From owner-freebsd-virtualization@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jan 3 17:43:35 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-virtualization@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 22D203DF for ; Fri, 3 Jan 2014 17:43:35 +0000 (UTC) Received: from alto.onthenet.com.au (alto.OntheNet.com.au [203.13.68.12]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D887A1224 for ; Fri, 3 Jan 2014 17:43:34 +0000 (UTC) Received: from dommail.onthenet.com.au (dommail.OntheNet.com.au [203.13.70.57]) by alto.onthenet.com.au (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 483A511DF0; Sat, 4 Jan 2014 03:43:27 +1000 (EST) Received: from Peter-Grehans-MacBook-Pro-2.local ([64.245.0.210]) by dommail.onthenet.com.au (MOS 4.2.4-GA) with ESMTP id BQZ76556 (AUTH peterg@ptree32.com.au); Sat, 4 Jan 2014 03:43:26 +1000 Message-ID: <52C6F6BC.6070108@freebsd.org> Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2014 09:43:24 -0800 From: Peter Grehan User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.2.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Andrea Brancatelli Subject: Re: Real Device with BHyve References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-virtualization@freebsd.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-virtualization@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.17 Precedence: list List-Id: "Discussion of various virtualization techniques FreeBSD supports." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2014 17:43:35 -0000 Hi Andrea, > Well, the machine starts ok but when the "child" FreeBSD starts > installation something strange happens. When I get to the partitioning > screen I can see the device avaiable as /dev/vtdb0 with the correct size > and such. I choose autopartitioning, the installer writes the partition > table but when it start to write /dev/vtdb0p2 a very cryptic error appears > about being unable to write - sorry, did not write it down. > > The installer then stops. > > If I do a fdisk /dev/vtdb0 in the VM I can see the GPT partition being > there. If I do a fdisk /dev/da2 on the host machine, I can see the GPT > partition as well, but the VM just doesn't want to write on it. > > I even tried changing kern.geom.debugflags=16 as I thought the host machine > could be locking somehow the drive, but that didn't seem to make any > difference. I know it was a lame check but I was out of ideas. > > So I just wanted to understand if such a scenario is supposed to be > supported.... It is. Been a while since I've done this but will try a repro. Other folk have supported success using zvols so I'd assumed it was working. > What I was thinking of, for example, was of having an external iSCSI device > connected on the hostmachine mapped as a virtual disk for a specific VM, in > order to speed the VM disk performances. Yes, that's one of the scenarios in mind. > Just another quick question... I have seen some improvements by having the > VM's virtual disk on ZFS against UFS. Is it just me or is there any real > improvement by using ZFS? Difficult question to answer - probably workload-dependent. later, Peter.