How to run FreeBSD with GUI (Gnome), using a VM without graphic card !?

[Louis]

I have installed FreeBSD14 in a VM on TrueNAS Scale. That works using the command line.
However, I would like to use a GUI if possible GNOME.

So I installed xrdp and gnome and did add some lines in rc.conf

gnome_enable="YES"
moused_enable="YES"
dbus_enable="YES"
hald_enable="YES"
gdm_enable="YES"

After reboot I hoped to see the gui (using TrueNas SPICE) but not so.
So I did startx as root. Which did show an error

(EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.
xinit: giving up
xinit: unable to connect to X server: Connection refused

That error seems to be related to a missing graphic card driver. And yep there is no graphic card attached to this VM.
And if possible, I prefer to keep it that way, since I only have one (extra) video card in the NAS
(and you can not share ^normal^ video cards )

I have a Fedora VM also without graphic card, with GUI. However, I did not manage that for FreeBSD.

So hopefully a GUI without graphic card is possible and someone can explain how to do that !!

 

[SirDice]

Boot the FreeBSD guest with UEFI, that should enable the efifb and you can use that with scfb(4).

 

[nxjoseph]

Don't forget to add your normal user to the "video" group before running X.

 

[SirDice]

Don't forget to add your normal user to the "video" group before running X.

Don't need this, only with the DRM drivers.

 

[SirDice]

hald_enable="YES"

Remove this. sysutils/hal disappeared a long time ago.

 

[Louis]

Thanks so much!

- I removed hald_enable="YES"
and added
/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-scfb.conf
with as content:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "scfb"
EndSection

The GUI is starting and I can log in (as user) form spice, but than it stops mouse and keyboard are not working.
After that I have to make the GUI accessible form windows using xrdp I think

 

[Louis]

I did not manage the issues I still had to manage above:
- I do not manage th get the mouse and keyboard working using spice; And I noticed that others have the same problem
- I have xrdp working on communication level, but it does not display the gui. Something is wrong there. I will create a separate question related to that one.