bhyve How to run (very) old Linux under bhyve?

[spork]

I'm trying to work with a really old Debian VM brought over from esxi and I'm not having much luck.

It does seem to boot, mostly, with the "grub" bhyve loader, but the serial console becomes unresponsive at some point in the boot process. It does seem to still be running, but I cannot interact with it.

I really want to see the full boot on a graphics console just so I can perhaps tell what's going on. UEFI mode I don't believe works with very old OSes like this (Debian Squeeze - 2015?), but there apparently was something called "UEFI-csm" that was UEFI with BIOS emulation. That port died during the python3 upgrade though.

What are people doing to boot really old OSes that want to see something that looks like a traditional BIOS and want to have a true graphics console?

 

[Emrion]

I would say they use emulators/virtualbox-ose.

 

[spork]

I would say they use emulators/virtualbox-ose.

Oh, I should note the host running bhyve is headless...

 

[Deleted member 82802]

UEFI mode I don't believe works with very old OSes like this (Debian Squeeze - 2015?)

Just for the note: FreeBSD supports UEFI booting since 2014 (10.1-RELEASE), I doubt linux distros are/were behind us.

 

[spork]

Just for the note: FreeBSD supports UEFI booting since 2014 (10.1-RELEASE), I doubt linux distros are/were behind us.

I would not have the slightest clue how to convert a VM that originated with legacy BIOS to boot w/EFI...

 

[cracauer@]

Oh, I should note the host running bhyve is headless...

You can use VNC over X11 forwarding.

 

[kpedersen]

If it is old, it might be a bit lighter on resources. You might get away with qemu?

 

[spork]

You can use VNC over X11 forwarding.

I'm trying really hard not to install a DE on this thing...

 

[fff2024g]

bhyve don't support BIOS . so you can't install very old linux vm .
virtualbox-ose can support BIOS. so you can install very old linux vm.
wish to help you.
by the way , the bhyve can't work with virtualbox-ose together.

 

[momocraft]

And lack of a BIOS may not be the last problem.

Emulator like qemu could have a chance (but IDK how well it works on FreeBSD) I guess? At least qemu can run headlessly.

 

[spork]

lol, so I'm a fool… I know next to nothing about Linux, and very little about how bhyve's console works. With the loader set to "grub" I've had successful boots, but at some point console output stops. This VM is not setup for networking yet, so I can't ping it or ssh to it to check status. But the "hang" is right after some daemon failing to start because it really wants networking.

Now I don't know what magic goes on in bhyve to make grub and then the linux kernel output via serial to bhyve's "virtual" serial console, but that certainly works. After some googling and playing with inittab, I got a post-boot getty spawning and the guest has been booting just fine all along, it just stopped output after boot. Oops!