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@voutilad
Created May 29, 2017 15:16
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Installing Alpine Linux in OpenBSD's VMM Hypervisor
# Assuming you're a regular user that has doas allowances for vmctl
mkdir -p ~/vmm
cd ~/vmm
# Grab the the one of the virt iso's of Alpine Linux
curl https://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.6/releases/x86_64/alpine-virt-3.6.0-x86_64.iso -o alpine-virt-3.6.0-x86_64.iso
# Make a new virtual disk image, change the size as needed
vmctl create alpine-virt.img -s 6G
# Boot Alpine from the ISO. Make sure you have this exact disk order because as of 29 May 2017
# VMM's SeaBIOS will only try to boot from the first one it seems!
# Also, this assumes:
# - you want 1024M of memory, tune as desired
# - you configured a virtual switch called "local" in your /etc/vm.conf
# (see: http://www.h-i-r.net/2017/04/openbsd-vmm-hypervisor-part-2.html)
doas vmctl start alpine -d alpine-virt-3.6.0-x86_64.iso -d alpine-virt.img -n local -m 1024M -c
# You shoud get a serial console connection immediately. Hit enter or whatever to boot Alpine.
# Once in Alpine, run:
setup-alpine
@divansantana
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I've had this issue too. Guessing it's hardware related. openbsd72 running alpine-virt anything greater then or equal to 3.6 fails. No idea why.

@voutilad
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voutilad commented Jan 5, 2023

Are you on Intel-based hardware for the OpenBSD host? If so, it's probably the Linux kernel probing some expected Intel hardware via MMIO registers. vmm(4) and vmd(8) do not implement support for emulating that access yet, but there is some preliminary support I committed a few months ago that's gated behind an #ifdef. It requires a -current host and building vmd(8) from source and twiddling the MMIO_NOTYET definition.

It might help the guests boot. If not, check the output and share it on misc@openbsd.org for me please.

@divansantana
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Done. Thanks @voutilad :)

@voutilad
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voutilad commented Jan 6, 2023

See my reply on the email list: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=167303917804395&w=2

In short, I think this is an issue we will fix in -current but since I don't think I have newer Intel hardware that supports the TSLEEP instructions to test my changes it may be a few days to confirm.

@divansantana
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Looks like recent patch in 7.2 fixed this. Thank you!

@divansantana
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Looks like recent patch in 7.2 fixed this. Thank you!

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