Should FreeBSD port NetBSD's NVMM?

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gh_legacy said:
You can't stop mocking me? ?
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I don't know if I am the only one who thinks so, but you were a little unfair in some things (not only here iirc). The sentence came across as if you had a right or it should be naturally that the latest version should be in the ports. This is something that can not be done just by the way.
 
gh_legacy said:
You can't stop mocking me? ?
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Well, actually i try to but when someone attacks other people over "cheap talk" while not contributing to realizing their own "wishlist items" i get a bit grumpy. Alexander88207 put it quite nicely. There is a certain level of entitlement coming across. It might be a language/written communication thing but that's how it comes across for (seemingly not only) me.

There is nothing wrong with desiring certain features (even if it seems pointless to most people - like my wish to customize the amount and locations of running X servers doesn't make sense to the general public). You just can't expect anyone to invest a lot of time/energy (and that's basically what porting a whole different technology comes down to) into your problems for no personal gain at all. While people around here seem generally very generous and helpful there is a certain line where one is just asking to much.

Concerning your gripes with bhyve you might be better off describing your actual problems. People would very likely try to come up with solutions (well, at least as long as your problem isn't something along the lines of "I want to play Super Tux on SpongebobSquarepants Linux 0.1 but there is no 3D acceleration...") or you might even convince some developer to push out improvements but asking for a whole new system to be integrated is not likely to be going anywhere.

I am very well aware that i am talking from somewhat of a high horse since i am actually capable of helping myself most of time which probably isn't an option for an ordinary user. I am also not saying that you should learn how to code and to everything yourself but i guess it would be very useful if you'd at least familiarize yourself with the development process a bit (if only to get a feel for the amount work certain tasks require). Your tendency to try things might make you into a pretty valuable tester if your conclusions just weren't often so radical and out of this world from a developers perspective.
 
Phishfry said:
Can you please expand on this.
How can a console be shite? Does it crash or what exactly does not work?
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It maybe OK for people who really used a console, but for people has never used a console like me it's very difficult, counter-intuitive to use and too limited. I learned to use the cli on modern virtual terminals like xfce4-terminal, mate-terminal... Asking me to deal with this old console, sorry, I will abandon Bhyve, only because that console. Luckily, we could use tmux as the console for Bhyve. It's really revived my interest for Bhyve and I tested many OSes on Bhyve. If you want to drag a younger audience, then this console is unacceptable. Nowadays we have too many choices, in no way we would limit ourselves by forcing us using that terrible console. No way!
 
One example: the arrow keys not work as expected. Us, the youngsters, grew up on modern virtual terminals, at least xterm-256, that old console is unacceptable.
 
If that console is as good as the virtual console of FreeBSD before I type startx, I will happily use it. The fact is, it's not. It's sucks. It's a pos! Not only minor annoying like the arrow keys not work, it also has many problem displaying the output of the running OS. It should be abandoned as soon as possible and replaced with a better, easier to use solution.
 
To be honest i am having a hard time following what you are even talking about. Sounds like are angry about some kind of serial console but as you seem to be after running GUIs i don't understand why you would even use something like that (which doesn't magically get "modern" with qemu either by the way). Besides if you absolutely want a nice console to manage your guest you could always just SSH in and use whatever you want as terminal. Am i missing something here or are you talking about some management console? Qemus management console isn't very nice either so i likely wouldn't see the point if you did.

Actually, i get the impression that you aren't making the right choice (of which there are so many as you say). This "younger audience" you speak of seems to suspiciously correlate with "non technical audience" for which there is more than enough appropriate choices. FreeBSD just might (luckily in my personal opinion) not be one of them.

I also don't think "demanding" or pretending to represent some group (hint: you don't - you speak for yourself and noone else) is a good approach. If you'd calmly describe your problem in detail and it happens be not overly time consuming to fix there might actually be people willing to hack this in but if they are approached like this their reaction is likely to be just "let this person deal with their problems themselves".
 
gh_legacy said:
It maybe OK for people who really used a console, but for people has never used a console like me it's very difficult, counter-intuitive to use.
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Unfortunately *you* need to be the one to learn and adapt. Otherwise no-one will hire you as a professional and no-one will work with you as a hobbyist.

