Subject: Re: bug#66207: Cannot boot VMs with grub-efi-bootloader

From: Ricardo Wurmus <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Oct 2023 22:59:21 +0200

Mathieu Othacehe <[email-masked]> writes:

> Now it looks to me that what Ricardo is observing is not linked to any
> of the changes mentioned above.  When using the grub-efi-bootloader,
> Grub is never installed in the post-MBR gap. This was already the case
> in 1.4.0 and is still true. Those images cannot be booted without the
> qemu -bios option unless I'm mistaken.

FWIW I tried the 1.4.0 image at
https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/gnu/guix/guix-system-vm-image-1.4.0.x86_64-linux.qcow2,
which did boot just fine.

I suppose that one isn’t using the grub-efi-bootloader.

It’s quite possible that I’m one of only few people who are unaware of
the “-bios” option to qemu.  So there really isn’t any bug or regression
here, it’s just that my primitive mental model (use “guix system” to
build a VM, run with qemu) had not required upgrading until now.

For the benefit of people like me or newcomers perhaps the documentation
could make the dependency between the use of the grub-efi-bootloader and
additionally required qemu arguments a little clearer.

-- 
Ricardo