that
> are not aliases (i.e. skip the entries that start with a slash).

Yes, that should be fine.

Regards
Nikunj