Booting W7 ISO in bhyve VM

[Arkhen]

First and foremost, my experience is quite limited with bhyve and the like, so apologies in advance for stupid questions.

I'm attempting to boot a Windows 7 ISO. When booting the VM I'm simply met with:

Is booting Windows 7 only possible with UEFI-CSM? And if that's the case, what alternatives to VNC do I have, since that's only available under UEFI?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Arkhen]

No one know? :/

 

[HolyK]

Hi, i was fighting with that as well and gave up. It just wont boot with UEFI in order to get VNC working.
//Edit: It was 32bit which is not supported at all

Look for W10 LTSC if you want crapware-free (no metro, no games, etc...) or strip it down even further with nLite.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Windows 7 boots and installs just fine.

• with EFI, no CSM
• it must be the 64 bit version
• the mouse won't work in VNC so it's a bit tedious navigating the installer with the keyboard

Apart from that ... plain works. BTDT.

Patrick

 

[HolyK]

Yea i forgot to mention that. I was trying 32bit version of Win7 which i've stripped out to get as much lightweight OS as possible. That does not work with UEFI at all (as there is no 32bit efi bootload). Win7 64bit worked (installation) but it was crashing post-install for unknown reason. I did not spent much time on that. The 64bit is significantly more "fat" than 32bit so i went with Win10 LTSC + removed few extra services. It works fine for me (i have it only for one specific service so it is mostly head-less usage with only 2GB of RAM assigned)

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Try to set the blocksize of the virtual disk to 512 explicitly instead of leaving the "default" setting. Not the ZVOL volblocksize, mind you. There's a separate setting in the UI for the emulated blocksize.

HTH,
Patrick

 

[rfanch3r]

Yea i forgot to mention that. I was trying 32bit version of Win7 which i've stripped out to get as much lightweight OS as possible. That does not work with UEFI at all (as there is no 32bit efi bootload). Win7 64bit worked (installation) but it was crashing post-install for unknown reason. I did not spent much time on that. The 64bit is significantly more "fat" than 32bit so i went with Win10 LTSC + removed few extra services. It works fine for me (i have it only for one specific service so it is mostly head-less usage with only 2GB of RAM assigned)

Im glad it wasn't just me, I had 1 hell of a time getting win10 64bit version installed , took me forever to find the below information to actually boot into it:

If you have issues booting from a CD within bhyve (Freenas VM)
UEFI shell
Type exit
Choose Boot Maintenance Manager / Boot from File / EFI

Even after this it refuses to actually boot into it all of the way. I eventually just gave up and went with something else.

 

[Yorick]

Odd. In my testing on 11.3, Win10 works without a hitch, every time. Just have to make sure to use VirtIO for both disk and ethernet, and load drivers at the appropriate points during install.
It's still pretty slow, mind you. That's much better in 12 Core, but there bhyve doesn't stay running for Win10 during first install - solvable with a reboot of TrueNAS. "WIP" in a jira ticket.

 

[LSmith4285]

I'm finding with Win7 the install falls over every time as soon as the cursor appears and no matter which options I select for the environment and I can't get past that. That's using an untouched ISO that has been tested and works in other VM environments.

When I tried Win10 I found I got the OOBEKEYBOARD etc. errors which I believe there is a work around for but I haven't got to it yet.

 

[Yorick]

with Win7 the install falls over every time as soon as the cursor appears

Yeah the mouse cursor doesn't move in VNC with Win7. Confirmed in 11.3 and 12.0 nightly. Opened https://jira.ixsystems.com/projects/NAS/issues/NAS-106127 for it.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Windows 7 does not have a driver for the mouse emulated by bhyve. You will have to navigate the installer by keyboard and then use RDP. This, OTOH, works flawlessly.

 

[LSmith4285]

Yeah the mouse cursor doesn't move in VNC with Win7. Confirmed in 11.3 and 12.0 nightly. Opened https://jira.ixsystems.com/projects/NAS/issues/NAS-106127 for it.

Windows 7 does not have a driver for the mouse emulated by bhyve. You will have to navigate the installer by keyboard and then use RDP. This, OTOH, works flawlessly.

Yes I know about the mouse not working issue, I don't even get that far, as soon as the cursor appears on the screen the VM falls over and I have to start it up again.

 

[Yorick]

Just tried it with Win7-Pro-x64, VirtIO disk and Network, EFI, on a Kaby Lake. No issues.

You may have the wrong settings, or an issue with the underlying hardware, maybe.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Yes I know about the mouse not working issue, I don't even get that far, as soon as the cursor appears on the screen the VM falls over and I have to start it up again.

Have you set the emulated disk's blocksize to "512" instead of "default"?

 

[LSmith4285]

Just tried it with Win7-Pro-x64, VirtIO disk and Network, EFI, on a Kaby Lake. No issues.

You may have the wrong settings, or an issue with the underlying hardware, maybe.

Settings are the same as yours, hopefully your later suggestion isn't correct.

Have you set the emulated disk's blocksize to "512" instead of "default"?

I couldn't see anywhere to do it as it doesn't appear in the wizard. I've used the wizard then found I can edit the disk and set the blocksize to 512 but still the same behaviour.

I'll have another play in the morning.

 

[Yorick]

Settings are the same as yours, hopefully your later suggestion isn't correct.

Not sure what else it could be. FreeNAS version? I tested on 11.3-U2.1. Win7 Pro 64-bit, with the current signed VirtIO drivers from RedHat / Fedora.

 

[LSmith4285]

Also running FreeNAS-11.3-U2.1, it's all a bit odd. I've tried VirIO and Intel but no change.

 

[LSmith4285]

Having tried 3 different flavours of Windows 7 my problem must be something to do with the system or config as they all crash in the same place.