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    ESXi 6.5.0 Guest OS errors…

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    • jimpJ
      jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
      last edited by

      Was this a new 2.4.0 install or an upgrade? If it was a new install, what filesystem and partition options were used?

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      • J
        jasonsansone
        last edited by

        I installed 2.4 RC new when it was first released and then restored a config in order to take advantage of ZFS. It’s ZFS on Bios.  I have updated each successive snapshot since the initial RC release.

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        • jimpJ
          jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
          last edited by

          I have a mix here, some upgrades, some new installs, most on UFS, one or two on ZFS, I think they're all on GPT/BIOS though. None have issues.

          Any special hardware involved in the hypervisor? Passing anything through? Any special options enabled?

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          • J
            jasonsansone
            last edited by

            Nothing special. It’s a Lenovo Thinkstation C20. Dual Xeon Quad Core with 48GB ECC DDR3. No pci passthrough although VT-d is fully enabled for other guest VM’s. No tweaks or special options in the guest or host.

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            • jimpJ
              jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
              last edited by

              Looks like it could be a FreeBSD issue: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=220923 and/or https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=217282

              Seems intermittent and doesn't appear to happen to everyone, not many hits out there for it.

              Maybe something in the video/console settings of the virtual hardware itself.

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              • johnpozJ
                johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                last edited by

                @Jimp

                So you stated "I'm on 6.5.0 (Build 5310538) and though I do see that guest OS difference message"

                Then you updated to "6.5.0 Update 1 (Build 6765664)"  Did this make the OS message go away?

                An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.7.2, 24.11

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                • jimpJ
                  jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                  last edited by

                  @johnpoz:

                  @Jimp

                  So you stated "I'm on 6.5.0 (Build 5310538) and though I do see that guest OS difference message"

                  Then you updated to "6.5.0 Update 1 (Build 6765664)"  Did this make the OS message go away?

                  No, that message is still there, and there is no OS option in the ESX settings for the VM to make it match. Not sure if that's something that FreeBSD or VMware is going to have to fix.

                  I should also add that the exact same message shows up on a FreeBSD 11.1 VM, so it isn't specific to pfSense. It does go away if you stop the tools guestd daemon, so maybe an update to the open-vm-tools package will eventually fix it.

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                  • J
                    jasonsansone
                    last edited by

                    I don't think that warning really matters.  VMWare is simply not properly identifying the Guest OS but you already manually selected FreeBSD, so the drivers and hardware emulation is accurate.  The same occurs when I update to brand new releases of macOS or Ubuntu builds.

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                    • johnpozJ
                      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                      last edited by

                      I have not seen this OS message.. Curious why some people are and I am not.. Guess I could try a clean install.. I am running current open-vm-tools..

                      I am not using zfs that is for sure.. But I could try installing pfsense clean and freebsd clean and see if I can get it to come up..

                      An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                      If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                      Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                      SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.7.2, 24.11

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                      • J
                        jasonsansone
                        last edited by

                        Here is the warning

                        Warning.jpg
                        Warning.jpg_thumb

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                        • johnpozJ
                          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                          last edited by

                          Yeah I do not get that.. Wow 8 cpus for your pfsense - bit of overkill ;) heheeh

                          An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                          If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                          Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                          SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.7.2, 24.11

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                          • J
                            jasonsansone
                            last edited by

                            @johnpoz:

                            Yeah I do not get that.. Wow 8 cpus for your pfsense - bit of overkill ;) heheeh

                            Smoke'm if you got'em?

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                            • johnpozJ
                              johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                              last edited by

                              I just bumped pfsense to

                              2.4.0-RC (amd64)
                              built on Mon Oct 09 17:58:12 CDT 2017
                              FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE-p1

                              And now I am getting it.. Hmmmmmm?

                              edit:
                              I just closed that notice with its little x, and then logged out of esxi, then back in.. And doesn't seem like its coming back??  Huh… Wonder if it only comes up if your watching pfsense boot on esxi?

                              An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                              If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                              Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                              SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.7.2, 24.11

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                              • Z
                                zxvv
                                last edited by

                                @jimp:

                                Looks like it could be a FreeBSD issue: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=220923 and/or https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=217282

                                Seems intermittent and doesn't appear to happen to everyone, not many hits out there for it.

                                Maybe something in the video/console settings of the virtual hardware itself.

                                I'm seeing this vga_bitblt_text() bug as well in VMs.

                                I had no success varying most of the guest VM vga configuration - ram from 4M to 256MB, with or without 3d support, etc.

                                It occurs in VMs with both legacy bios and EFI bios.

