Re: Trying to virtualize ReactOS with bhyve : I don't see a viable way to do it...

UPDATE :

I've been able to unfreeze ReactOS on the boot stage. I've just removed the
bhyve "-A" offending parameter that can't be used because ReactOS probably
does not support ACPI. Now I'm at this stage :

https://ibb.co/Dtw8Hj1

Now the problem is that I can't move the mouse inside the vm and the
keyboard does not work...so I need to find some workaround to supply the
absence of the arbiter...

I've thought about using virtio-input and I've added this parameter to
bhyve :

-s 12,virtio-input,/dev/input/event7 \

I've chosen event7,because I've got it here :

[root@marietto /bhyve]==> ls /dev/input/
event0 event1 event2 event3 event4 event5 event6 event7

Anyway I also tried event6,event5...it didn't work.

Can someone quickly explain how it works ? Is it supposed to work even if
ReactOS does not have the arbiter ?
More precisely the ReactOS developer said : "Hardware initialization
doesn’t occur on UEFI due to missing arbiter support : It means that the
hardware (even essential such as input devices) will not work and you may
not be able to interact with the system in any way"

My idea is to use Barrier to be able to use the mouse and keyboard inside
the vm...I will install the server on freebsd and the client inside the
reactos vm...

Could it work  as long as reactOS has a network connection ?

Let me know.

On Fri, Apr 19, 2024 at 3:52 PM Mario Marietto <marietto2008@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello.
>
> I'm trying to boot the 32 bit ISO image of ReactOS using bhyve or qemu and
> seabios as bootloader.
>
> As first experiment I tried to boot the x86 version of ReactOS with qemu
> (8.2.2) and seabios (version 1.16.1_1),like this :
>
> qemu-system-x86_64 -machine q35 -m 1G -cdrom
> /home/marietto/Desktop/Downloads/OS/ReactOS/reactos-livecd-0.4.15-dev-7921-g6d853be-x86-msvc-win-dbg.iso
> -boot order=d
>
> Unfortunately,I get the error below :
>
> https://ibb.co/tZmFh2x
>
> but my real goal is to boot ReactOS by using seabios. Even here I'm
> unlucky. Infact on this web page :
>
> https://eradman.com/posts/bhyve-ipxe.html
>
> we can read :
>
> *Bhyve is somewhat similar to QEMU-KVM without the emulation required to
> boot SeaBIOS.*
>
> Is really true that I can't use seabios to boot ReactOS with bhyve ?
> Anyway,ok. I've continued my searching and I found this thread :
>
> https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/bhyve-with-bios-boot.79794/
>
> where we can read :
>
> *bhyveload has nothing to do with BIOS. As detailed in the man page you
> linked to, it is for loading a FreeBSD guest.*
>
> So,it seems that I can't even use bhyveload. So,what can I use ? What can
> I do ?
>
> I've gone on the ReactOS forum and I've created a thread where
> I 've asked how to boot the 64 bit + UEFI version of ReactOS using bhyve.
> The developers helped me,but in the end we have done nothing. Because after
> some progress,I found this error :
>
> https://ibb.co/N9QHdnp
>
> Unfortunately it is frozen when it tries to load the mountmgr.sys driver.
> Actually unfixed and no one knows how to fix it.
>
> Now I'm here,asking for some further ideas and suggestions.
>
> --
> Mario.
>


-- 
Mario.