Due to QEMU moving towards a QMP configuration mechanism and away from config file support, the LXD team are currently in the process of migrating to using QMP to add devices to VMs (so that we can support the use of QEMU 6.0).
Currently we are using the `-S` flag to freeze CPU at startup, then using QMP to add NIC devices via the `device_add` command, and then using the `cont` command to start the VM guest.
This is working mostly fine, but there is one issue; the provided "bootindex" property is not respected.
E.g.
device_add {"addr":"00.0","bootindex":"0","bus":"qemu_pcie4","driver":"virtio-net-pci","id":"dev-lxd_eth0","mac":"00:16:3e:0c:69:e7","mq":"on","multifunction":"off","netdev":"lxd_eth0","vectors":"6"}
The device is seen within the VM guest and the VM BIOS, but its boot order is last rather than first.
We've also tried using a non-zero bootindex of 1 and that has the same effect.
After discussions on #qemu IRC channel, we found that running `system_reset` after adding the devices allowed the `bootindex` property to be respected.
So this looks like bug. Perhaps we can discuss it in one of the forthcoming community calls?
Thanks
Tom Parrott