Building a Headless FreeBSD Virtual System
Martin McCormick
martin at dc.cis.okstate.edu
Wed Aug 29 15:37:24 UTC 2012
I am using Oracle's VirtualBox package for the Mac. It is free and I
am not sure that Dollars would get past the issue I have, here.
VirtualBox uses Microsoft's remote desktop as the one
and only output channel to allow remote access to the virtual
system one is creating and this is really bad design for
computer users who are blind and use screen readers. Pictures of
text just don't work. If you had some very complex system with
OCR, it might sort of work, but such systems don't exist as a
drop-in for a good old ASCII terminal so that's not an option.
So far, I downloaded the bootonly ISO image of
FreeBSD9.0, mounted it and added the following loader.conf:
boot_multicons="YES"
boot_serial="YES"
comconsole_speed="115200"
console="comconsole,vidconsole"
vesa_load="YES"
Next, I used VirtualBoxmanage to define the disk and
create the machine with a virtual IDE controller that is pointed
to the ISO image for FreeBSD9.0 with the serial console.
Has anybody been able to use VirtualBox and a fake
serial console to get around the remote desktop non solution?
I will probably have to add a virtual serial port in the
machine definition one puts in the original machine build, but I
am not sure this doesn't just go to that remote desktop channel
where it gets scrubbed of any usefulness except for eyeballs on
screens.
This whole thing looks very promising but there's got to
be a way around that shoe which doesn't fit in the form of that
GUI remote desk top.
In my case, the machine build goes without error but I
can't tell yet if it is even booting.
Mac's, by the way, have a relatively good screen reader
built in but VirtualBox doesn't work with it, something that is
a problem with a number of third-party programs especially when
they were originally developed for Windows. This, of course,
does not pertain to the main topic of this list, but I say it
here so that you know I am aware you are supposed to be able to
use the GUI on the Mac to manage your new virtual system.
Essentially, the local GUI and the remote desktop don't work for
me for the same reasons.
My hope is to get FreeBSD running as a guest system on
a powerful Mac and retire an old Dell server with noisy fans and
several BTU of heat output which is in the realm of 15 years old
and will probably retire itself at some random date in the
future.
Thank you for any good suggestions.
Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group
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