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-rw-r--r--docs/system/bootindex.rst7
-rw-r--r--docs/system/s390x/bootdevices.rst29
2 files changed, 17 insertions, 19 deletions
diff --git a/docs/system/bootindex.rst b/docs/system/bootindex.rst
index 8b057f812f..988f7b3beb 100644
--- a/docs/system/bootindex.rst
+++ b/docs/system/bootindex.rst
@@ -49,10 +49,11 @@ Limitations
 -----------
 
 Some firmware has limitations on which devices can be considered for
-booting.  For instance, the PC BIOS boot specification allows only one
-disk to be bootable.  If boot from disk fails for some reason, the BIOS
+booting.  For instance, the x86 PC BIOS boot specification allows only one
+disk to be bootable.  If boot from disk fails for some reason, the x86 BIOS
 won't retry booting from other disk.  It can still try to boot from
-floppy or net, though.
+floppy or net, though. In the case of s390x BIOS, the BIOS will try up to
+8 total devices, any number of which may be disks.
 
 Sometimes, firmware cannot map the device path QEMU wants firmware to
 boot from to a boot method.  It doesn't happen for devices the firmware
diff --git a/docs/system/s390x/bootdevices.rst b/docs/system/s390x/bootdevices.rst
index 1a7a18b43b..1a1a764c1c 100644
--- a/docs/system/s390x/bootdevices.rst
+++ b/docs/system/s390x/bootdevices.rst
@@ -6,9 +6,7 @@ Booting with bootindex parameter
 
 For classical mainframe guests (i.e. LPAR or z/VM installations), you always
 have to explicitly specify the disk where you want to boot from (or "IPL" from,
-in s390x-speak -- IPL means "Initial Program Load"). In particular, there can
-also be only one boot device according to the architecture specification, thus
-specifying multiple boot devices is not possible (yet).
+in s390x-speak -- IPL means "Initial Program Load").
 
 So for booting an s390x guest in QEMU, you should always mark the
 device where you want to boot from with the ``bootindex`` property, for
@@ -17,6 +15,11 @@ example::
  qemu-system-s390x -drive if=none,id=dr1,file=guest.qcow2 \
                    -device virtio-blk,drive=dr1,bootindex=1
 
+Multiple devices may have a bootindex. The lowest bootindex is assigned to the
+device to IPL first.  If the IPL fails for the first, the device with the second
+lowest bootindex will be tried and so on until IPL is successful or there are no
+remaining boot devices to try.
+
 For booting from a CD-ROM ISO image (which needs to include El-Torito boot
 information in order to be bootable), it is recommended to specify a ``scsi-cd``
 device, for example like this::
@@ -82,23 +85,17 @@ Note that ``0`` can be used to boot the default entry.
 Booting from a network device
 -----------------------------
 
-Beside the normal guest firmware (which is loaded from the file ``s390-ccw.img``
-in the data directory of QEMU, or via the ``-bios`` option), QEMU ships with
-a small TFTP network bootloader firmware for virtio-net-ccw devices, too. This
-firmware is loaded from a file called ``s390-netboot.img`` in the QEMU data
-directory. In case you want to load it from a different filename instead,
-you can specify it via the ``-global s390-ipl.netboot_fw=filename``
-command line option.
-
-The ``bootindex`` property is especially important for booting via the network.
-If you don't specify the ``bootindex`` property here, the network bootloader
-firmware code won't get loaded into the guest memory so that the network boot
-will fail. For a successful network boot, try something like this::
+The firmware that ships with QEMU includes a small TFTP network bootloader
+for virtio-net-ccw devices.  The ``bootindex`` property is especially
+important for booting via the network. If you don't specify the ``bootindex``
+property here, the network bootloader won't be taken into consideration and
+the network boot will fail. For a successful network boot, try something
+like this::
 
  qemu-system-s390x -netdev user,id=n1,tftp=...,bootfile=... \
                    -device virtio-net-ccw,netdev=n1,bootindex=1
 
-The network bootloader firmware also has basic support for pxelinux.cfg-style
+The network bootloader also has basic support for pxelinux.cfg-style
 configuration files. See the `PXELINUX Configuration page
 <https://wiki.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=PXELINUX#Configuration>`__
 for details how to set up the configuration file on your TFTP server.