[solved] no bootable device - HVM creation from .ova image

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1

Hi there, I tried booting into a newly created Linux-HVM copied from an .ova-file which resulted in SEABIOS throwing an error: No bootable device.

I followed this guide: Standalones and HVMs | Qubes OS (last paragraph).

Now this is a linux-based OS and the guide is dealing with a windows-based OS, however, the creation of the HVM should basically be the same.

[user@dom0 ~]$ qvm-run --pass-io <source-vm> 'cat "/home/user/challenge.raw"' > ./challenge.img
[user@dom0 ~]$ md5sum challenge.img
71dfc73ce886714b4ccf2f41a851195d  challenge.img
[user@dom0 ~]$ file challenge.img
challenge.img: DOS/MBR boot sector
[user@dom0 ~]$ qvm-create -P poolhd0_qubes --property=virt_mode=hvm --property=memory=4096 --property=kernel='' --label blue --standalone --root-copy-from /home/user/challenge.img challengeVM

This kind of problem has been addressed in the forum before, but not been solved so far. I suspect setting up a linux HVM from an .ova or .vdmk to be a common thing and this to be a minor issue.

2

The image’s size has to be 10G:

[user@dom0 ~]$ dd if=/dev/zero of=challenge.img count=0 bs=1 seek=10737418240

My thanks and kudos go to @naverone.

PS: there has been a request by @yann (qvm-create doc improvements by ydirson · Pull Request #185 · QubesOS/qubes-core-admin-client · GitHub) to clearify that requirement in the documentation… however, from my point of view it would make much more sense to get the flaw in qvm-create fixed.

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