SOLVED No GUI on virtual machines

[EnKo]

Since years I have problems to get (Linux) virtual machines running properly on FreeNAS/TrueNAS with GUI. I just tried it again with PureOS and as far as I remember I tried it with Manjaro in past without satisfying success. LinuxLite (Ubuntu) and Ubuntu (itself) works fine. I found nearly no topics nor documentation about it. So, is this a unique problem or do you have similar experiences and maybe even (a general) solutions?

It should not be a question of hardware. Virtualisation is switched on in BIOS (of course). I run my system with

• Intel Xeon E3-1245v5
• Supermicro X11SAE-M
• Using onboard graphic card

 

[sretalla]

Since years I have problems to get (Linux) virtual machines running properly on FreeNAS/TrueNAS with GUI. I just tried it again with PureOS and as far as I remember I tried it with Manjaro in past without satisfying success. LinuxLite (Ubuntu) and Ubuntu (itself) works fine. I found nearly no topics nor documentation about it. So, is this a unique problem or do you have similar experiences and maybe even (a general) solutions?

You're saying that some distros are "working fine"... does that mean displaying GUI as you expect?

How are you accessing the GUI in those cases (and the ones that don't work)? via the built-in NoVNC?

 

[sretalla]

for PureOS, seems to be well understood... https://forums.puri.sm/t/closed-error-no-suitable-video-mode-found/14893/9

 

[EnKo]

For Linux Lite both, NoVNC and external VNC viewer, works as expected. Thanks for the link, in meantime I found another topic in the forum which describes similar problems. I will try to install PureOS as per the linked description.

For PureOP the problem seems to be on Guest-OS side, but for other distributions, is there an implementation problem at TrueNAS/BSD or why many distributions not works properly, compared to e. g. VirtualBox?

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

What is your use case for running a local UI with these VMs? I have early come to the conclusion that VNC sucks (keyboard layout, copy&paste, ...) and never use it after initial installation. For Linux VMs there's SSH. And for Windows VMs there's RDP.

 

[sretalla]

but for other distributions, is there an implementation problem at TrueNAS/BSD or why many distributions not works properly, compared to e. g. VirtualBox?

Generally speaking, the problems you will experience would be related to GRUB booting... a lot of distros don't have UEFI (or you need to seek out the version that does).

If you want to boot GRUB installs, maybe best to follow the same approach as the PureOS suggestion.

 

[EnKo]

I tried the description on PureOS website and faced a quite good example of my problems, using the same settings for both cases.

While loading PuroOS starts GRUB, but fails on booting ...

SUPER GRUB2 DISK fails on displaying GRUB (while it is operational) ...

Is this a known problem?

 

[EnKo]

What is your use case for running a local UI with these VMs? I have early come to the conclusion that VNC sucks (keyboard layout, copy&paste, ...) and never use it after initial installation. For Linux VMs there's SSH. And for Windows VMs there's RDP.

In general I use it for purposes where I don't want to use one of the personal computers, e. g. downloading in background or collect e-mails. Some programs don't have a non-GUI mode.

 

[sretalla]

Is this a known problem?

What I found was I had to set the VNC device to 640x480 resolution to avoid that scrambled video.

 

[EnKo]

I forgot this solution. I had in mind it works with higher resolutions already. I could resolve the scrambling problem and startup the graphical interface of PuroOS.

But in the end: what is the problem in general? Is it the related on the guest OS or BHYVE or hardware or TrueNAS? All the distributions didn't work on FreeNAS/TrueNAS, I can install with quite the same setting via VirtualBox on my PC. Is this behavior on all systems the same?

 

[EnKo]

Supplemental: I set the resolution to default and made my commands with scrambled screen (press Enter, 3 times Down, press Enter) and PureOS started with normal screen.

 

[sretalla]

All the distributions didn't work on FreeNAS/TrueNAS, I can install with quite the same setting via VirtualBox on my PC

You'll probably find that the difference is the ability of a GUI-driven hypervisor like VirtualBox or VMware desktop (or whatever else) to switch video modes in-flight, which would allow the demands of the guest OS to be met with the appropriate screen resolution for the job.

Because we're talking about a headless system with no video of its own using NoVNC to provide one (with a resolution hard-coded up front), it's a bigger hurdle in that scenario.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

In general I use it for purposes where I don't want to use one of the personal computers, e. g. downloading in background or collect e-mails. Some programs don't have a non-GUI mode.

You can run Xvnc without a local UI and connect with a VNC client over the network. Even on FreeBSD inside a jail, which is much less overhead compared to a VM. Full KDE desktop if you are so inclined. Or Xfce or LXDE for something less resource hungry.

 

[EnKo]

@sretalla : OK. This is the answer I was afraid of already.

@Patrick M. Hausen : I will have a look on x11vnc. seems to be a good alternative.