question on bhyve + 9-stable

[Peter Grehan]

Hi Alfred,

> I only have 1 really fast machine, so I've decided to give bhyve a whirl
> and try to do -stable development inside of a bhyve instance.

  Great !

> The problem I'm having is that:
> 1) the 9.1-RELEASE image does not seem to boot because it can not mount
> the rootfs (iso). I think this may be due to missing virtualization
> modules.

  Yep, that's right. Michael Dexter has pre-built virtio modules at

     http://mirrors.nycbug.org/pub/BHyVe/r244024/

  .. and I guess the long-term solution for running older FreeBSD 
releases is to have bhyve implement block/network device models that 
will be recognized. AHCI looks like a good pick for a block model: any 
input on a network device would be appreciated (e1000 does seem to stick 
out).

> 2) building release iso from 9-stable, while it has the klds needed, the
> image seems to causes the hypervisor to exit.

  That's the new TSC sync detection code, which does a CPUID with 
basically a random leaf value. bhyve should deal with that: a fix will 
be in when I'm back from vacation. But, in the meantime, there are two 
workarounds:

  - use single CPU only (-c 1), or

  - force the hard-coded hypervisor detection code in FreeBSD to trigger 
with a loader variable

     set smbios.bios.vendor="Bochs"

    ... and, since the TSC is actually OK, force the use of that as the 
timecounter

     set kern.timecounter.invariant_tsc=1
     set kern.timecounter.smp_tsc=1

later,

Peter.