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Date:      Thu, 6 Nov 2014 11:52:35 -0800
From:      Craig Rodrigues <rodrigc@FreeBSD.org>
To:        "freebsd-virtualization@freebsd.org" <freebsd-virtualization@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Booting a bhyve VM with NFS root?
Message-ID:  <CAG=rPVdeVRpK%2BN4P4Y4Qd%2BKfEPKQAdFgxGq=_O2dOFSGGwELEQ@mail.gmail.com>

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Hi,

Has anyone tried the following:

   (1)  Create a disk image, which only has the contents of the /boot
directory
         and /etc/fstab.
   (2)  /etc/fstab should specify the root file system over NFS
   (3)  Boot the disk image in bhyve.  The loader will parse /etc/fstab,
         and it will also load the kernel and boot it.  When the kernel
boots
         it will mount the root file system over NFS.

For a real system running with a BIOS, PXE can be used for a lot of this:
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/network-diskless.html

The pxeldr populates some kernel environment variables which are then
used to mount a root file system:

https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/sys/nfs/nfs_diskless.c?revision=273174&view=markup#l145

Has anyone tried manually specifying these variables
via the "bhyveload -e" arguments, and forcing the VM to mount its root file
system over NFS?

This would be handy for very quickly test booting a new buildworld.

--
Craig



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