• Re: Bhyve with physical partitions?

    From Andreas Kempe@21:1/5 to All on Thu Dec 21 09:54:42 2023
    Den 2023-12-21 skrev David Chmelik <dchmelik@gmail.com>:
    Can one use physical partitions one multi-boots from in Bhyve in FreeBSD
    UNIX and keep multi-booting? I'd like to use Slackware GNU/Linux (and
    other OS) in Bhyve but still keep it on its partition.

    You can pass drives/partitions to bhyve just as you would image files.
    Passing -s 2,ahci-hd,/dev/nvd0p1 to bhyve makes the first partition on
    my NVME show up as a block device in the VM. I have never tried it
    myself with an existing installation, but I think it should be
    possible.

    If only passing partitions through I suspect you could have some
    issues with the bootloader since each partition becomes its own block
    device. You might have to either adjust the bootloader's settings or
    create a separate bootloader for that VM only.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Grant Taylor@21:1/5 to Andreas Kempe on Thu Dec 21 09:22:34 2023
    On 12/21/23 03:54, Andreas Kempe wrote:
    You can pass drives/partitions to bhyve just as you would image files. Passing -s 2,ahci-hd,/dev/nvd0p1 to bhyve makes the first partition
    on my NVME show up as a block device in the VM. I have never tried
    it myself with an existing installation, but I think it should be
    possible.

    The problem that I've had doing things like this -- admittedly with
    other hypervisors and other OSs -- is that it a partition is not an
    entire disk.

    Thus when the VM thinks it's working with an entire disk and slices and partitions therein, it's actually doing it inside of another partition
    as seen from the outside of the VM.

    To pull this off I've had to pass the entire drive to the VM so that
    it's inside view of the drive / block device matches the outside view of
    the drive / block device.

    If only passing partitions through I suspect you could have some
    issues with the bootloader since each partition becomes its own block
    device. You might have to either adjust the bootloader's settings or
    create a separate bootloader for that VM only.

    IMHO the boot loader issue is a second order problem based on the first
    order problem of nesting (slice & partitions inside a slice & partition).



    --
    Grant. . . .

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Andreas Kempe@21:1/5 to All on Thu Dec 21 16:14:46 2023
    Den 2023-12-21 skrev Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net>:
    On 12/21/23 03:54, Andreas Kempe wrote:
    You can pass drives/partitions to bhyve just as you would image files.
    Passing -s 2,ahci-hd,/dev/nvd0p1 to bhyve makes the first partition
    on my NVME show up as a block device in the VM. I have never tried
    it myself with an existing installation, but I think it should be
    possible.

    The problem that I've had doing things like this -- admittedly with
    other hypervisors and other OSs -- is that it a partition is not an
    entire disk.

    Thus when the VM thinks it's working with an entire disk and slices and partitions therein, it's actually doing it inside of another partition
    as seen from the outside of the VM.

    To pull this off I've had to pass the entire drive to the VM so that
    it's inside view of the drive / block device matches the outside view of
    the drive / block device.


    What kind of issues have you been having? When I pass a partition
    through, it appears as a block device without a partition table with a
    file system directly on the block device. Once Linux/FreeBSD is
    booted, I have never had an issue mounting and using the storage, ex.
    mount /dev/sda /mnt inside a Linux VM.

    That said, in the scenario where you multi-boot, passing the entire
    drive and selecting the right OS in the boot loader is probably the
    easiest solution, but I imagine things can go horribly wrong if you accidentally boot from the host's drive.

    Only tangentially related to the matter at hand, but I usually forego
    the partition table on things like USB sticks when I only want a
    single file system and have never had an issue with it.

    If only passing partitions through I suspect you could have some
    issues with the bootloader since each partition becomes its own block
    device. You might have to either adjust the bootloader's settings or
    create a separate bootloader for that VM only.

    IMHO the boot loader issue is a second order problem based on the first
    order problem of nesting (slice & partitions inside a slice & partition).


    Considering I've never tried doing this, the bootloader issue was
    mostly me speculating because it was really the only thing I could
    imagine having issues with considering both FreeBSD/Linux, in my
    experience, handle file systems directly on block devices just fine,
    but I don't know what Grub or other common bootloaders think of
    booting a drive without a partition table.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Grant Taylor@21:1/5 to Andreas Kempe on Thu Dec 21 23:28:33 2023
    On 12/21/23 10:14, Andreas Kempe wrote:
    What kind of issues have you been having? When I pass a partition
    through, it appears as a block device without a partition table with
    a file system directly on the block device.

