hi everyone

Hello.

quick q: I'm revisiting the bhyve vms, last time I tried is long time ago. Reading the docs I'm not sure if this is the one to choose now or still KVM. my guest is FreeBSD. Last time I tried I couldn't get freebsd booting properly IIRC

I saw only minimal docs for bhyve in the wiki

so my question is should I go for KVM or bhyve for a new BSD VM

In most cases, bhyve is the better option.

ok. for booting from iso I still have to pass the extra options?

as in something like this "bhyve_extra_opts": "-s 3,ahci-cd,/omniosce-r151030.iso",

Yeah

ok will check that out tnx. vnc is implemented as well by now? (yeah it's long time ago I played with it ;)

I'd like to get it to work like kvm does, where you can specify a "boot one time" option, but vmadm is basically a single very large, unwieldy JS file.

hehe

vnc...kind of. I think it depends on which boot rom you use

as in?

jbk: Do you remember what the deal is with bhyve and vnc?

ktk: It's not something I use, and I didn't implement it, so I never remember

ktk: So there's the bootrom parameter in the vm payload. The default is "bios"

vnc only works with the UEFI bootrom

but it does work pretty well in my experience

Ok, so you can specify "bootrom": "uefi" in the json payload

andyf: your improvements have also helped

And that should select the correct boot rom file.

ISTR something about the port used in the vm config in smartos

i don't think you have to explicitly set it

but i also vaguely recall something about it can be disabled

On my bhyve instances, vmadm info <uuid> shows me a port, and I *can* connect to it. But it's a blank screen.

what are the VMs running?

I actually just use `zlogin -C <uuid>`

Mine's ubuntu

I can't recall if ubuntu will still spit stuff out on the fb/vga console if using a serial console

Yeah, I think that's just linux though.

It doesn't really have a concept of "no really, use serial for everything"

so if I manage to boot the iso with serial it might be easier then

I don't need vnc, I just need to get to shell to start ssh

Yeah.

regarding vmadm, the creation of the vm should still be done with the json payload & vmadm right?

like in the old days

yeh the BSDs handle console via zlogin -C just fine

Yes, always.

vmadm will always be the supported interface for creating instances.

ok tnx

will give it a try

I'm probably not the typical user as I really only use SmartOS as VM host for my VMs but it's still the nicest host systme out there IMO

as in hobby, not professional VM hosting

A lot of people do that actually.

ah really. can't even remember when I started, it's my second machine and it is reaching its end as well so I guess around 10ish years. can't even remember when SmartOS was made public

The first recorded commit is Oct 2010, and AFAIUI, it was always developed in the open.

oh ok. I think 2012 could fit for me then

That's about when I started using it as well.

I was first aware of it sometime in 2011, but I had a running OpenSolaris box that I didn't have time to replace until it died, then I went SmartOS, and never looked back.

yeah same. I was briefly on OpenIndiana or Illumos or however it was called back then

illumos is the upstream. {SmartOS,OpenIndiana,OmniOS,...} are distros of illumos.

bahamat: was the efi bootrom ever updated? SmartOS has had a really old one forever. Not sure anyone ever pulled in the one from OmniOS

No, I don't think so.

But, if it's well tested in OmniOS, we can probably bring it in.

Where is it at?

When I was running OpenSolaris I wanted to update to OpenIndiana, but I think I had already had a zfs update that made it incompatible, and locked me onto the Oracle side.

I think it's built from github.com/omniosorg/uefi-edk2

danmcd: ah ok

I think the releases section have the prebuilt binaries

andyf: did that ever get moved to illumos or does it just live under the omniosorg ?

Bryan Cantrill's "illumos fork yeah" talk from late-2011, or my "illumos at 5" talk from early-2016 (when it was actually 5.5 at that point) cover that history well.

hah could be that this is where I learned about it actually (brians talk)

ok I tried this for booting, don't seem to get anything on zlogin -C UUID:

vmadm update UUID bhyve_extra_opts="-s 3:0,ahci-cd,/FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso"

vmadm start UUID

from whatI get the current BSD images should have serial enabled by default

anything wrong on my extra_opts?

ah

will check that out tomorrow, early morning here. night!

still no support for mounting other things into bhyve zones? :)

nbjoerg: Depends on your definition of "things".

You can mount whatever the guest supports.

bahamat: like a null point of a /zones/iso

You might be able to lofi mount something manually.