Solved vm-bhyve mouse and keyboard not working with some Linux GUIs

[scottro]

Running FreeBSD-14.0 and have been happily using vm-bhyve to run a Win10 and some RHEL9 VMS. The other day I went to install ArchLinux. I used the centos7 template just increasing the memory as that seemed to be closed to what I wanted. The template is:

loader="uefi"
graphics="yes"
xhci_mouse="yes"
cpu=1
memory=512M
network0_type="virtio-net"
network0_switch="public"
disk0_type="virtio-blk"
disk0_name="disk0.img"

For a working RHEL9 install I added bhyve_options="-A" to the end.

The install went smoothly, and then I installed X with openbox. I did startx and I had no mouse or keyboard input. (I had been sure to install the evdev driver. I also tried with devuan, and Fedora. With Fedora, which has a GUI installer, I couldn't even click on any choices, though I was able to to tab.
Web searching hasn't found anything, so this may be some weirdness with my particular system, but though I'd ask and see if anyone has any ideas.

Rocky and other RH alternatives work, as well as RH itself so it may be a kernel version thing, with newer kernels, but at this point, I'm just guessing.

 

[Andrey Lanin]

I faced a similar problem. This advice helped me (post 4) :

Solved - mouse disappeared on Debian guest after kernel update in it

Hi everyone! Just updated kernel in Debian 12 VM (to 6.1.0-13-amd64). After VM's reboot, mouse dissapeared in it. bhyve VM startup script: sudo bhyve -c 8,sockets=2,cores=2,threads=2 -m 16G -H -w -S \ -s 0,hostbridge \ -s 4,ahci-hd,/uvero/bsd2/vms/deb12.img \ -s 5,virtio-net,tap0 \ -s...

forums.freebsd.org

 

[scottro]

Thanks, that worked with the Fedora install, I was able to click on everything. I'll have to try another Arch install and see if it works with that (I'd already destroyed that one.)
But just removing the xhci_mouse="yes" worked for me on the Fedora install. I'll update after reinstalling Arch.

 

[scottro]

Ok, just did a quick ArchLinux install and once again, removing the xhci_mouse fixed the issue. As I mentioned it doesn't happen with RHEL, so I wonder if it's a kernel change, but regardless, your suggestion fixed my issue and I'm marking this solved.
To recap, I create a vm for any Linux GUI and use the centos7 template. I then do vm config and comment out the xhci_mouse="yes" line. (I also increase the memory as the 512 allotted by the default template may not work with some of the new Linux distributions.)

Once that's done, mouse and keyboard work in the VM.
Again thanks.

 

[scottro]

Did a bit more searching and found there's a bug report and patch. https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=275760
So hopefully, there'll be a fixed package soon.