    You answered your own question. "When you pass a partition through, it
    appears as a block device without a partition table with a file system
    directly on the block device."

    Once Linux/FreeBSD is booted, I have never had an issue mounting and
    using the storage, ex. mount /dev/sda /mnt inside a Linux VM.

    Even if it works, which Linux and FreeBSD probably can / will, it is an atypical arrangement to use a file system on a raw partitioned block device.

    What's more is that is different behavior inside vs outside of the virtualization. Ergo inconsistent behavior. Now you are dependent on
    an OS that can tolerate the inconsistency.

    There's also a decent chance that the actual device names will be
    different inside vs outside. How big of a problem that is will be
    dependent on the OS.

    I'll say it this way, the difference in accessing the block device
    inside vs outside will be different and non-transparent.

    That said, in the scenario where you multi-boot, passing the entire
    drive and selecting the right OS in the boot loader is probably the
    easiest solution, but I imagine things can go horribly wrong if you accidentally boot from the host's drive.

    I would suggest a different drive to avoid the issue that you mention.

    Only tangentially related to the matter at hand, but I usually forego
    the partition table on things like USB sticks when I only want a
    single file system and have never had an issue with it.

    Most *nix will work with that fairly well. Any time I've tried to have
    Windows access that flash drive (different computer I'm working on for a
    family member) things don't go well, if at all. Far more times than I
    care to count I've had to partition the drive and format the partition
    vs formatting the raw drive.

    Considering I've never tried doing this, the bootloader issue was
    mostly me speculating because it was really the only thing I could
    imagine having issues with considering both FreeBSD/Linux, in my
    experience, handle file systems directly on block devices just fine,
    but I don't know what Grub or other common bootloaders think of
    booting a drive without a partition table.

    Valid concerns.

    I've tried to do something similar with Solaris and the one time I did,
    the device names were significantly different and it was a non-starter.



    Grant. . . .

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Andreas Kempe@21:1/5 to All on Fri Dec 22 09:59:00 2023
    Den 2023-12-22 skrev Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net>:
    On 12/21/23 10:14, Andreas Kempe wrote:
    Once Linux/FreeBSD is booted, I have never had an issue mounting and
    using the storage, ex. mount /dev/sda /mnt inside a Linux VM.

    Even if it works, which Linux and FreeBSD probably can / will, it is an atypical arrangement to use a file system on a raw partitioned block device.

    What's more is that is different behavior inside vs outside of the virtualization. Ergo inconsistent behavior. Now you are dependent on
    an OS that can tolerate the inconsistency.

    There's also a decent chance that the actual device names will be
    different inside vs outside. How big of a problem that is will be
    dependent on the OS.

    I'll say it this way, the difference in accessing the block device
    inside vs outside will be different and non-transparent.


    A very good point. I only thought about the root device, which for
    Linux is passed by the bootloader so in my mind that probably wouldn't
    be an issue if one got the bootloader working. If you have any
    additional storage set up in the fstab, you will need to modify it
    for use as a VM.

    That said, in the scenario where you multi-boot, passing the entire
    drive and selecting the right OS in the boot loader is probably the
    easiest solution, but I imagine things can go horribly wrong if you
    accidentally boot from the host's drive.

    I would suggest a different drive to avoid the issue that you mention.


    Naturally. I was writing with David Chmelik's scenario in mind with a multi-boot and partitions.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Andreas Kempe@21:1/5 to All on Fri Dec 22 11:41:41 2023
    Den 2023-12-21 skrev David Chmelik <dchmelik@gmail.com>:
    Can one use physical partitions one multi-boots from in Bhyve in FreeBSD
    UNIX and keep multi-booting? I'd like to use Slackware GNU/Linux (and
    other OS) in Bhyve but still keep it on its partition.

    To not just talk out of my ass, I tried this with my Gentoo
    installation and got it to work.