I also feel you just need to learn more. That terminal you are complaining about is likely the virtual serial connection. It is limited because it has to be because not everyone is on a consumer PC. Just grit your teeth for the few minutes you need until you set up the guest's network and you can SSH into it instead.

Have you tried to run tmux in that terminal? That tool may provide some of the features you expect.

Come on, you at least need spend a couple of weeks trying to solve the darn problem yourself until you are even qualified to complain about it.

gh_legacy said:
modern virtual terminals like xfce4-terminal, mate-terminal...
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You may not know this but FreeBSD's terminal is actually newer and "more modern" than them (https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=vt&sektion=4)
 
vigole said:
Don't project you incompetency or lack of experience on young people. Many of them are writing system programs, working on device drivers and programming microcontrollers.
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This is one of the wonderful things that has happened recently with the rise of Raspberri Pi, Arduino, etc. More and more people are bit-banging on the hardware like it's 1988. I love it.
 
Jose said:
This is one of the wonderful things that has happened recently with the rise of Raspberri Pi, Arduino, etc. More and more people are bit-banging on the hardware like it's 1988. I love it.
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Its true! After an (almost criminally) boring period between literally the ZX Spectrum and the Arduino *many* years later, there was almost nothing for technical hobbyists. It gave rise to legions of fairly incompetent "IT" people in my generation haha.

It is like the entire industry (and education system) just wanted cattle who could enter data into into a spreadsheet rather than do anything cool or worthwhile.

anonymous9 said:
Contributing Bhyve port to illumos - path to native VM environment
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It looks like the whole Illumos thing is mixing things up. The following source suggests that Pluribus Networks just did the port to Illumos.

omniosce.org

bhyve Hypervisor

The bhyve hypervisor
omniosce.org

I did find this out though. It seems that due to the unportable nature of Docker, for it to run on macOS it needed an entire hypervisor (almost like VirtualBox on Windows before WSL could be used). They actually chose to use a Bhyve derivative. https://github.com/moby/hyperkit
 
Telling people is incompetence doesn't make you look cooler. The fact is your nmdm console sucks, just that. If tmux can't be used as console for Bhyve, I have already ditched your Bhyve for a long time.
 
Another bad thing about Bhyve is firmware support. It doesn't support legacy BIOS firmware. Yeah, there is uefi-csm, but it's just not work. The only way to install your guest as BIOS with a MSDOS partition table and boot it is using grub2-bhyve. This is the only way you could continue installing legacy BIOS based OSes without going the EFI route. Yes, only grub2-bhyve works. And that port is unmaintained ?

Anyone let me know if we could just grab the SeaBIOS firmware from VirtualBox and use it with Bhyve? And if it just works, why people don't do that from the beginning? Sorry but I don't see the point of using EFI for guest OS. Because most EFI firmwares of virtualization software out there sucks, including VirtualBox's own :rolleyes:

p/s: it seemed KVM also uses SeaBIOS, too.
 
gh_legacy said:
Telling people is incompetence doesn't make you look cooler. The fact is your nmdm console sucks
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It is more to warn other members of the forum so they don't waste their time.

nmdm is pretty much exactly the same as qemu's -serial stdio or -nographic option. It has to be fairly conservative because the serial is relatively bandwidth constrained. Emulating that correctly is more important to sysadmins than your happiness.

This stuff is for developers or sysadmins. Not really users like you. Did you try SSH?

gh_legacy said:
I have already ditched your Bhyve for a long time.
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I imagine I speak for many of us when I ask, can you *please* consider ditching the rest of our FreeBSD too? XD
 
gh_legacy said:
Another bad thing about Bhyve is firmware support. It doesn't support legacy BIOS firmware. Yeah, there is uefi-csm, but it's just not work. The only way to install your guest as BIOS with a MSDOS partition table and boot it is using grub2-bhyve. This is the only way you could continue installing legacy BIOS based OSes without going the EFI route. Yes, only grub2-bhyve works. And that port is unmaintained ?

