Get into BIOS of PCIe card passed through to VM from inside VM

proxwolfe

Renowned Member
Jun 20, 2020
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Hi,

So I have a VM and I have passed through a PCIe card to this VM (ROM-Bar option is set to yes, if that is relevant).

The PCIe card has a BIOS that I can access during boot. I have been trying to access it during the boot of my VM but I don't seem to be able to reach it. No matter how quickly I press the key combination (CTRL-C) during the VM's boot in the console, GRUB always comes up (which probably means that I missed the windows to press the key).

Any ideas how I can get into that BIOS from within the VM (I don't want to reboot the host and get into the PCIe card's BIOS at that level because the host is headless and so this would entail installing monitor, keyboard etc in a remote location)? Is there a start up option for Qemu to directly go into a card's bios or can I supply a key press at the time I start the VM?

Thanks for your help!
 
You should be able to select a hostpci passthrough device in the bootorder dialog ('Options -> Boot Order' in the web interface), selecting your device there and putting it at the top of the queue should allow you go into any available option ROMs.
 
Interesting - I thought the boot order only applied to drives. Next time I will give it a try.

This time, after many a failed attempt at doing it in a VM, I rebooted the proxmox host and entered the card's BIOS during the host machine POST.

Thanks!