force boot from multiple bootable virtual drives

Discussions about using Linux guests in VirtualBox.
milverton
Posts: 48
Joined: 17. Apr 2022, 22:25

Re: force boot from multiple bootable virtual drives

Post by milverton »

Thank you Montagar.

Again, I'm a bystander here, but I do have a question to you, fth0, arising from.your first post, 19. Apr 2022, 18:57:
fth0 wrote:VirtualBox only boots from the first 4 IDE, SATA and SCSI devices.
Can you point me to where this intended behavior is officially documented by Virtualbox? Thanks!
fth0
Volunteer
Posts: 5668
Joined: 14. Feb 2019, 03:06
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Linux, Windows 10, ...
Location: Germany

Re: force boot from multiple bootable virtual drives

Post by fth0 »

milverton wrote:
fth0 wrote:VirtualBox only boots from the first 4 IDE, SATA and SCSI devices.
Can you point me to where this intended behavior is officially documented by Virtualbox? Thanks!
It's "documented" in the VirtualBox source code. For starters, have a look at Console::SetBiosDiskInfo().
Montagar
Posts: 11
Joined: 25. Sep 2012, 20:09

Re: force boot from multiple bootable virtual drives

Post by Montagar »

fth0 wrote:Were you able to discover if the randomization takes place in VirtualBox or in Syslinux?
All my research on the Linux side keeps going back to the BIOS needing to force the SATA port to boot from when multiple bootable drives are involved.
fth0
Volunteer
Posts: 5668
Joined: 14. Feb 2019, 03:06
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Linux, Windows 10, ...
Location: Germany

Re: force boot from multiple bootable virtual drives

Post by fth0 »

Montagar wrote:All my research
What did you discover?

Why is the "secondary" disk also read from (several MB)?
Montagar
Posts: 11
Joined: 25. Sep 2012, 20:09

Re: force boot from multiple bootable virtual drives

Post by Montagar »

fth0 wrote:
Montagar wrote:All my research
What did you discover?

Why is the "secondary" disk also read from (several MB)?
My research came up with the fact that the boot process is controlled by virtualbox (since it is acting as the BIOS) and no one knows why virtualbox is randomly booting from the secondary disk.
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