    Create an image to use for a custom EFI:
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/efi.img
    mdconfig /path/to/efi.img
    gpart create -s GPT md0
    gpart add -t efi md0
    newfs_msdos /dev/md0p1

    Boot the VM using a live CD medium:
    bhyve -A -H -P -c 2 -m 2G -s 0,hostbridge \
    -s 1,lpc -s 2:0,ahci,hd:/path/to/efi.img,hd:/dev/gentoodevicep2 \
    -s 3,ahci-cd,/path/to/install-amd64-minimal-20231210T170356Z.iso \
    -s 4,virtio-net,tap4 -s 29,fbuf,tcp=0.0.0.0:5901,w=800,h=600,wait \
    -l bootrom,/usr/local/share/uefi-firmware/BHYVE_UEFI.fd testvm

    The iso is the Gentoo minimal install ISO. /path/to/efi.img is the
    custom EFI file system created earlier and /dev/gentoop2 is the
    partition where the Gentoo install resides.

    When the VM boots, /dev/sdb is the gentoo file system and /dev/sda1 is
    the EFI partition. Mount the file systems and chroot.

    mount /dev/sdb /mnt/gentoo
    mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/efi
    arch-chroot /mnt/gentoo

    In the chroot, backup the old grub config and generate a new one:
    cp -r /boot/grub /root
    grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/efi --removable
    grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

    I did not need to adjust the fstab since my fstab was empty. Make sure
    to check it if you have mounts in there.

    Exit the chroot and shut down the VM:
    exit
    shutdown -hP now

    The VM can now be booted without the installation medium and boots
    just fine:
    bhyve -A -H -P -c 2 -m 2G -s 0,hostbridge \
    -s 1,lpc -s 2:0,ahci,hd:/path/to/efi.img,hd:/dev/gentoodevicep2 \
    -s 4,virtio-net,tap4 -s 29,fbuf,tcp=0.0.0.0:5901,w=800,h=600,wait \
    -l bootrom,/usr/local/share/uefi-firmware/BHYVE_UEFI.fd testvm

    It is doable (since I did it), but how easy it is will depend on your distribution. I have not used Slackware so I am afraid I don't really
    know how easily the equivalent of what I did for my Gentoo
    installation would be.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Andreas Kempe@21:1/5 to All on Fri Dec 22 11:45:19 2023
    Den 2023-12-22 skrev Andreas Kempe <kempe@lysator.liu.se>:
    Den 2023-12-21 skrev David Chmelik <dchmelik@gmail.com>:
    Can one use physical partitions one multi-boots from in Bhyve in FreeBSD
    UNIX and keep multi-booting? I'd like to use Slackware GNU/Linux (and
    other OS) in Bhyve but still keep it on its partition.

    To not just talk out of my ass, I tried this with my Gentoo
    installation and got it to work.

    Create an image to use for a custom EFI:
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/efi.img
    mdconfig /path/to/efi.img
    gpart create -s GPT md0
    gpart add -t efi md0
    newfs_msdos /dev/md0p1
    mdconfig -u 0 -d

    The md0 device should be removed before using the image.

    Boot the VM using a live CD medium:
    bhyve -A -H -P -c 2 -m 2G -s 0,hostbridge \
    -s 1,lpc -s 2:0,ahci,hd:/path/to/efi.img,hd:/dev/gentoodevicep2 \
    -s 3,ahci-cd,/path/to/install-amd64-minimal-20231210T170356Z.iso \
    -s 4,virtio-net,tap4 -s 29,fbuf,tcp=0.0.0.0:5901,w=800,h=600,wait \
    -l bootrom,/usr/local/share/uefi-firmware/BHYVE_UEFI.fd testvm

    The iso is the Gentoo minimal install ISO. /path/to/efi.img is the
    custom EFI file system created earlier and /dev/gentoop2 is the
    partition where the Gentoo install resides.

    When the VM boots, /dev/sdb is the gentoo file system and /dev/sda1 is
    the EFI partition. Mount the file systems and chroot.

    mount /dev/sdb /mnt/gentoo
    mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/efi
    arch-chroot /mnt/gentoo

    In the chroot, backup the old grub config and generate a new one:
    cp -r /boot/grub /root
    grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/efi --removable grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

    I did not need to adjust the fstab since my fstab was empty. Make sure
    to check it if you have mounts in there.

