Fun with FreeBSD

[SL6-A1000]

Yeah, I've got a FreeBSD-7.3-RELEASE KVM guest installed on a RHEL 6.0 box.


What kind of VM software are you using?
What kind of networking issues are you having?
Is the BSD box supposed to use DHCP or static IP?
What have you done so far to get networking up on the BSD box?
Note that KVM uses dnsmasq and iptables to do a lot of the ip management of VM guests, so you may have to look at that setup.

I've always been interested in KVM, but when u look up KVM boxes etc they cost a bomb. So i have never really bothered setting one up.

Is it good? like in terms of performance, does KVM run alot slower?

Out of curiosity are you running FreeBSD on a Xen machine in RHEL 6 or just a virtual machine like virtualbox.

[atreyu]

I've always been interested in KVM, but when u look up KVM boxes etc they cost a bomb.

what does that mean? At a hosting provider they cost more? Or are you talking resource-heavy?

Is it good? like in terms of performance, does KVM run alot slower?

Well, slower than what? I don't use Xen or VMWare or Windows HyperVisor or anything. But I do use VirtualBox on Widows laptops sometimes. I do have one Dell 1340 Laptop with RHEL 6.0 installed and about 5 VM guests installed (Win2K, WinXP, Fedora 13, FreeBSD and one other, don't remember). I only have two running simultaneously at any one time, but I can say that both guests perform admirably. And the KVM host doesn't seem ill affected either, though to be fair I don't use it as a desktop machine. I just remote into it occasionally to manage the guests. I would definitely recommend looking into KVM, especially if you use a distro that has support for it built in (RHEL/Fedora/CentOS, etc.). I have another Asus laptop (weaker specs than the Dell) that has Win7 and VirtualBox with one Ubuntu guest. Now *that* set up is definitely more sluggish than the KVM setup on the other laptop. At least as far the the host goes (the Ubuntu guest - text only - is fine).

Out of curiosity are you running FreeBSD on a Xen machine in RHEL 6 or just a virtual machine like virtualbox.

I'm running FreeBSD as a KVM guest on RHEL 6, which does not use Xen, but, well, KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), and libvirtd. Red Hat opted for KVM instead. I think they did Xen for a little while, then ditched it b/c the kernel support for KVM got where it needed to get. So yeah, it is more like VirtualBox (not really sure what Xen is like - never used it).

[Lakshmipathi]

Since I'm not a fan of Gnome 3, any such shortage of functionality doesn't get in my way at all.

Yes,I don't like Gnome-3 tool . In fact, I raised a bug with Redhat's Fedora bugzilla - asking them to provide option for Gnome-2 with recent Fedora packages

Just for far warning the HAMMER filesystem doesn't perform so well in a virtual machine. They haven't fixed that side of it up yet (i believe they are working on it). Bare metal is the way to go for HAMMER FS if you really want to test it out.

Did you configure FreeBSD's network settings when you installed or after installation?

I don't think I'll be in a position to install FreeBSD/Dragonfly on bare-metal until I get familiar with them.
And also I'm not sure there GRUB(2) supports them or not.I try with VM first before moving to bare-metal.
I'll just keep an eye on Hammer development from time to time.

Yeah, I've got a FreeBSD-7.3-RELEASE KVM guest installed on a RHEL 6.0 box.


What kind of VM software are you using?
What kind of networking issues are you having?
Is the BSD box supposed to use DHCP or static IP?
What have you done so far to get networking up on the BSD box?
Note that KVM uses dnsmasq and iptables to do a lot of the ip management of VM guests, so you may have to look at that setup.

I'm using Virtual Box On Fedora-17. I didn't change anything specific to networking - Just using the default setting.

Wait a second,I tried the same freebsd from home today,it works perfectly. I can ping outside world. May be some firewall issues
in my work place prevented freebsd. Anyway,I'm about to install gnome-2 lets see

[SL6-A1000]

what does that mean? At a hosting provider they cost more? Or are you talking resource-heavy?

Well, slower than what? I don't use Xen or VMWare or Windows HyperVisor or anything. But I do use VirtualBox on Widows laptops sometimes. I do have one Dell 1340 Laptop with RHEL 6.0 installed and about 5 VM guests installed (Win2K, WinXP, Fedora 13, FreeBSD and one other, don't remember). I only have two running simultaneously at any one time, but I can say that both guests perform admirably. And the KVM host doesn't seem ill affected either, though to be fair I don't use it as a desktop machine. I just remote into it occasionally to manage the guests. I would definitely recommend looking into KVM, especially if you use a distro that has support for it built in (RHEL/Fedora/CentOS, etc.). I have another Asus laptop (weaker specs than the Dell) that has Win7 and VirtualBox with one Ubuntu guest. Now *that* set up is definitely more sluggish than the KVM setup on the other laptop. At least as far the the host goes (the Ubuntu guest - text only - is fine).



I'm running FreeBSD as a KVM guest on RHEL 6, which does not use Xen, but, well, KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), and libvirtd. Red Hat opted for KVM instead. I think they did Xen for a little while, then ditched it b/c the kernel support for KVM got where it needed to get. So yeah, it is more like VirtualBox (not really sure what Xen is like - never used it).

Oh ok kool. I was talking about a KVM switch.

Yes,I don't like Gnome-3 tool . In fact, I raised a bug with Redhat's Fedora bugzilla - asking them to provide option for Gnome-2 with recent Fedora packages


I don't think I'll be in a position to install FreeBSD/Dragonfly on bare-metal until I get familiar with them.
And also I'm not sure there GRUB(2) supports them or not.I try with VM first before moving to bare-metal.
I'll just keep an eye on Hammer development from time to time.

I'm using Virtual Box On Fedora-17. I didn't change anything specific to networking - Just using the default setting.

Wait a second,I tried the same freebsd from home today,it works perfectly. I can ping outside world. May be some firewall issues
in my work place prevented freebsd. Anyway,I'm about to install gnome-2 lets see

No need to worry about GRUB2. Just add something along the lines of this to your /etc/grub.d/xx_custom: ("xx" being whatever number you may have configured it too, 40 being the default)

menuentry "DragonflyBSD 3.2" {
set root= '(x,y)'
chainloader +1
}

That should allow you to boot just about any BSD OS, be it DragonflyBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD or OpenBSD.

Just make sure you allow it to install the BSD bootloader to the /root partition of that BSD system. Otherwise things become more complex when trying to dual-boot through GRUB2. Especially if your using HAMMER, I assume you understand GRUB2.

I'm using Virtual Box On Fedora-17. I didn't change anything specific to networking - Just using the default setting.

Wait a second,I tried the same freebsd from home today,it works perfectly. I can ping outside world. May be some firewall issues
in my work place prevented freebsd. Anyway,I'm about to install gnome-2 lets see

I was talking about the network configuration within FreeBSD, not how virtualbox network settings are configured.

[atreyu]

Oh ok kool. I was talking about a KVM switch.

yeah, i always thought that KVM was an unfortunate acronym.