Installing FreeBSD into a Virtual Machine

Before installing the operating system, be sure that you have already created a new virtual machine and configured it using the Configuration Wizard.

Various versions and distributions of FreeBSD have been tested with the current VMware GSX Server distribution. The 3.x and 4.0 through 4.5 distributions of FreeBSD — specifically 3.1, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5 — are fully functional. Floppy, CD-ROM and network devices autoconfigure and work.

Be sure to install VMware Tools in your guest operating system.

Issues with FreeBSD Guest Operating Systems

In a FreeBSD 4.5 guest operating system, sometimes VMware Tools does not start after you install VMware Tools, reboot the guest operating system or start VMware Tools on the command line in the guest. An error message appears:
Shared object "libc.so.3" not found.

The required library was not installed. This does not happen with full installations of FreeBSD 4.5, but does occur for minimal installations. To fix the problem of the missing library, complete the following steps:

Insert and mount the FreeBSD 4.5 installation CD or access the ISO image file.
Change directories and run the install script.
cd /cdrom/compat3x
./install.sh

FreeBSD 4.4 installs only from CD-ROM, and not from an ISO image.

Note: With all versions of FreeBSD is that there is a problem probing for the CD-ROM device wdc1. FreeBSD sends an illegal ATAPI command to the IDE controller and ignores the error status reply. This results in approximately a one-minute delay each time the system boots.

Versions of FreeBSD older than 4.4 do not boot if the operating system has been installed on a SCSI virtual disk larger than 2GB. To correct this issue, you need to set the disk geometry for the SCSI virtual disk.

If you are using FreeBSD 4.3 or earlier with a SCSI virtual disk, the guest operating system does not boot if the SCSI virtual disk is larger than 2GB. During installation, FreeBSD does not probe the virtual disk geometry correctly. FreeBSD has fixed this problem in FreeBSD 4.4. If you don't want to upgrade to 4.4, you can either use FreeBSD on an IDE virtual disk, or else you can set the disk geometry by hand during the installation. For information on setting the disk geometry by hand, please visit the VMware Web site at www.vmware.com/support/reference/common/fbsd_scsi.html.

VMware does not support sound in FreeBSD guest operating systems.

The Linux emulation support in FreeBSD 3.1 is insufficient to run the X server provided by VMware for use on Linux systems running in a virtual machine. The VGA server distributed with FreeBSD works as expected.

On a Linux host with an XFree86 3.x X server, it is best not to run a screen saver in the guest operating system. Guest screen savers that demand a lot of processing power can cause the X server on the host to freeze.

The generic FreeBSD kernel works well. Users who want to configure a kernel specifically for use in a virtual machine can use a configuration file like the one below. Note that this file was created for FreeBSD 3.1.

________________________________________________________ # # VMWARE -- Workstation virtual machine # # For more information read the handbook part System Administration -> # Configuring the FreeBSD Kernel -> The Configuration File. # The handbook is available in /usr/share/doc/handbook or online as # latest version from the FreeBSD World Wide Web server # URL:http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ # # An exhaustive list of options and more detailed explanations of the # device lines is present in the ./LINT configuration file. If you are # in doubt as to the purpose or necessity of a line, check first in LINT. # machine "i386" cpu "I686_CPU" ident VMWARE maxusers 32 options INET #InterNETworking options FFS #Berkeley Fast Filesystem options FFS_ROOT #FFS usable as root device [keep this!] options MFS #Memory Filesystem options MFS_ROOT #MFS usable as root device, "MFS" req'ed options NFS #Network Filesystem options NFS_ROOT #NFS usable as root device, "NFS" req'ed options MSDOSFS #MSDOS Filesystem options "CD9660" #ISO 9660 Filesystem options "CD9660_ROOT" #CD-ROM usable as root. "CD9660" req'ed options PROCFS #Process filesystem options "COMPAT_43" #Compatible with BSD 4.3 [KEEP THIS!] options UCONSOLE #Allow users to grab the console options FAILSAFE #Be conservative options USERCONFIG #boot -c editor options VISUAL_USERCONFIG #visual boot -c editor config kernel root on wd0 # To make an SMP kernel, the next two are needed #options SMP # Symmetric MultiProcessor Kernel #options APIC_IO # Symmetric (APIC) I/O # Optionally these may need tweaked, (defaults shown): #options NCPU=2 # number of CPUs #options NBUS=4 # number of busses #options NAPIC=1 # number of IO APICs #options NINTR=24 # number of INTs controller isa0 controller eisa0 controller pci0 controller fdc0 at isa? port "IO_FD1" bio irq 6 drq 2 disk fd0 at fdc0 drive 0 disk fd1 at fdc0 drive 1 controller wdc0 at isa? port "IO_WD1" bio irq 14 disk wd0 at wdc0 drive 0 disk wd1 at wdc0 drive 1 controller wdc1 at isa? port "IO_WD2" bio irq 15 disk wd2 at wdc1 drive 0 disk wd3 at wdc1 drive 1 options ATAPI #Enable ATAPI support for IDE bus options ATAPI_STATIC #Don't do it as an LKM device acd0 #IDE CD-ROM device wfd0 #IDE Floppy (e.g. LS-120) device wt0 at isa? port 0x300 bio irq 5 drq 1 # atkbdc0 controls both the keyboard and the PS/2 mouse controller atkbdc0 at isa? port IO_KBD tty device atkbd0 at isa? tty irq 1 device psm0 at isa? tty irq 12 device vga0 at isa? port ? conflicts # splash screen/screen saver pseudo-device splash # syscons is the default console driver, resembling an SCO console device sc0 at isa? tty # Enable this and PCVT_FREEBSD for pcvt vt220 compatible console driver #device vt0 at isa? tty #options XSERVER # support for X server #options FAT_CURSOR # start with block cursor device npx0 at isa? port IO_NPX irq 13 # # Laptop support (see LINT for more options) # device apm0 at isa? disable flags 0x31 # Advanced Power Management device sio0 at isa? port "IO_COM1" flags 0x10 tty irq 4 device sio1 at isa? port "IO_COM2" tty irq 3 device sio2 at isa? disable port "IO_COM3" tty irq 5 device sio3 at isa? disable port "IO_COM4" tty irq 9 # Parallel port device ppc0 at isa? port? net irq 7 controller ppbus0 device nlpt0 at ppbus? device plip0 at ppbus? device ppi0 at ppbus? #controller vpo0 at ppbus? #device lnc0 at isa? port 0x1000 net irq 10 drq 0 device lnc0 # probe on PCI pseudo-device loop pseudo-device ether pseudo-device sl 1 pseudo-device ppp 1 pseudo-device tun 1 pseudo-device pty 16 pseudo-device gzip # Exec gzipped a.out's # KTRACE enables the system-call tracing facility ktrace(2). # This adds 4 KB bloat to your kernel, and slightly increases # the costs of each syscall. options KTRACE #kernel tracing # This provides support for System V shared memory and message queues. # options SYSVSHM options SYSVMSG # The `bpfilter' pseudo-device enables the Berkeley Packet Filter. Be # aware of the legal and administrative consequences of enabling this # option. The number of devices determines the maximum number of # simultaneous BPF clients programs runnable. #pseudo-device bpfilter 4 #Berkeley packet filter