Note: This did not work on a Debian Lenny Host. It worked OK for Debian Squeeze (with more recent libvirt and kvm).
virsh shutdown deb01 //make sure it actually shuts down via acpi virsh edit deb01 //add in the bold lines below
<os> <type arch='i686' machine='pc'>hvm</type> <boot dev='hd'/> **<boot dev='cdrom'/>** <nowiki>//</nowiki>add this line **<bootmenu enable='yes'/>** <nowiki>//</nowiki>add this line </os>
…..
<disk type='file' device='cdrom'>
<target dev='hdc' bus='ide'/>
**<source file='/root/gparted-live-0.7.1-1.iso'/>** <nowiki>//</nowiki>add this line
<readonly/>
</disk>
virsh start deb01
The manual approach to get KVM to boot off a cdrom is only to have the line: <boot dev='cdrom'/>
Once you start the VM (virsh start vm), connect using VNC. You can right-click on the VNC window titlebar, send a CTRL+ALT+DELETE to reboot the VM and then press F12 to see the boot bios.
