Re: bhyve without UEFI questions

  On 2024-01-22 23:57, Chuck Tuffli wrote:
> I'm getting conflicting information and thought I'd ask here about
> guest disk images without UEFI.
>
> 1. If bhyve can boot the image with uefi-csm, should I be able to get
> a graphical console? I tried:
>     -s 6:0,fbuf,tcp=0.0.0.0:5900,vga=io
> VNC connects, but the screen is blank. I saw some mentions of vga=on,
> but that generates an error message.

As far as I know, VGA emulation in bhyve still does not work as intended.

I did some work to fix this back in 2019, but the patches were never merged:

https://www.gulbra.net/freebsd-bhyve/

> 2. Instead of using uefi-csm, can bhyve boot SeaBIOS? I've tried -l
> bootrom,/tmp/seabios/out/bios.bin but I'm not sure that is working.

The problem is that you will need an emulated video card with its own 
Video BIOS, unless you pass through a real video device. My patches will 
give you that, but the code is non-trivial and has not been touched in 
almost five years. It would take some work to bring it up to date with 
the current baseline. I have been lingering on this list in the hope 
that someone with commit privileges would take an interest in BIOS 
booting and VGA graphics, but I guess most people only need UEFI nowadays.

/Henrik