On 21/05/2025 18:01, void wrote:
This bhyve host was set up following instructions from the bhyve section of the
handbook. I've just checked and no mention is made of the
new requirement in section 24.7.1 of the handbook at
https://freebsd.org/handbook
So, if a lot of people run bhyve guests as described
then more people are going to be affected than one might initially
presume.
Just in case, here is the full Handbook link:
https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/virtualization/#virtualization-bhyve-prep
I am quite sure that a lot of hosts with VMs are configured that way.
Mine are.
And I saw on developers@ other people reporting the same kind of setup.
I must admit that in my rational mind I understand that a bridge is a bridge,
but I always felt that a bridge combining several physical interfaces (and thus
physical LANs) and/or maybe some VLAN interfaces is different from a bridge that
combines a single physical or VLAN interface with several virtual interfaces
(like tap or epair) that are connected to VMs.
I always knew to assign an IP address to the first kind of a bridge, never to
its members.
But in the second case, it felt that the physical interface is the primary
interface. It's *the* network interface. It must be configured fully. And the
bridge is "ephemeral". Maybe I won't start any VMs and won't configure the
bridge at all.
Why always have that bridge?
Or why change the main networking configuration when I decide to create that "VM
bridge"?
And this view is reflected in Handbook and also in some external tools for VM
management.
Take for instance vm-bhyve which seems to be a pretty popular "front-end" to
bhyve.
Its quick start has these steps which are equivalent to what Handbook has:
7. vm switch create public
8. vm switch add public em0
Seeing both sides of the things I am not sure what to propose here.
But I certainly do not enjoy the thought that I need to change a host's network
configuration in case I just want to run a VM and to bridge it to the LAN.
Or I'd have to pre-configure a bridge (with a single member, initially) on every
host where I might want to configure a bridged VM later.
vm-bhyve links:
- https://github.com/freebsd/vm-bhyve
- https://github.com/churchers/vm-bhyve/wiki/Virtual-Switches
--
Andriy Gapon