Anyone let me know if we could just grab the SeaBIOS firmware from VirtualBox and use it with Bhyve? And if it just works, why people don't do that from the beginning? Sorry but I don't see the point of using EFI for guest OS. Because most EFI firmwares of virtualization software out there sucks, including VirtualBox's own :rolleyes:

p/s: it seemed KVM also uses SeaBIOS, too.
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Now that's a least something i would call a specific complaint. It get's a little less serious as there seems to be a viable workaround (being unmaintained doesn't matter as long as it works) but in any case it's something that could be considered even if "sucking" is somewhat subjective and it would be better if you would list technical limitations instead.
 
What needs to be expressed here is that nmdm provides a dumb terminal console.
I think this user believes that it should be a virtual terminal console.
Tmux and stdio provides a virtual terminal console.
When I boot up with serial redirection enabled on my motherboard BIOS I cannot hit F2 to enter the BIOS remotely.
That is why all serial redirect capable motherboards use the Tab key to enter BIOS. Tab is supported by the dumb console.
Dumb consoles are limited by their nature.
 
“nmdm” is an abbreviation for null-modem. And you can think of it as exactly that: a software representation of a null-modem cable, no more and no less. People who are a little older probably remember that you used these kind of cables to connect serial terminals (like a DEC VT100 or VT220) to serial ports on your PC. It’s exactly the same with the nmdm interface: You have to connect a terminal (in this case, a virtual terminal, i.e. a piece of software) to it to make it useful.

(PS: By the way, if someone could use an old – but working – DEC VT510 and is willing to pick it up in Munich (DE), send me a message. :) )
 
olli@ said:
“nmdm” is an abbreviation for null-modem. And you can think of it as exactly that: a software representation of a null-modem cable, no more and no less. People who are a little older probably remember that you used these kind of cables to connect serial terminals (like a DEC VT100 or VT220) to serial ports on your PC.
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Not only that. Those things also enabled one of the earliest forms of online gaming. In the the most literal sense. You just had to grab your tower and take it to your buddy (very convenient!) and the both of you could then duke it out. All of this while sitting like maybe 2m apart because your PCs were physically on-a-line and the cable wouldn't reach any further. Null modem cables were very much ahead of their times!
 
ekvz said:
Not only that. Those things also enabled one of the earliest forms of online gaming. In the the most literal sense. You just had to grab your tower and take it to your buddy (very convenient!) and the both of you could then duke it out. All of this while sitting like maybe 2m apart because your PCs were physically on-a-line and the cable wouldn't reach any further. Null modem cables were very much ahead of their times!
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I learned a lot of what I know about Novell networking so I could play Doom 1 head-to-head against my buddy. A couple of garbage-picked 3com 3C501s; some thinnet, t-connectors, and terminators, and we're off to the races in what would've been called a LAN party in the naughts. I think LAN parties are old school now too.
 
Jose said:
I learned a lot of what I know about Novell networking so I could play Doom 1 head-to-head against my buddy
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Since it's a off-topic thread and it was from the beginning (wrong section, but things happens!) let me tell you my story. I was a Duke Nukem 3D fan, and at the time I thought I was a master in it! Then there was a Duke Nukem 3D competition. I was confident that I'm going to win the cup. PCs was connected to each other with Dialup MODEMs. Race started and in my first match I lost 0 to 50. I can't remember the exact score, but mine definitely was zero! At that very moment I realized that there's a very important concept in playing FPS, namely Mouse!
 
Phishfry said:
What the OP needs to ask himself is- What does NVMM do that Bhyve does not?
That is what I would ask myself if I was a developer.

We have Bhyve and Xen.
Why do we need more options? We have two perfectly functioning tools for Virtualization.
Why would a developer want to add a third?
Is this a numbers game? The OS with the most choices win?
We have limited manpower and need to focus on refining the choices we have.
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on FreeBSD there is only one good hypervisor : bhyve. I don't think that xen is good as bhyve. At least I've read that it lacks the pci passthrough. It is a very needed feature. So,I want to exclude it from the list because it is not mature yet.
 
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