FreeBSD 13 UFS/MBR Install Fails on VMDK, but works fine on VDI

Allan

Allan

I don't know if anyone else had come across this as of yet, but I set out today to see if I could create an OCI compliant image for Oracle Cloud of a minimal FreeBSD 13-RELEASE install. Part of the requirements for importing a custom image is that it must be a VMDK disk and partitioned with MBR (I don't have this issue with Azure; it seems like Oracle is always playing catchup, but that's another debate for another time on a different forum ;))

Anyway, the installer will crash (hung system) if I try to use "Auto UFS" on my blank 12GB VMDK disk. I tried partitioning it manually (via bsdinstall) but I get a very nondescript popup that says "invalid option." So, I opted to drop to the shell and partition it out by hand using gpart.

I can partition the drive successfully ( gpart create -s MBR ada0). However, the moment I attempt to add the first (boot) partition ( gpart add -t freebsd-boot -s 512 -l boot ada0) or any other partition for that matter, gpart errors out with "Invalid option."

However, if I do this on a VDI, it works fine.

For my workaround, I did the complete install on a VDI and then cloned the medium to a VMDK which then booted with no problem. Is this a known issue that I missed somewhere? Are there specific settings for a VMDK within VBox that need to be enabled to allow FreeBSD (gpart) to play nicely?
 
The freebsd-boot partition is for GPT systems, MBR doesn't use it.

Allan said:
or any other partition for that matter, gpart errors out with "Invalid option."
Click to expand...
With MBR you need to create partitions inside a slice. See the examples in gpart(8).
 
SirDice said:
The freebsd-boot partition is for GPT systems, MBR doesn't use it.


With MBR you need to create partitions inside a slice. See the examples in gpart(8).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response.

I hear what you're saying, and I'm going to explore further today, but please keep in mind that it's also failing when I attempt to use the "Auto UFS" option which is the installer doing all the partitioning. So, to summarize, if I allow the installer to auto partition my blank VDI drive as MBR, it works but if it's a VMDK (also blank), it fails.

For the manual install, I was following the instructions found here: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/procedure-for-manual-installation.64370/
 
Did a quick test install on Virtualbox 6.1 (Windows host) and FreeBSD 13.0 installed just fine with Auto (UFS) and MBR on a VMDK disk.
 
Same here. Tested dynamically allocated & fixed size for VMDK. They work both.
It's "Auto ZFS" (if you choose MBR) that doesn't work, no matter what the disk is.
 
I should have mentioned I'm on a macOS host. Sorry.

Problem is, my VMs are on my iMac, but depending on where I am, I could be using a Mac, a Surface (Win10), or even FreeBSD running on an old (white) MacBook or Dell Laptop! I'm so platform agnostic (the exception being Linux - I avoid that hot mess!) I forget what I'm using sometimes. Unless I'm sitting directly on my Mac machine, everything is VBoxManage via SSH and RDP or serial port redirection!
 
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