[Fedora-xen] Booting from floppy image

[Costa Kavanides]

I read other entries about this subject but none
explain why it is not possible to boot from a floppy
image with XEN even though it is possible to do so
with QEMU.

Under dom0(2.6.21-6.fc7xen) I issue the command:

    qemu -boot a -fda <my-floppy-image> -hda
<my-C-disk-image>

and I get to boot from the floppy image, whereas when
I use xen whose config file contains

   'file:<my-floppy-image>,ioemu:fda:fda,r'
                    or
   'file:<my-floppy-image>,fda,r'

in the <disk> clause, I get the following message in
the booting window:

    Booting from Floppy...
    Boot from Floppy failed: could not read the boot
disk
    FATAL: No bootable device.

The QEMU monitor shows that, while disk-C image was
taken into consideration as such, the equivalent
<file> command for the floppy disk was completely
ignored. 
Furthermore, it expects the floppy media to be present
in the drive, as the following lines from the
monitor's
<info block> command show:

    hda: type=hd removable=0 file=<my-disk-C-image>
ro=0 drv=raw
    hdb: type=cdrom removable=1 locked=0 [not
inserted]
    fda: type=floppy removable=1 locked=0 [not
inserted]

Can somebody explain whether that behaviour was the
result of a design choice or error? 
Let me emphasize the importance to have this feature.
Thanks,

Costa


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