bhyve - non *bsd guests

[Scott Pilz]

 	No issues with the Intel E5-2650v2 running multiple processors 
per guest and Linux/OpenBSD? Just want to verify before I place a 
rather large order of hardware. Thanks.

 	Scott

On Tue, 26 Nov 2013, Scott Pilz wrote:

>
> 	Thank you for your quick answer, and I'm not surprised by this. Makes 
> perfect sense. I ran into the 1-CPU issue when I first started my testing.
>
> 	I'll ensure that the new IX blade system we're going with as 
> supported processors.
>
> 	Keep up the great work. I'll be happy to do some extensive testing 
> under various environments on this project if needed.
>
> 	Scott
>
> On Tue, 26 Nov 2013, Peter Grehan wrote:
>
>> 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.
>> 
>> 
>