Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH v2 5/5] ne2k_isa: add property for option rom loading.

[Anthony Liguori]

Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
> On 10/07/09 15:28, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> > Having a pxe flag is somewhat odd. Real network devices always have roms
> > and they always get loaded. They register themselves as BEV devices and
> > the normal boot selection is used to determine whether a particular NIC
> > gets network booted or not.
> >
> > Our roms do expose themselves as BEV roms so there's really no harm in
> > loading an option rom while booting from disk.
>
> Wrong.  Loading a pxe rom makes qemu trying to boot from it, even with 
> -boot c (using the roms shipped in pc-bios/).

Only with the e1000 because the rom is misconfig.  Try the ne2k or the 
rtl8139.

> > Any PCI device can have a rom and it probably should be a generic
> > property of any PCI device. There's really nothing specific about
> > network adapters.
>
> It's pc-specific though, so when we go the route of loading roms 
> unconditionally we need to wrap that into a machine-specific helper 
> function so it happes on TARGET_I386 only.

No, it's not pc-specific.  An e1000 card on a PPC still has an x86 
option rom.  Whether it gets loaded and how it gets loaded depends on 
the target, but not the existence of the rom on the device.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori