vbox VirtualBox stopped working after upgrade to 15.1

[Yampress]

However, there are still old systems in active use, and many people would certainly like to virtualize them. Yet, bhyve currently lacks support for these systems—they have been left unsupported—whereas VirtualBox and QEMU/KVM continue to maintain that support.
In bhyve, it has been abandoned. Maybe come up with a new solution instead of carrying over the old one.

 

[cracauer@]

• the fact that fewusers should need BIOS compatibility these days

I recently needed it for PXE boot.

 

[T-Aoki]

I recently needed it for PXE boot.

The items are picked from the commit message I've mentioned in my previous post.
And if the works for fitting to newer EDK2, newer toolkits (preferrably in-base llvm/clang) and supported python3 is trivial enough, I think it wouldn't have been deprecated / deleted.

FYI: Jananese only page, but I found a page describing how to run i386 version of FreeBSD 2.2.9 (there wasn't amd64 nor UEFI yet) on qemu running at the top of amd64 version of FreeBSD 14.3 bhyve environment.
Even if you cannot read Japanese (maybe somehow translatable on Internet, though), the sample screenshots could be helpful.

 

[cracauer@]

Well, I think the reason why people have tolerated the absence of BIOS boot in bhyve is that they can always run Qemu on FreeBSD.

Still an unsatisfactory situation IMHO.

 

[Yampress]

So what is the point of bhyve if QEMU exists?
Since bhyve has been created, let it run and support both older and newer systems.

 

[T-Aoki]

So what is the point of bhyve if QEMU exists?
Since bhyve has been created, let it run and support both older and newer systems.

If I understand correctly, qemu is a full-software virtualization that is NOT depend on support features on CPU instructions and can emulate different CPUs, with the cost of heavy runtime loads, while Bhyve is light-weighted and hardware-supported virtualization that depends on support features on CPU instructions such as Intel VT-x and AMD-v and does NOT support emulation of different CPUs.

And yes, qemu doesn't require Bhyve VMs to run and runs directly on host FreeBSD or inside jail of it. My understanding of the benefit with qemu ran inside guest OS on Bhyve would be "stronger / stricter separation from host" that allows stopping / restarting VM even if qemu running on it is crashed / hung up.

 

[Yampress]

On Linux, QEMU runs with KVM, which is why it's lightweight.
I use Debian linux https://wiki.debian.org/KVM and virt-manager
Why not create a version of QEMU that runs on top of VMM on FreeBSD?

 

[Emrion]

So what is the point of bhyve if QEMU exists?

It's in base. Nothing to install. It's why I adopted it since the beginning of my need for VMs into FreeBSD.

I agree with T-Aoki. I ain't personally using anymore of BIOS booting OSes. I was using bhyve-grub for that before, but it doesn't provide resource for a graphical interface, IIRC.

So, for these corner cases, it remains VirtualBox, and qemu.

 

[T-Aoki]

On Linux, QEMU runs with KVM, which is why it's lightweight.
I user Debian linux https://wiki.debian.org/KVM
Why not create a version of QEMU that runs on top of VMM on FreeBSD?

I could be mis-understanding , as I'm NOT using qemu for years after VirtualBox was ported to FreeBSD. So things could be significantly changed since then. Need someone that actually using recent qemu.
Anyway, qemu can emulate different CPUs unless the feature is dropped, but this mutually cannot get benefits from VMM on base.

 

[T-Aoki]

One of the use-case of qemu on FreeBSD here.

 

[Yampress]

Gentlemen, bhyve is a fantastic solution, and combined with vm-bhyve, it is brilliant. The focus should be on expanding its capabilities even further; I believe that support for older systems, compatibility with a wider range of operating systems, and a graphical interface for managing the virtual machines would meet the needs of most users. Ever since I got acquainted with vm-bhyve, I haven't wanted anything to do with VirtualBox.
It’s powerful and offers immense capabilities.

 

[Emrion]

Well, if this needed by most people, why not improve bhyve? But... Never forget that each "improvement" will be at the cost of the complexification of the code. That means more works after any feature is added and more bugs, as well.

Anyway, that seems to be the way our small world goes.

 

[cracauer@]

So what is the point of bhyve if QEMU exists?
Since bhyve has been created, let it run and support both older and newer systems.

Qermu on FreeBSD has no hardware acceleration, it emulates the CPU even if you run x86-on-x86.

Work to fix that exists, but is far from merged.

Also see:

bhyve Post in thread 'Booted Debian and FreeBSD 15 using qemu accelerated with bhyve/vmm for the first time. This is an epic milestone for the community !'

May 19, 2026

Excellent work Zio. I'm interested in helping out if you need extra hands.

• Zare

• 

 

[T-Aoki]

If I understand correctly (I've not yet tried Bhyve), Bhyve needs firmware (or BIOS) module to run, and assuming EDK2 for this purpose.
And I've found this (link to actual PR doesn't work as of "server not found", though) searching Internet. It's NOT FreeBSD but upstream that removed CSM support.