Change boot device of existing vm

Community Support
1

Hi,

Is there a way to change the boot device of an existing vm?

I have a vm that I’d like to boot from an ISO without losing the disk data.

thanks!

2

I’d like to add that I tried to add the BOOT attribute to the vm:
BOOT = network,hd

I also tried onevm update and add
BOOT = network,hd
and
OS = [ BOOT =‘network,hd’]

but none worked.

3

This should work for KVM, are you using other hypervisor? if not, are there
any relevant message in the VM console (e.g. reboot and check using VNC).
Note that you cannot change the BOOT attribute once the VM has been
started. You need to shutdown the VM, update the template and fire a new VM.

4

Thanks for clarifying.
It does work if I start a new VM. I wanted to know if I can do it on an existing VM, without recreating it.

5

You can not change the boot parameter for an already created VM. For installations what I do is exchange the order. First hd and then the installation (network or cdrom). The first time the VM starts it fails starting from HD as there is nothing there so it tries with the installation media. After installation next boots will find the OS in the HD and will boot from there.

6

The reason for this was to boot the VM with a cd, such as clonezilla.

We just migrated from proxmox, so we need to adapt to the differences, but I think it would be nice the be able to change the boot order or an existing vm without having to change the template and recreating it.

7

We’ve filled an issue to take care of this see
http://dev.opennebula.org/issues/4320

8

thanks, ruben!

9

Would like to see this feature added as well. Still don’t see it in 5.4.6.