                                On the bright side, it is intermittent – about 1/4 of reboots.  It seems to occur early enough that file system damage doesn't seem to be an issue when invoking a reboot in the debugger.

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                                • C
                                  C0RR0SIVE
                                  last edited by

                                  Yeup the hangs I mentioned earlier are from that vga_bitblt_text() issue…  Tried all sorts of things...

                                  One VM is an upgrade from 2.3.x, another was installed using a snapshot image a while back, accepting the defaults all the way through.  The third one is a copy of the first VM.

                                  The hanging at boot is very random for me, but thankfully it happens before disk access occurs from the looks of things.

                                  For the most part, the message is an annoyance in my log files, a very big one, the real issue now seems to be more or less vga_bitblt_text() causing a hang which is outside of the hands of PFSense it seems... :(

                                  Going to have to find a snapshot and use that one till I know this is fixed as this (the hanging issue more specifically now) is (I know it shouldn't be...) in a production environment and we kill everything at night to save money on the light bill and everything auto-starts in the mornings.

                                  @johnpoz:

                                  I just closed that notice with its little x, and then logged out of esxi, then back in.. And doesn't seem like its coming back??  Huh… Wonder if it only comes up if your watching pfsense boot on esxi?

                                  If you switch views a few times, or log in a day later it usually pops right back up, and when viewing your VM's it will keep bouncing between Warning and Normal on the status for it.

                                  I wonder if whoever maintains the VM Tools Package for PFSense could make modifications to report the "proper" OS?

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                                  • johnpozJ
                                    johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                    last edited by

                                    "we kill everything at night to save money on the light bill and everything auto-starts in the mornings."

                                    Wow… what a BAD idea that is!  So did you do the math on that?  What exactly is your host drawing at night when cpus are all idle anyway?

                                    So how many watts this host drawing?  Now how much you pay per kwh, do the math for it being off at night.. What you save a $1.20 a month? ;)  You eat up 10 years worth of saving with 1 oh shit this didn't boot..

                                    An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                    If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                    Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                    SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.7.2, 24.11

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                                    • C
                                      C0RR0SIVE
                                      last edited by

                                      The closet pulls ~650w minimum at all times, under load, the closet will reach about 1300w, it's not just the host that gets killed at night either.  Switches (that's about 140w alone), 4 satellite modems (between 20w and 45w each depending on weather conditions, signal quality and other factors), and other devices all get powered off shortly after the host shuts down and back on automatically when the host starts back up.

                                      It also keeps the AC from having to run as much at night even though it's easier to cool at night, it still saves on the bill.

                                      No need to do the math, real world testing I average between $20 to $45 lower on the bill on months that I kill everything.  While that doesn't seem like a lot per month, over the course of a year, that's a nice savings that can go to other things :)

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                                      • jimpJ
                                        jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                                        last edited by

                                        @C0RR0SIVE:

                                        I wonder if whoever maintains the VM Tools Package for PFSense could make modifications to report the "proper" OS?

                                        The pfSense package only uses the FreeBSD port. This issue also affects FreeBSD, so any fix needs to happen on FreeBSD and then it will make its way into our package after.

                                        Maybe it just hasn't shown up yet, but I used "Upgrade VM Compatibility" to upgrade two VMs to "VM version 13", or ESX 6.5 level, and they no longer report the version mismatch warning.

                                        Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

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                                        Do not Chat/PM for help!

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                                        • jimpJ
                                          jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                                          last edited by

                                          @jimp:

                                          @C0RR0SIVE:

                                          I wonder if whoever maintains the VM Tools Package for PFSense could make modifications to report the "proper" OS?

                                          The pfSense package only uses the FreeBSD port. This issue also affects FreeBSD, so any fix needs to happen on FreeBSD and then it will make its way into our package after.

                                          Maybe it just hasn't shown up yet, but I used "Upgrade VM Compatibility" to upgrade two VMs to "VM version 13", or ESX 6.5 level, and they no longer report the version mismatch warning.

                                          Spoke too soon, it just hadn't shown back up yet. Disregard.

                                          Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

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                                          • jimpJ
                                            jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                                            last edited by

                                            Anyone that can reproduce that vga_bitblt_text() crash relaibly (I still can't), try adding this to your /boot/loader.conf.local:

                                            debug.debugger_on_panic=0
                                            

                                            It won't stop the crash but it should allow the VM to restart itself automatically if it happens, rather than sitting at a debug prompt. Though that would also stop it from gathering panic data if you have an actual crash later. Could add a tunable in the GUI to set it back to 1 at boot time which should be late enough to work around that.

                                            Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

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                                            Do not Chat/PM for help!

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