Tied to find this and only found it is possible to use the Esc key on boot, however the time to access is so short I cant get it activated. Looking for something like what VMware can do or Virtualbox by forcing a VM to bios on boot. Specifically I am installing blackarch and if the boot mode is not EFI it does not present the correct options.
I think the SeaBios is classic x86 BIOS only.
For your specific problem, there is a ‘uefi’ feature which is described in man quv-features as “experimental”.
Could it work for you?
I cant find anything on quv-features. Any link would be great. What I am refering too is any HVM boots and shows a SeaBIOS and everything I find on it is it obviously is not as full featred as a full HW bios and can be accessed by a immediate Esc button press. However there is little time if even a second to activate.
How about increasing the time in grub options file?
I don’t believe grub has even been installed. As a reference, just create a HVM and start it and you will see what I am referring too. It is a quick splash screen when trying too boot. I am guessing it is in a legacy mode that will post for either a dos disk structure or GPT but some OS’s recognize it as legacy only.
Yes. qvm-features - not quv.
I think I did not ever try using this feature - let us know if it does work, or if you find another solution.
Tried qvm-features qemu_extra_args ‘-boot menu=on,splash-time=15000’
No differnce.
The feature I was suggesting is called simply “uefi”.
In the man page
you can type /uefi to search for the text “uefi”.
?foo searches backwards, for “foo”.
I hid this because maybe it seems rude, but I would be interested to know if it is useful to anyone.
The command in Dom0 to enable it would be:
qvm-features YOURQUBENAME uefi 1
[edited to add the important value ‘1’ - without it, the feature is not set! see later post, below]
If it does not work, then you can remove the feature, by putting the -d option.
(edit : qemu_extra_args feature looks cool, and may help for classic boot - I did not know it was hackable)
OK, I tested it out.
- The blackarch slim iso does indeed recognise the boot mode.
- The ‘uefi’ feature does not work in Qubes 4.2.4
- The boot blocks with “Guest has not initialized the display (yet).”
- This seems to be due to a missing patch and boot firmware, referenced in an issue.
- note that there is an error in my given command line above… I do that everytime, and I will edit it now.
- In my current qubes 4.3 testing version, the feature works as expected.
- blackarch slim boots and is recognised as UEFI.
The command to enable it - in 4.3 - is :
qvm-features YOURQUBENAME uefi 1
Verify the feature with:
qvm-features YOURQUBENAME
Then I can boot it using
qvm-start --cdrom=ISOSRCQUBE:/path/to/blackarch.iso YOURQUBENAME
Maybe this will help someone…
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Thank you for the investigation. May e a day or so for me too try. Been recovering from a sys-gui-gpu headach.
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Just tried it and acted exactly as I hoped. Thank you so much. I hope to get to the point I can help as much.
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