[virt-tools-list] osdict: fedora18 virtioconsole=True & seabios

[Cole Robinson]

On 01/11/2014 05:03 PM, John Morris wrote:
> 
> 
> On 01/11/2014 01:31 PM, Cole Robinson wrote:
> 
>> In your case it sounds like you just want a traditional serial device: you can
>> get that by passing --console pty on the command line. Then your previous
>> config should keep working.
> 
> My interest in seabios stems from the gPXE option.  I feel like I'm
> entering the realm of the pedantic here, sorry, but it would be nice to
> set the VM config once, and then after 'virsh start --console $vmname'
> have the option of booting either the OS or a PXE environment with the
> default settings.
> 
> So, are you recommending a traditional serial device because seabios
> doesn't know how to handle virtio consoles?
> 

I recommended a serial device because it sounded to me like you had a
previously working config that was broken by the new virtioconsole default.

Indeed seabios doesn't know anything about virtio console, but then again I
don't think it does anything natively with a regular serial device for a
default VM install.

What you want can probably be achieved by doing:

virt-install --console pty --boot menu=on,useserial=on,hd,network ...

That says:

1) Add a plain serial device, mapped to a host pty (which virsh console will
attach to)
2) Enable seabios boot menu
3) Use sgabios to send boot output to serial
4) Mark disk and network as valid boot options.

Though I'm not sure if sgabios is packaged on RHEL? I just tried that on a
Fedora 20 host and it worked for me.

- Cole