    Exit the chroot and shut down the VM:
    exit
    shutdown -hP now

    The VM can now be booted without the installation medium and boots
    just fine:
    bhyve -A -H -P -c 2 -m 2G -s 0,hostbridge \
    -s 1,lpc -s 2:0,ahci,hd:/path/to/efi.img,hd:/dev/gentoodevicep2 \
    -s 4,virtio-net,tap4 -s 29,fbuf,tcp=0.0.0.0:5901,w=800,h=600,wait \
    -l bootrom,/usr/local/share/uefi-firmware/BHYVE_UEFI.fd testvm

    It is doable (since I did it), but how easy it is will depend on your distribution. I have not used Slackware so I am afraid I don't really
    know how easily the equivalent of what I did for my Gentoo
    installation would be.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Grant Taylor@21:1/5 to Andreas Kempe on Fri Dec 22 09:07:12 2023
    On 12/22/23 03:59, Andreas Kempe wrote:
    A very good point. I only thought about the root device, which
    for Linux is passed by the bootloader so in my mind that probably
    wouldn't be an issue if one got the bootloader working.

    I think Linux has some flexibility that makes this a little bit easier
    in that you can use UUID and / or a label that's part of the file system meta-data to identify the file system for root and / or other mount
    points. The kernel will then check all available block devices to
    locate the file system based on that. It's nice and can be quite handy
    in a dynamic hardware environment.

    I don't know if any other OSs have any capability like that.

    If you have any additional storage set up in the fstab, you will need
    to modify it for use as a VM.

    Most likely.

    My stance is that this may be technically possible to do, but that it
    will likely be ... problematic and not conducive for the average system remotely supported.

    Naturally. I was writing with David Chmelik's scenario in mind with
    a multi-boot and partitions.

    Fair enough.



    --
    Grant. . . .

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Grant Taylor@21:1/5 to Andreas Kempe on Fri Dec 22 09:26:19 2023
    Pre-script: I'm sick and tired of the UI->UX changes made in
    contemporary Thunderbird. Different buttons must now be used between
    email and news to direct replies where I want them to go. >:-|

    On 12/22/23 05:41, Andreas Kempe wrote:
    To not just talk out of my ass, I tried this with my Gentoo
    installation and got it to work.

    Testing is good.

    Aside: Are you running Gentoo (user space) on top of a FreeBSD kernel?
    -- I believe it's an officially supported configuration, but I think
    that most will assume Linux in association with Gentoo. The "bhyve" and "mdconfig" seem very *BSD to me.

    Create an image to use for a custom EFI:
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/efi.img
    mdconfig /path/to/efi.img
    gpart create -s GPT md0
    gpart add -t efi md0
    newfs_msdos /dev/md0p1

    Boot the VM using a live CD medium:
    bhyve -A -H -P -c 2 -m 2G -s 0,hostbridge \
    -s 1,lpc -s 2:0,ahci,hd:/path/to/efi.img,hd:/dev/gentoodevicep2 \
    -s 3,ahci-cd,/path/to/install-amd64-minimal-20231210T170356Z.iso \
    -s 4,virtio-net,tap4 -s 29,fbuf,tcp=0.0.0.0:5901,w=800,h=600,wait \
    -l bootrom,/usr/local/share/uefi-firmware/BHYVE_UEFI.fd testvm

    Would you please break down what that command is doing, what virtual
    hardware it's creating, how the disks are being backed, etc.

    I'm not familiar with bhyve. I know of it, but not much more.

    The iso is the Gentoo minimal install ISO. /path/to/efi.img is the
    custom EFI file system created earlier and /dev/gentoop2 is the
    partition where the Gentoo install resides.

    When the VM boots, /dev/sdb is the gentoo file system and /dev/sda1 is
    the EFI partition. Mount the file systems and chroot.

    mount /dev/sdb /mnt/gentoo
    mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/efi
    arch-chroot /mnt/gentoo

    The arch-chroot is a new one on me. A quick search makes me think it's
    just a wrapper around chroot with some creature features. Cool.

    In the chroot, backup the old grub config and generate a new one:
    cp -r /boot/grub /root

    What is your goal of copying /boot/grub to root's home directory; /root?

    grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/efi --removable grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

    I did not need to adjust the fstab since my fstab was empty. Make sure
    to check it if you have mounts in there.

    fstab is one of those things that's going to be very pointy if you use
    device paths. Less so if you use UUID and / or labels.

