[Fwd: about vbox and freebsd]

[Michael Powell]

John Francis Lee wrote:

> I got an answer to my question, posted here, from ... but I've been
> instructed not to post to individuals but to the list so I copy the
> Mak's response here :
> 
> <snip>
> Your CPU is 64-bit from what I can see. From a bit of Googling, others
> have encountered this problem, and it seems to have to do with VM-X. I
> have no idea what that is, but a thread in which someone has a very
> similar issue is here:
> 
>    http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=19420
> 
> One notable quote is:
> 
>    ...[the CPU] does not have Intel VT (hardware virtualization), so you
> will not be able to run 64 bit guests in Virtualbox even though you run
> a 64 bit host.
> 
> HTH
> </snip>

Something sounds strange here. The name for Intel's hardware virtualization 
feature is VT-I, or sometimes VT-x, while AMD's name for the same thing is 
AMD-V. Your processor supports AMD-V and VirtualBox supports both, at least 
in the version 3.0.4 that I am running.

Alas, my processor is Intel and if there actually is a problem of VirtualBox 
not being 64 bit capable with AMD-V I cannot test. Since your host system is 
Ubuntu I am also wondering if the problem could involve their packaging of 
the product, e.g., an older version of VirtualBox such as 2.x or some such. 
Also wonder if it needs to be manually turned on in BIOS. Also I believe the 
64 bit support is relatively new so you might want to check which version of 
VirtualBox it became included as a new feature and compare that against the 
version you have.

Since this is a FreeBSD list I'm just going to say it could be an Ubuntu 
problem, and leave it at that.
 
> So, OK. I cannot have 64 bit guests using virtual box.
> 
> I have installed the 32 bit version of FreeBSD... but it has no X and
> apparently no networking because the ftp from pkg_add failed.
> 
> Did I do something wrong in the install, or do I really have to
> configure all that stuff by hand?

Don't know. But the default VirtualBox networking is NAT, with it supplying 
DHCP services to the client. You may need to enter a line in your (FreeBSD) 
/etc/rc.conf similar to:

ifconfig_rl0="DHCP"   where rl0 would be whatever is your network interface. 
When it boots (the FreeBSD guest) it should be assigned an IP something like 
10.0.2.15 and a default gateway something like 10.0.2.2. These can vary.

Also be aware that while you can connect outbound and receive return traffic 
you will be unable to initiate inbound connections. If you require this 
ability you will need to manually set up VirtualBox in bridge mode, which 
also requires some non-trivial config changes to your host OS.

Like I said, something just sounds fishy to me because on the VirtualBox 
3.0.4 that I run it clearly supports both Intel and AMD hardware 
virtualization. Since I don't have the AMD processor to try it myself I 
can't confirm. At any rate, if the 32 bit FreeBSD runs and satisfies your 
needs why keep fiddling.

-Mike