Xorg on FreeBSD based VM on bhyve

L

Lars Wittebrood

Hi,

I have a requirement (end goal) to run a FreeBSD based VM (as a guest) as a Xorg 'workstation' on the bhyve hypervisor. This 'workstation' will be accessed using a X server running on a Windows 8 or 10 laptop/pc. I use vm-bhyve as bhyve management tool. The bhyve hosts runs latest FreeBSD 11.2 version and vm-bhyve version 1.2.3 is used.

My understanding is that
  1. I have to boot my FreeBSD based VM using UEFI
  2. I have to use the SCFB driver within my FreeBSD VM

I got this from

I have 2 questions:
  1. Is the above correct? Are these the requirements for my end goal? Is more and/or other things needed?
  2. How do I run/boot a FreeBSD VM with UEFI using vm-bhyve? The vm-bhye wiki provides a Windows example, but not for FreeBSD as a guest. I've tried to use uefi="yes" in the VM config file, but then the VM does not boot

Thank you in advance for any pointers!

With kind regards,
Lars
 
Possible but probably not required. Just install a desktop and run any one of the VNC servers. You don't need to have a working "local" Xorg for VNC server to work. For remote X access ( through SSH X forwarding) you don't even need to have a complete desktop installed (the X server runs on your Windows desktop). Just start the application from the SSH command line and the application's GUI will magically appear on your Windows desktop.
 
Actually, I've tried similar setup at home on weekend just to see how it works for Electron app. (with CentOS@bhyve). I used net/xrdp. Probably, it's the best path if your workstations are Windows. For *NIX I'd choose SirDice method. Not sure if xrdp supports multiple sessions and properly handles disconnected one.
 
Hi,
thank you both for the quick reply. Really appreciated.
I installed XOrg and the i3wm window manager on this VM. When I issue the startx command then I get the following error:

Code: 
user@vmname:user $ startx
xauth:  file /home/user/.serverauth.647 does not exist

X.Org X Server 1.18.4
Release Date: 2016-07-19
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE-p9 amd64
Current Operating System: FreeBSD wrkstn.intra.socruel.nu 11.2-RELEASE-p9 FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE-p9 #0: Tue Feb  5 15:30:36 UTC 2019     [email]root@amd64-builder.daemonology.net[/email]:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64
Build Date: 07 February 2019  09:44:50AM

Current version of pixman: 0.34.0
        Before reporting problems, check [URL]http://wiki.x.org[/URL]
        to make sure that you have the latest version.
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
        (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
        (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Mon Mar 18 20:15:45 2019
(==) Using config directory: "/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d"
(EE)
Fatal server error:
(EE) xf86OpenConsole: No console driver found
        Supported drivers: pccons (with X support), syscons, pcvt
        Check your kernel's console driver configuration and /dev entries(EE)
(EE)
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
         at [URL]http://wiki.x.org[/URL]
 for help.
(EE) Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information.
(EE)
(EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.
xinit: giving up
xinit: unable to connect to X server: Connection refused
xinit: server error

When I search on the error message I do not get a definite answer. Most write that you have to use x11-servers/xorg-vfbserver?
 
Lars Wittebrood said:
Hi,
thank you both for the quick reply. Really appreciated.
I installed XOrg and the i3wm window manager on this VM. When I issue the 'startx' command then I get the following error:
Click to expand...
Xorg doesn't autodetect scfb driver, you need to provide a hint. Try to create /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/video.conf and put the following into it
Code: 
Section "Device"
    Identifier "Card0"
    Driver     "scfb"
EndSection
 
Hi,
thank you for your responses both.
Regarding sshd_config, see the added config options to the FreeBSD default sshd_config:
Code: 
ListenAddress 10.26.16.199
AllowGroups sshlogin
Protocol 2
X11Forwarding yes
X11UseLocalhost no
IgnoreRhosts yes
PermitEmptyPasswords no
PermitRootLogin no
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
# From Lynis
#AllowAgentForwarding no
UseDNS no
MaxSessions 2
MaxAuthTries 2
LogLevel VERBOSE
Compression no
ClientAliveCountMax 2
#AllowTcpForwarding no

I have a config for the scfb driver:
Code: 
user@vmname:user $ less /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/driver-scfb.conf
Section "Device"
     Identifier    "Card0"
     Driver        "scfb"
EndSection

