bhyve - non *bsd guests

[Peter Grehan]

Hi Scott,

>      The error I'm getting is:
>
> VM unrestricted guest capability required
> Error in initializing VM

  It's this one:

 > b) the CPU does not support what I'm trying to do

  Your 5570 CPU is a first-gen Nehalem. These models don't have 
'unrestricted-guest' VT-x support which is required to run code in 
16/32-bit mode with paging disabled. This feature arrived with Westmere 
and successors.

  grub-bhyve boots Linux and OpenBSD in 32-bit "flat" mode - protected 
mode with paging disabled. This can only work if unrestricted-guest is 
supported by the CPU. Other hypervisors work around this by using s/w 
instruction emulation until paging is enabled.

  You'll find the same error if you start up a FreeBSD VM with > 1 vCPU 
since the AP spinup code is started in 16-bit real mode.

  This doesn't show up with a single-vCPU FreeBSD guest since bhyveload 
sets up a 64-bit execution environment for the kernel.

later,

Peter.