    Exit the chroot and shut down the VM:
    exit
    shutdown -hP now

    The VM can now be booted without the installation medium and boots
    just fine:
    bhyve -A -H -P -c 2 -m 2G -s 0,hostbridge \
    -s 1,lpc -s 2:0,ahci,hd:/path/to/efi.img,hd:/dev/gentoodevicep2 \
    -s 4,virtio-net,tap4 -s 29,fbuf,tcp=0.0.0.0:5901,w=800,h=600,wait \
    -l bootrom,/usr/local/share/uefi-firmware/BHYVE_UEFI.fd testvm

    It is doable (since I did it), but how easy it is will depend on your distribution.

    Sure. Lots of things are possible with Linux.

    Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park comes to mind: ... your scients were
    so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to
    think if they should.

    I'm all for a proof of concept for academic reasons. But I don't think
    I'd want to do many of the academic things that I've done in production.
    At least not as I did them.

    I have not used Slackware so I am afraid I don't really know how easily
    the equivalent of what I did for my Gentoo installation would be.

    :-)



    --
    Grant. . . .

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Andreas Kempe@21:1/5 to All on Fri Dec 22 21:51:50 2023
    Den 2023-12-22 skrev Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net>:
    Pre-script: I'm sick and tired of the UI->UX changes made in
    contemporary Thunderbird. Different buttons must now be used between
    email and news to direct replies where I want them to go. >:-|

    On 12/22/23 05:41, Andreas Kempe wrote:
    To not just talk out of my ass, I tried this with my Gentoo
    installation and got it to work.

    Testing is good.

    Aside: Are you running Gentoo (user space) on top of a FreeBSD kernel?
    -- I believe it's an officially supported configuration, but I think
    that most will assume Linux in association with Gentoo. The "bhyve" and "mdconfig" seem very *BSD to me.


    I have Gentoo with the Linux kernel on a block device. Gentoo with the
    FreeBSD kernel was abandoned a few years ago, if I'm not mistaken.

    mdconfig is a FreeBSD utility. I should have specified, but I made the experiment on my FreeBSD daily driver with a "normal" Gentoo
    installation on a block device with a proper partition table.

    Creating the partition table and file system in the EFI image was done
    from FreeBSD using mdconfig, gpart and newfs_msdos, but could just as
    well have been done using Linux tools from the installtion medium
    instead.

    Create an image to use for a custom EFI:
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/efi.img
    mdconfig /path/to/efi.img
    gpart create -s GPT md0
    gpart add -t efi md0
    newfs_msdos /dev/md0p1

    Boot the VM using a live CD medium:
    bhyve -A -H -P -c 2 -m 2G -s 0,hostbridge \
    -s 1,lpc -s 2:0,ahci,hd:/path/to/efi.img,hd:/dev/gentoodevicep2 \
    -s 3,ahci-cd,/path/to/install-amd64-minimal-20231210T170356Z.iso \
    -s 4,virtio-net,tap4 -s 29,fbuf,tcp=0.0.0.0:5901,w=800,h=600,wait \
    -l bootrom,/usr/local/share/uefi-firmware/BHYVE_UEFI.fd testvm

    Would you please break down what that command is doing, what virtual
    hardware it's creating, how the disks are being backed, etc.

    I'm not familiar with bhyve. I know of it, but not much more.


    -A - provide ACPI tables, not strictly needed, but I added it on by
    reflex

    -H - make the virtual CPU yield when idle to avoid constantly spinning

    -P - force the guest virtual CPU to exit when a PAUSE instruction is
    detected

    -c 2 - two virtual cores

    -m 2G - 2GB of memory

    -s 1,lpc - add an LPC PCI-ISA bridge for serial ports

    -s 2:0,ahci,hd:/path/to/efi.img,hd:/dev/gentoodevicep2 - provide an
    AHCI controller with two block devices backed by efi.img, a
    file, and gentoodevicep2, partition 2 of a GPT partitioned
    block device. They show up as /dev/{sda,sdb}.

    -s 3,ahci-cd,/path/to/install-amd64-minimal-20231210T170356Z.iso -
    provide an AHCI CD controller backed by an iso file.