I've also tried to do:
sudo X -configure
And then I get the following output:
Code: 
X.Org X Server 1.18.4
Release Date: 2016-07-19
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE-p9 amd64
Current Operating System: FreeBSD wrkstn.intra.socruel.nu 11.2-RELEASE-p9 FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE-p9 #0: Tue Feb  5 15:30:36 UTC 2019     [email]root@amd64-builder.daemonology.net[/email]:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64
Build Date: 07 February 2019  09:44:50AM

Current version of pixman: 0.34.0
        Before reporting problems, check [URL]http://wiki.x.org[/URL]
        to make sure that you have the latest version.
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
        (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
        (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Tue Mar 19 07:03:56 2019
List of video drivers:
        vesa
        modesetting
        scfb
scfb trace: probe start
No devices to configure.  Configuration failed.
(EE) Server terminated with error (2). Closing log file.
 
There is no video device available from a bhyve vm.
See the note there>>> Note: VGA / GPU pass-through devices are not currently supported. <<<

You can load the scfb driver all day long. There is no video device for it to attach to.
A video device would need to be passed-thru to the VM and that is not supported.

Now for X11Forwarding you need no video driver at all. Just xorg-minimal.
If you must install a video driver for some reason there is x11-drivers/xf86-video-dummy for this purpose.
Remember that X11-Forwarding only forwards applications, not the whole desktop.
 
Phishfry said:
You can load the scfb driver all day long. There is no video device for it to attach to.
Click to expand...
I beg to differ.

Code: 
------------------------
Virtual Machine: lady3jane
------------------------
  state: stopped
  datastore: stor10k
  loader: bhyveload
  uuid: f31dc44e-f1c9-11e8-8acb-002590f15838
  uefi: yes
  cpu: 4
  memory: 4096M
  memory-resident: 0 (0.000B)

  console-ports
    com1: /dev/nmdm-lady3jane.1B
    vnc: 0.0.0.0:5900
Code: 
root@hosaka:~ # cat /storage/vm/lady3jane/lady3jane.conf
uefi="yes"
graphics="yes"
graphics_port="5900"
graphics_res="1920x1200"
graphics_wait="yes"
#xhci_mouse="yes"
utctime="yes"
loader="bhyveload"
cpu=4
memory=4096M
network0_type="virtio-net"
network0_switch="public"
disk0_type="virtio-blk"
disk0_name="disk0"
disk0_dev="sparse-zvol"
#zfs_dataset_opts="compress=off"
zfs_zvol_opts="volblocksize=4k compress=off"
uuid="f31dc44e-f1c9-11e8-8acb-002590f15838"
network0_mac="58:9c:fc:00:c5:50"

Mouse works weird with TigerVNC client on Windows. If I recall correctly it should work better with the RealVNC client.
 

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No, from the VM's viewpoint the video device is a UEFI framebuffer device. There is no VNC server running on the VM. The VM doesn't even know it's not a "real" graphics card. It's bhyve that 'translates' the EUFI-GOP to VNC.

github.com

UEFI Graphics (VNC)

Shell based, minimal dependency bhyve manager. Contribute to churchers/vm-bhyve development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com
en.wikipedia.org

UEFI - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Lars Wittebrood said:
I have a config for the scfb driver:
Code: 
user@vmname:user $ less /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/driver-scfb.conf
Section "Device"
     Identifier    "Card0"
     Driver        "scfb"
EndSection
Click to expand...

  1. Are you sure you use UEFI loader ?
  2. Start X from vnc session.

Please provide xorg logs with this config.
 
Phishfry said:
Well your video device in this case is a VNC server.
Your not going to get a desktop with stdio.
Click to expand...
SirDice is right.
Here is Xorg startup from bhyve vnc console, specially for you :)
Code: 
[   413.218] (II) LoadModule: "scfb"
[   413.218] (II) Loading /usr/local/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/scfb_drv.so
[   413.218] (II) Module scfb: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[   413.218]    compiled for 1.18.4, module version = 0.0.4
[   413.218]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 20.0
[   413.218] (II) scfb: driver for wsdisplay framebuffer: scfb
[   413.218] (--) Using syscons driver with X support (version 2.0)
[   413.218] (--) using VT number 9

