Multiple ISOs or removing and attaching a new one to the same device?

AWhite · November 28, 2023, 11:29pm

I’m trying to add ISO files to the boot, and it’s not allowing me to add more than 1 CDROM image.
Nor can I have one to boot to, then remove and add the next ISO to the same device, just like ejecting and replacing the media in the drive like you would do in the past with a real BR/DVD/CDROM.

What can I do here please? this is very frustrating.

AWhite · November 28, 2023, 11:30pm

I should also add, when trying to boot, it is always telling me " ‘dom0’ doesn’t expose device ‘/path/to/image.iso’ " which is very very very annoying to not be able to attach an ISO image.

apparatus · November 29, 2023, 2:23am

Related issue:

github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues

qvm-start ignores multiple --device options

opened 07:45PM - 20 Jan 19 UTC

closed 09:19AM - 05 Aug 23 UTC

SuzanneSoy

T: bug C: core P: default eol-4.0

### Qubes OS version: 4.0 ### Affected component(s): `qvm-start…` --- ### Steps to reproduce the behavior: ``` qvm-start --cdrom nonexistant-blah --hddisk the-storage-vm:loop0 vm-to-boot ``` ``` qvm-start --drive cdrom:nonexistant-blah --drive hd:the-storage-vm:loop0 vm-to-boot ``` ### Expected behavior: Both versions should fail (or better, both should succeed if provided an actual block device for the first argument). ### Actual behavior: The first version indicates that `argument --hddisk: not allowed with argument --cdrom`, but the second version boots, completely ignoring the first `--drive` option without any warning or error. ### General notes: This is command-line parsing issue (although if we could attach multiple devices, as is possible with a native QEMU, it would be nice, but hardly a priority (unless someone shows an actual use case in the comments)). --- ### Related issues: #4438 is about SeaBIOS not being able to boot the hard disk.

apparatus · November 29, 2023, 2:32am

You can try to attach your ISOs as block devices.
Make ISO available as block device in your VM with ISO:

sudo losetup -f image.iso

Then this ISO will be available in Qubes Devices widget and you can attach it to another qube if it has Xen block device drivers.

AWhite · November 29, 2023, 4:24am

Thing is, in earlier versions of Qubes, it did work…
So who tried to fix something that was not broken?

Thanks for informing me.

I’ll have a look at how you say to do it.

Thing is, detatching the device then attaching a new one means it removes the device, not just the media. that causes massive issues because it won’t see the new media because it won’t install the new device at that time.

But since I can’t attach more than one device, it won’t work anyway unfortunately.