bhyve VM drive size limit?

[Dylan Williams]

Dear all,

Is there a limit with respect to the size of the virtual drive I can create for a VM using bhyve? Presumably not but I’m running into problems with a larger drive.

I am trying to create a 4T Ubuntu machine on a FreeBSD11.1 server using iohyve. There’s plenty of drive space available so it’s not a drive space issue. I am able to create a 40G machine without any problems but exactly the same commands to create a 4000G machine results in a server that won’t boot past Grub. Is this an iohyve issue perhaps?

Commands used that results in a working Ubuntu server:

iohyve create ubu 40G
iohyve set ubu loader=grub-bhyve os=debian ram=40G cpu=10
iohyve install ubu ubuntu-16.04.3-server-amd64.iso <ftp://ftp.cuhk.edu.hk/pub/Linux/ubuntu-releases/16.04.3/ubuntu-16.04.3-server-amd64.iso>

Commands used that results in a broken Ubuntu server:

iohyve create ubu 4000G
iohyve set ubu loader=grub-bhyve os=debian ram=40G cpu=10
iohyve install ubu ubuntu-16.04.3-server-amd64.iso <ftp://ftp.cuhk.edu.hk/pub/Linux/ubuntu-releases/16.04.3/ubuntu-16.04.3-server-amd64.iso>

The screen I get in the console when I boot (iohyve start ubu) the 4T machine is:

                             GNU GRUB  version 2.00

   Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB
   lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists possible
   device or file completions.


grub>

Does anyone have any ideas? I’ve been at this for hours trying different configurations. LVM is not selected when installing either of the above machines as that seems to cause more problems.

Many thanks,
Dylan.