Hi, > -bios we're stuck with because it's a legacy > option,
What is legacy about it? Well, the x86-centric name of course. Thats why the machine option is named 'firmware' instead. It also doesn't use QemuOpts, which is fixed by this patch. Anything else? > >> Why is this a machine option rather than a property of > >> the ROM/flash device? > > > > Not all machines have a flash device. > > No, but they must have *something* that the firmware code lives in... Some don't. They just memcpy the firmware into guest ram instead. Most have a memory region for the firmware which gets mapped into guest address space. Sometimes pulled out of thin air, sometimes modeled as proper device. > > Also flash drives don't want a > > simple (readonly) image file but a (writable) blockdev as backing > > storage, at least the pflash device emulation I've briefly looked at. > > ...so how does this work for machines where the firmware lives in > a flash device? pc: In case '-pflash $blockdev' is present '-bios $image' is ignored. My patch doesn't change that behavior, i.e. -machine firmware=$image is ignored too in case -plflash is present on the command line. Given that pflash operates on a blockdev I don't see a obvious way to change that ... cheers, Gerd