[   413.219] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for scfb
[   413.219] scfb trace: probe start
[   413.219] (II) scfb(0): using default device
[   413.219] scfb trace: probe done
[   413.219] (WW) VGA arbiter: cannot open kernel arbiter, no multi-card support
[   413.219] scfb: PreInit 0
[   413.219] (II) scfb(0): Using: depth (32),   width (1024),    height (768)
[   413.219] (II) scfb(0): Creating default Display subsection in Screen section
        "Default Screen Section" for depth/fbbpp 24/32
[   413.219] (==) scfb(0): Depth 24, (==) framebuffer bpp 32
[   413.219] (==) scfb(0): RGB weight 888
[   413.219] (==) scfb(0): Default visual is TrueColor
[   413.219] (==) scfb(0): Using gamma correction (1.0, 1.0, 1.0)
[   413.219] (II) scfb(0): Vidmem: 3072k
[   413.219] (==) scfb(0): DPI set to (96, 96)
[   413.219] (**) scfb(0): Using "Shadow Framebuffer"
[   413.219] (II) Loading sub module "shadow"
[   413.219] (II) LoadModule: "shadow"
[   413.219] (II) Loading /usr/local/lib/xorg/modules/libshadow.so
[   413.219] (II) Module shadow: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[   413.219]    compiled for 1.18.4, module version = 1.1.0
[   413.219]    ABI class: X.Org ANSI C Emulation, version 0.4
[   413.220] (II) Loading sub module "fb"
[   413.220] (II) LoadModule: "fb"
[   413.220] (II) Loading /usr/local/lib/xorg/modules/libfb.so
[   413.220] (II) Module fb: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[   413.220]    compiled for 1.18.4, module version = 1.0.0
[   413.220]    ABI class: X.Org ANSI C Emulation, version 0.4
[   413.220] scfb: PreInit done
[   413.220] (--) Depth 24 pixmap format is 32 bpp
[   413.220] scfb: ScfbScreenInit 0
[   413.220]    bitsPerPixel=32, depth=24, defaultVisual=TrueColor
        mask: ff0000,ff00,ff, offset: 16,8,0
[   413.220] mmap returns: addr 0x806a00000 len 0x300000, fd 6, off 0
[   413.220] scfb: ScfbSave 0
[   413.220] scfb: ScfbSave done
[   413.221] (==) scfb(0): Backing store enabled
[   413.221] scfb: ScfbScreenInit done
 
Hi,
first thank you for all the pointers above!
I had a couple of wrong assumptions as it seems. I assumed that you could display a whole desktop remotely using X. I now understand why that is not possible. Starting X applications like 'xclock' just works in my existing configuration.
I still want to display a whole desktop remotely (I want to test the i3wm window manager). So I tested what SirDice showed above. Thanks for that, I assumed that you could not use 'loader="bhyveload" and uefi="yes"' together in a vm-bhyve vm config!). So I created a new VM with UEFI on my bhyve box. Bhyve related packages installed on my bhyve box:

Code: 
user@bhyvebox:user $ pkg info | grep bhyve
bhyve-firmware-1.0_1           Collection of Firmware for bhyve
grub2-bhyve-0.40_6             Grub-emu loader for bhyve
uefi-edk2-bhyve-0.2_1,1        UEFI-EDK2 firmware for bhyve
uefi-edk2-bhyve-csm-0.2_1,1    UEFI-EDK2 firmware for bhyve with CSM
vm-bhyve-1.2.3                 Management system for bhyve virtual machines

The vm-bhyve commands to create my new vm:
Code: 
# vm create -s 128G -t freebsd-uefi test
# vm install test FreeBSD-11.2-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso
# tmux attach -t test

It just shows:
Code: 
 [B]__[/B]               [B]__   ___[/B] [B]_[/B]
 |  [B]__|             |  _ \ / __[/B]|  __ \
 | |[B]_ _ __ _[/B]  [B]_ | |[I]) | ([/I][/B] | |  | |
 |  [B]_| '[/B]/ _ \/ _ \|  _ < \___ \| |  | |
 | |   | | |  [B]/  [B]/| |_) |[/B][/B]) | |__| |
 | |   | | |    |    ||     |      |      |
 |[I]|   |[/I]|  \[B][I]|\[/I][/B]||[B][B]/|_[/B][/B]/|[B]_[/B]/    ``[ICODE]                        [/ICODE]
                                             s[ICODE] [/ICODE].....---.......--.``[ICODE]   -/
 ┌────────────Welcome to FreeBSD───────────┐ +o   .--[/ICODE]         /y:[ICODE]      +.
 │                                         │  yo[/ICODE]:.            :o      [ICODE]+-
 │  1. Boot Multi User [Enter]             │   y/               -/[/ICODE]   -o/
 │  2. Boot Single User                    │  .-                  ::/sy+:.
 │  3. Escape to loader prompt             │  /                     [ICODE]--  /
 │  4. Reboot                              │ [/ICODE]:                          :[ICODE]
 │                                         │ [/ICODE]:                          :[ICODE]
 │  Options:                               │  /                          /
 │  5. Kernel: default/kernel (1 of 2)     │  .-                        -.
 │  6. Configure Boot Options...           │   --                      -.
 │                                         │    [/ICODE]:[ICODE]                  [/ICODE]:[ICODE]
 │                                         │      .--             [/ICODE]--.
 │                                         │         .---.....----.
 └─────────────────────────────────────────┘

