Description

Windows 11 requires UEFI to install so using UEFI with Packer/Qemu is becoming mandatory in some cases.

Current documentation states:

"firmware (string) - The firmware file to be used by QEMU this option could be set to use EFI instead of BIOS, by using "OVMF.fd" from OpenFirmware, for example."

However, setting firmware on RHEL 9 to point to to /usr/share/edk2/ovmf/OVMF_CODE.secboot.fd shows these errors:

Qemu stderr: qemu-kvm: Machine type 'pc-i440fx-rhel7.6.0' is deprecated: machine types for previous major releases are deprecated
Qemu stderr: qemu: could not load PC BIOS '/usr/share/edk2/ovmf/OVMF_CODE.secboot.fd'

The first message seems to be present also with without setting firmware but might be relevant. After this Qemu exits with code 1. From a user perspective it is not clear what should be used as the value for firmware and what is causing this error.

So this RFE is about making using UEFI with Packer/Qemu easier, either by improving the documentation or enhancing the code or both. Thanks.