    -s 4,virtio-net,tap4 - provide a network interface, I manually bridge
    it on the host

    -s 29,fbuf,tcp=0.0.0.0:5901,w=800,h=600,wait - graphics controller
    listening for a VNC connection, wait means that the VM waits for an
    incoming VNC connection before booting

    -l bootrom,/usr/local/share/uefi-firmware/BHYVE_UEFI.fd - bhyve UEFI
    firmware needed to boot an UEFI VM

    testvm - name of the virtual machine

    The iso is the Gentoo minimal install ISO. /path/to/efi.img is the
    custom EFI file system created earlier and /dev/gentoop2 is the
    partition where the Gentoo install resides.

    When the VM boots, /dev/sdb is the gentoo file system and /dev/sda1 is
    the EFI partition. Mount the file systems and chroot.

    mount /dev/sdb /mnt/gentoo
    mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/efi
    arch-chroot /mnt/gentoo

    The arch-chroot is a new one on me. A quick search makes me think it's
    just a wrapper around chroot with some creature features. Cool.


    The Gentoo install process uses a chroot and previously you had to
    manually mount devfs, proc, sysfs etc in the chroot. arch-chroot does
    the mounting for you so there is less to type.

    In the chroot, backup the old grub config and generate a new one:
    cp -r /boot/grub /root

    What is your goal of copying /boot/grub to root's home directory; /root?


    It's just a backup. I don't want to use my Gentoo installation this
    way so I wanted a simple way of restoring the bootloader config
    without having to boot the installation medium to generate a new one.

    grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/efi --removable
    grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

    I did not need to adjust the fstab since my fstab was empty. Make sure
    to check it if you have mounts in there.

    fstab is one of those things that's going to be very pointy if you use
    device paths. Less so if you use UUID and / or labels.

    Exit the chroot and shut down the VM:
    exit
    shutdown -hP now

    The VM can now be booted without the installation medium and boots
    just fine:
    bhyve -A -H -P -c 2 -m 2G -s 0,hostbridge \
    -s 1,lpc -s 2:0,ahci,hd:/path/to/efi.img,hd:/dev/gentoodevicep2 \
    -s 4,virtio-net,tap4 -s 29,fbuf,tcp=0.0.0.0:5901,w=800,h=600,wait \
    -l bootrom,/usr/local/share/uefi-firmware/BHYVE_UEFI.fd testvm

    It is doable (since I did it), but how easy it is will depend on your
    distribution.

    Sure. Lots of things are possible with Linux.

    Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park comes to mind: ... your scients were
    so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to
    think if they should.

    I'm all for a proof of concept for academic reasons. But I don't think
    I'd want to do many of the academic things that I've done in production.
    At least not as I did them.

    I have not used Slackware so I am afraid I don't really know how easily
    the equivalent of what I did for my Gentoo installation would be.

    :-)




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  • From Andreas Kempe@21:1/5 to All on Sun Dec 24 23:24:14 2023
    Den 2023-12-24 skrev David Chmelik <dchmelik@gmail.com>:
    On Fri, 22 Dec 2023 11:41:41 -0000 (UTC), Andreas Kempe wrote:

    Den 2023-12-21 skrev David Chmelik <dchmelik@gmail.com>:
    Can one use physical partitions one multi-boots from in Bhyve in
    FreeBSD UNIX and keep multi-booting? I'd like to use Slackware
    GNU/Linux (and other OS) in Bhyve but still keep it on its partition.

    To not just talk out of my ass, I tried this with my Gentoo installation
    and got it to work.

    Good to see some discussion ending up with people testing this and getting
    it working and explaining that for Gentoo GNU/Linux (which I'd also try
    this with, without UEFI).

    I looked for documentation on FreeBSD.org and BHyVe.org but didn't find
    much. Is there a manual somewhere in (e)textbook format other than just
    the manual page, or does one have to learn everything from that? I've
    found textbooks to be a bit more descriptive than many of the manual pages (some cryptic, some historically removed with the AT&T/whatever fiasco).

    I'm afraid I don't know of any really good bhyve resource. What I
    know, I've mostly learnt from reading man bhyve which at least has
    some good examples.

    For my daily behyve use, I use virt-manager and libvirtd since it now
    has a bhyve back-end. Unfortunately, the interactive configuration in virt-manager doesn't really support all the bhyve stuff so I have had
    to resort to XML editing and reading libvirt's wiki page[0] on the
    bhyve driver.

    [0]: https://libvirt.org/drvbhyve.html

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