-
/boot/kernel/kernel text=0x1547b08 data=0x143f30+0x4bc418 syms=[0x8+0x16ad00+0x8
+0x183cac]
Booting...
Start @ 0xffffffff80310000 ...
-

The logfile of the VM shows:

Code: 
root@bhyvebox:/virtuals/vms/test # less vm-bhyve.log
Mar 20 07:07:32: initialising
Mar 20 07:07:32:  [loader: bhyveload]
Mar 20 07:07:32:  [uefi: yes]
Mar 20 07:07:32:  [cpu: 2]
Mar 20 07:07:32:  [memory: 8G]
Mar 20 07:07:32:  [hostbridge: standard]
Mar 20 07:07:32:  [com ports: com1]
Mar 20 07:07:32:  [uuid: 6d230680-4ad6-11e9-b402-6805ca4d6b32]
Mar 20 07:07:32:  [utctime: yes]
Mar 20 07:07:32:  [debug mode: no]
Mar 20 07:07:32:  [primary disk: disk0]
Mar 20 07:07:32:  [primary disk dev: sparse-zvol]
Mar 20 07:07:32: generated static mac 58:9c:fc:0e:8b:b6 (based on 'test:0:1553062052:0')
Mar 20 07:07:32: initialising network device tap12
Mar 20 07:07:32: adding tap12 -> vm-intranet (intranet addm)
Mar 20 07:07:32: bring up tap12 -> vm-intranet (intranet addm)
Mar 20 07:07:32: booting
Mar 20 07:07:32: bhyveload -m 8G -e autoboot_delay=3 -d /virtuals/vms/.iso/FreeBSD-11.2-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso test
Mar 20 07:07:35:  [bhyve options: -c 2 -m 8G -Hwl bootrom,/usr/local/share/uefi-firmware/BHYVE_UEFI.fd -U 6d230680-4ad6-11e9-b402-6805ca4d6b32 -u]
Mar 20 07:07:35:  [bhyve devices: -s 0,hostbridge -s 31,lpc -s 4:0,virtio-blk,/dev/zvol/virtuals/vms/test/disk0 -s 5:0,virtio-net,tap12,mac=58:9c:fc:0e:8b:b6]
Mar 20 07:07:35:  [bhyve console: -l com1,stdio]
Mar 20 07:07:35:  [bhyve iso device: -s 3:0,ahci-cd,/virtuals/vms/.iso/FreeBSD-11.2-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso]
Mar 20 07:07:35: starting bhyve (run 1)


My freebsd-uefi.conf vm-bhyve template file looks like:
Code: 
guest="freebsd"
loader="bhyveload"
uefi="yes"
#graphics="yes"
#graphics_port="5900"
#graphics_res="1024x768"
#graphics_wait="yes"
cpu=2
memory=8G
network0_type="virtio-net"
network0_switch="intranet"
disk0_type="virtio-blk"
disk0_name="disk0"
disk0_dev="sparse-zvol"

Using this will NOT boot this VM. I've read that the FreeBSD installer ISOs are UEFI aware (?). So I am doing something wrong here. But for now I don't know what. But then again this whole UEFI stuff is new to me.

Another option I can try is using XRDP on top of Xorg on my existing VM.

Cheers,
Lars
 
You indeed doing it wrong. Remove loader= line entirely.
Start it with
vm install test FreeBSD-11.2-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso
Check for opened 5900 port on bhyve host and connect with VNC client.
 
Hi,
all (seems) ok now. I can start a FreeBSD VM installation using a VNC connection to the VM. Had no time yet to finish this. But sure it will be ok and have a UEFI based VM after finishing the install.
Thanks all for helping me and providing the opportunity to learn about this all.
Cheers,
Lars
 
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