Hi Michael,

thanks for vmrc.

I'm a first-time user of vmrc and bhyve ;) , and try to set up a centos image.

Choosing the centos65amd64iso, creating configuration and directories seems to work fine.

I'm dropped into the shell with a notice like
use /usr/local/etc/rc.d/vm onestart zimbra-centos2 to start your image...

Sadly, that drops me into a blank grub window...

Looking at the config file, it seems the machine is not started as iso.

So either the installation did not happen before, or the notice forgets to tell me how to boot the cdrom.

I'm now fumbling with booting manually - have to google a bit about grub...

Ask away if you need more information.

Cheers, Mathias

Hallo!

first, vmrc is awesome, but a few things with linux vm's could be better. i will tell you my experience.

if i want to boot a linux vm, i cannot use vmrc. i build my ubuntu/debian/centos on a zvol in /dev/zvol/zroot/vmname1 and always if i use "service vm start vmname1" the script generates a device.map with an img volume. after that, the grub-bhyve does not find the img because there is no and grub is waiting for input...
i found the line in your code, it's on /vmrc/vm on line 903 and on line 405. there is always an echo in the device.map file for an img volume. there is no chance to boot linux from a zvol isnt it?
all my linux vm's work with this commands :

grub.in should looks like this
echo "set root=(hd0,msdos1)" >> grub.in
echo "linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/vda1 quiet splash " >> grub.in
echo "initrd /initrd.img" >> grub.in
echo "boot" >> grub.in

BOOT IT:
grub-bhyve -r hd0 -m /usr/local/vmrc/vm/vmname1/device.map -M 2048 vmname1 < /usr/local/vmrc/vm/vmname1/grub.in > /dev/null

START IT:
tmux new -d -s "vmname1" "eval bhyve -c 4 -m 2048M -H -P -A -s 0:0,hostbridge -s 1:0,lpc -s 2:0,virtio-net,tap8070 -s 3,ahci-cd,vmname1.iso -l com1,stdio -s 4,virtio-blk,/dev/zvol/zroot/vmname1 vmname1"

that works! and i got a linux vm with a tmux session :)
that should work with vmrc, if device.map is not generated on "service vm start vmname1" i think.
any idea how to fix my problem??

greetings from germany

It'd be nice to provide an optional mac address through a template:
-s 2:0,virtio-net,tap0,mac=00:00:00:00:00:00

The vm script appear to ignore the value of vm_dev_type in the vm.conf file when booting install CD
using a command like service vm oneiso vm1

This line hard codes image in the device map

line 312:  echo "(hd0) $host_vmdir/$1/${1}.img" > $host_vmdir/$1/device.map

The workaround is to create vm1.img as a symlink to the right zvol. Perhaps in the case of a non-img setting the mkvm.sh could create this link just as it creates a symlink to the iso.

with the symlink in place everything worked smoothly, thanks

Using this:

linux (hd0,msdos1)/vmlinuz-2.6.32-431.el6.x86_64 ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root
initrd (hd0,msdos1)/initramfs-2.6.32-431.el6.x86_64.img
boot

works. The snapshot conf is missing the (hd0,msdos1) part...

I'm looking at f_netstart() in the vm script, and it appears to not fit with my set up. I have a private bridge configured with an IP which is not connected to my host system's NIC. For me the easiest change would be to disable this function. The only issue I have with the function is when it attempts to add ${host_nic} to ${host_bridge}. Possibly there can be a check to see if ${host_nic} is non empty then execute the addm.

Setting the vm_password to a value like "change me" will result in root having no password on boot of the VM.

Using 94be946 and after having created a VM using a zvol I need to change to /usr/local/vmrc/vm to be able to "service vm onestart myvm". Is this to be expected?

I can see stat for "myvm" but not within /usr/local/vmrc/vm.

It would be really nice to have a way to spin the machine up and do some setup things like get salt installed and pre-seeded with their respective master and to put them into a "highstate" on the first boot of the VM.

Maybe the template can specify a vm_firstboot FreeBSD specific key that can contain the path to a script to put inplace as firstboot on the filesystem?

File ifconfig_cmd.sh after the change and reboot the machine is overwritten default variables.