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8 Replies Last post: Apr 24, 2005 12:44 PM by peppert  

FreeBSD as guest operating system posted: Apr 21, 2004 5:22 AM

Click to view vikers's profile Novice
vikers
18 posts since
Apr 21, 2004
Hi.

Anyone managed to install FreeBSD (4.x) on ESX 2, or does anyone know if VMWare are planning to support FreeBSD on ESX 2?

Best regards,
Anders Vikenes
Norway

Re: FreeBSD as guest operating system

1. Apr 21, 2004 4:42 PM in response to: vikers
Click to view Anders's profile Expert
Anders
1,301 posts since
Oct 3, 2003
FreeBSD support was removed from 2.x and onwards.
I code is still there though, just manually change guestos to freebsd.

I've managed to make 5.2 work by adding:

acpi.present="FALSE"
monitor_control.disable_apic="TRUE"

This might be redundant for STABLE though...

- Anders

Re: FreeBSD as guest operating system

2. Apr 21, 2004 4:47 PM in response to: Anders
Click to view Anders's profile Expert
Anders
1,301 posts since
Oct 3, 2003
Oh BTW: you even get the cute BSD deamon on the status page... :D

- Anders

Re: FreeBSD as guest operating system

3. Apr 22, 2004 11:25 PM in response to: Anders
Click to view vikers's profile Novice
vikers
18 posts since
Apr 21, 2004
Hi.

Thanks for the tips, but i'm not able to find any disk when doing the partitioning. Did you use another kernel under installation, or is there any kernel patches for reading esx disks?

Best regards,
Anders

Re: FreeBSD as guest operating system

4. Apr 25, 2004 4:25 AM in response to: vikers
Click to view Anders's profile Expert
Anders
1,301 posts since
Oct 3, 2003
No special patches.
I think I used the buslogic virtual SCSI interface,
but you could try the LSI controller, just to be on the safe side.
As I said, I've only run UNSTABLE, not sure about 4.9.

I did try different kernels, but don't remeber what I ended up with.
The kernel choices are different anyway ?
STABLE does not give you the option of ACPI during installation ?

- Anders

Re: FreeBSD as guest operating system

5. Apr 26, 2004 12:02 AM in response to: Anders
Click to view vikers's profile Novice
vikers
18 posts since
Apr 21, 2004
When using BUSLogic i see the disk during dmesg, but still it says "no disks found" when choosing partition in sysinstall. (FreeBSD 4.9) When using 5.2.1 i don't get any info about disks during boot.

<VMWare virtual disk 1.0> Fixed direct access SCSI-2 Device
1500MB (3072000 512 byte sectors: 128H 32S/T 750C

Best regards,
Anders

Re: FreeBSD as guest operating system

6. Sep 22, 2004 5:01 PM in response to: vikers
Click to view Anders's profile Expert
Anders
1,301 posts since
Oct 3, 2003
By popular demand, here is my config.
No wonder noone got it working, I used the LSI controller... *blush*

- Anders

#!/usr/bin/vmware
config.version = "6"
virtualHW.version = "3"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.virtualDev = "vmxlsilogic"
memsize = "256"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.fileName = "/ISO/5.2.1-RC2-i386-miniinst.iso"
ide0:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
floppy0.startConnected = "FALSE"
floppy0.fileName = "/dev/fd0"
Ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
Ethernet0.connectionType = "monitor_dev"
Ethernet0.devName = "vmnic0"
Ethernet0.networkName = "Adapter0 Network"
usb.present = "FALSE"
RemoteDisplay.depth = "16"
displayName = "FreeBSD5.2.1"
guestOS = "freebsd"
checkpoint.cptConfigName = "FreeBSD5.2.1-651f1d71"
priority.grabbed = "normal"
priority.ungrabbed = "normal"

scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.name = "VMFS:FreeBSD5.2.1.dsk"
draw = "gdi"

scsi0.sharedBus = "none"

acpi.present="FALSE"

Ethernet0.addressType = "vpx"
uuid.location = "56 4d 09 48 f7 8c 88 16-eb d1 7c 8e 25 36 71 52"
uuid.bios = "56 4d 09 48 f7 8c 88 16-eb d1 7c 8e 25 36 71 52"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:50:56:8f:00:29"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
monitor_control.disable_apic="TRUE"

ide0:0.startConnected = "TRUE"

Re: FreeBSD as guest operating system

7. Jan 7, 2005 9:12 AM in response to: Anders
Click to view DougBaer's profile Expert
DougBaer
602 posts since
Oct 20, 2004
This is supported, officially, under ESX 2.5.

However, I've had a problem booting my FreeBSD 4.10 machine periodically. Install worked fine, but something seems to have gone nuts and the VM will no longer boot. Just hangs during the boot process. Even trying to boot from the install CD now fails.

The default that ESX picked when I chose to install FreeBSD was the BusLogic controller, though.

The box hangs consistently at the line:

ppi0: <Parallel I/O> on ppbus0

Message was edited by: DougBaer

Re: FreeBSD as guest operating system

8. Apr 24, 2005 12:44 PM in response to: DougBaer
Click to view peppert's profile Novice
peppert
15 posts since
Mar 31, 2005
this is working in 2.5 w/ 5.3-RELEASE for install and boot, if you manually edit the config changes as per above. However, the tools do not fully run (aborts on launching the memory driver). I'm trying to work out if they're compilable.

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