Crazy Macer Life

there are other options to use for virtual machines but i am going to go with the freebsd project standard, bhyve.

# kldload vmm

# editor /boot/loader.conf
...
vmm_load="YES"

this will load the virtual machine module for freebsd. for management i am going to go with vm-bhyve which is now part of the whole freebsd.org team of things. these instructions are taken directly from their github page.

1. pkg install vm-bhyve
2. zfs create pool/vm
3. sysrc vm_enable="YES"
4. sysrc vm_dir="zfs:pool/vm"
5. vm init
6. cp /usr/local/share/examples/vm-bhyve/* /mountpoint/for/pool/vm/.templates/
7. vm switch create public
8. vm switch add public em0
9. vm iso https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/ISO-IMAGES/14.2/FreeBSD-14.2-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso
10. vm create myguest
11. vm install [-f] myguest FreeBSD-14.2-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso
12. vm console myguest

i am going to do things just a little bit differently though because i already set up a bridge for jails. might as well keep that there.

# pkg install vm-bhyve

# zfs create platters/vm-bhyve

# zfs set mountpoint=/usr/local/vm-bhyve platters/vm-bhyve

# sysrc vm_enable="YES"
vm_enable:  -> YES

# sysrc vm_dir="zfs:platters/vm-bhyve"
vm_dir:  -> zfs:platters/vm-bhyve

# vm init

# ls /usr/local/vm-bhyve/
.config         .img            .iso            .templates

# cp /usr/local/share/examples/vm-bhyve/* /usr/local/vm-bhyve/.templates/

# ls /usr/local/vm-bhyve/.templates/
alpine.conf             centos7.conf            debian.conf             freebsd-zvol.conf       linux-zvol.conf         resflash.conf
arch.conf               config.sample           default.conf            freepbx.conf            netbsd.conf             ubuntu.conf
centos6.conf

# vm switch create -t manual -b bridge0

# vm switch list
NAME    TYPE    IFACE    ADDRESS  PRIVATE  MTU  VLAN  PORTS
public  manual  bridge0  n/a      no       n/a  n/a   n/a

since i have the jails in /usr/loca/bastille i thought it consistent to put vms in /usr/local/vm-bhyve. to each their own. since i have bridge0 running already for jails i went ahead and used the -t manual and -b bridge0 flags to add the virtual switch to bridge0. bridge0 is using lagg0 which in turn is using all the ports on the server. so my configuration is [ix0, igb0, igb1] ➡️[lagg0]➡️[bridge0]➡️vm-public(vswitch) if that makes any sense.

that should be it for the setup of vm-bhyve. i will test it later and see how it goes with debian or something since i had a bad go of debootstrap in freebsd (spat out some usr-is-merged error). tbf the resources saved by using linux jails probably doesn’t justify it but i wanted to at least have the option.