FB 9.1 boot loader problem in VirtualBox

[Polytropon]

On Sun, 6 Jan 2013 12:09:12 +0000 (UTC), jb wrote:
> A general question: to what extent is FB Install aware of installation env (VB
> here) ?

FreeBSD can only detect hardware "certainly" to a specific point.
The idea behind virtualization is that it presents non-existent
devices as if they were real. This technology has become so great
that many operating systems don't distinguish anymore between real
hardware and emulated hardware. :-)



> If so, would it make sense to sanitize it to avoid offering install options that
> are irrelevant/inappropriate ?

FreeBSD is a general-purpose operating system. It can be used for
desktops, for laptops, servers without GPU and keyboard, and for
virtual environments. This is all possible with the _same_ OS
distribution. Disabling things the OS or the installer can do
in a way that it does _not_ do things depending on arbitrary
circumstances (instead of operator decisions) doesn't sound
as an ideal solution, it looks more like "hey look at me, I'm
a crippled OS installer which only works for one specific
virtualisation environment, and when you're done with installation,
there could be things you expect to work which I won't let
you do simply because!"

However, there _are_ tailored "appliances" of FreeBSD which
specificlally target virtualied environments. They are based
on FreeBSD as the OS, and add certain preinstallation and
preconfiguration.

Just have a look at this:

http://www.virtualbsd.info/

This interesting project even skips the step of manual installation.
Instead it offers a fully functional image for VMware and VirtualBox.

It builds on the foundation of FreeBSD, instead of demanding a
change of the OS to fit one limited use case by predefining
settings that might be inappropriate (or leaving out functionality
that would be irrelevant) in this _one_ application.

The strength of a general-purpose OS is that it can be applied in
many settings. It's the administrator's task to deal with the
implications that this set of features implies for any specific
case.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...