a bhyve and Windows Server 2012R2 story

[Peter Grehan]

Hi Evan,

  Thanks for persevering :)

> [root at true11] /mnt/vm0/ds0/iso# pkg info | grep 7z
> p7zip-15.14                    File archiver with high compression ratio
>
> Unfortunately, it seems this version of 7z was not able to extract the
> UDF ISO correctly.

  I don't have that exact version of 2k12 but I was able to extract a 
2k15 tp5 ISO and verify that it was the same with 7z 15.14 and the older 
9.38 version. I'll try with some others and see how it goes.

> I also added NetKVM drivers from this version virtio-win-0.1.102.iso,
> not virtio-win-0.1.96.iso as was specified in the guide.

  Glad to hear the newer version worked. The 0.96 version should also be 
fine.

> My VM had a problem. It did boot and the SAC channels did start - but
> somewhere after WIMApplyImage message was displayed in the SACSetupAct
> - the VM would hang and top would show the bhyve process at 99% WCPU.
> I destroyed the VM after it hanged like this for 1 hour. It took some
> guessing, but eventually I recalled reading somewhere - possibly on a
> KVM/QEMU/Xen wiki page - that IOMMU is needed for more than 1 core.

  Shouldn't be anything to do with the IOMMU. I have noticed that 
Windows installs on AMD machines require 2 or more vCPUs. Still working 
that one out.

> I had difficulty at first with the network configuration. TrueOS has
> ipfw enabled and I suspect it was originally blocking my RDP traffic.
> Also, I did not have any successful network connections before I set
> and loaded what's described in 21.7.7 Persistent Configuration:
> https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/virtualization-host-bhyve.html
>
> At first, I attempted to RDP to an IP I had assigned from the SAC
> channel using the i <#> <ip> <netmask> <gateway> command. This never
> worked and I am not sure why. Eventually, I created a CMD channel,
> then used ipconfig to determine that Windows had leased a different IP
> via DHCP. Using RDP to reach the DHCP IP worked! Oddly, I did not see
> the static IP I had set in SAC updated with the DHCP one - but I
> checked later, and it was updated. I'm new to SAC and maybe this is
> just one of it's quirks. Not a FreeBSD problem in any case, but
> perhaps a stumbling block others on freebsd-virtualization may
> encounter.

  The AutoUnattend installation file specifies DHCP for config. If you 
want a fixed address, you should be able to get it either by modifying 
the AutoUnatted file prior to repack, or removing the DHCP config lines 
and configuring via SAC.

later,

Peter.