Problem Statement

Creating a VM from a disk image file always uses BIOS firmware.
This means a disk with GPT and EFI partition does not boot.

This is not related to PXE provisioning. This is a missing piece of config in libvirt's VM XML. UEFI hosts have an extra config compared to BIOS hosts.

  <os firmware='efi'>
    <type arch='x86_64' machine='pc-q35-rhel9.4.0'>hvm</type>
    <firmware>
      <feature enabled='yes' name='enrolled-keys'/>
      <feature enabled='yes' name='secure-boot'/>
    </firmware>
    <loader readonly='yes' secure='yes' type='pflash'>/usr/share/edk2/ovmf/OVMF_CODE.secboot
.fd</loader>
    <nvram template='/usr/share/edk2/ovmf/OVMF_VARS.secboot.fd'>/var/lib/libvirt/qemu/nvram/
misc-rhel9.site3.example.com_VARS.fd</nvram>
    <boot dev='hd'/>
    <bootmenu enable='yes'/>
  </os>

  <os>
    <type arch='x86_64' machine='pc-q35-rhel9.4.0'>hvm</type>
    <boot dev='hd'/>
  </os>

There is no metadata in a QCOW2 file about how a disk should boot, so choice should probably be manual. VMware section does offer a way to select either BIOS or UEFI. Libvirt does not.

My request may be related to this story.
https://issues.redhat.com/browse/SAT-25808
As a user, I want to be able to provision VMs on Libvirt with UEFI and SecureBoot

User Experience & Workflow

• Create a machine that boots with UEFI (maybe with virt-install --boot="uefi,hd,menu=on" ...)
• Power it down.
• Create a template file from its disk image file (maybe with virt-sparsify or virt-sysprep)
• Register the template as an image in Satellite.
• Provision a new machine with the template.
• Power up the new machine.
• Open a console. Messages for SeaBIOS and iPXE appear, then the message "Booting from Hard Disk...". Machine hangs.

Requirements

Provide an option to choose UEFI or BIOS.

Or possibly do this automatically, by detecting the presence of an EFI partition. (I don't know how - running virt-filesystems would only show /dev/sda2)

Business Impact

None. I am preparing for customer engagements.