Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 12:54:45 +0000 From: Darren Reed <darrenr@hub.freebsd.org> To: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> Cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Experiences with 7.0-CURRENT and vmware. Message-ID: <20070510125445.GA5460@hub.freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <20070510132153.A91312@fledge.watson.org> References: <20070510111326.GA94093@hub.freebsd.org> <20070510132153.A91312@fledge.watson.org>
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On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 01:28:16PM +0100, Robert Watson wrote: > > On Thu, 10 May 2007, Darren Reed wrote: > > >I'm using FreeBSD 7.0-CURRENT under vmware and there are a few issues. Redirecting to current@... > >First, time. hint.hw.acpi.disabled="1" This appears to make _no_ > >difference to time keeping on FreeBSD 7 and nor does it seem to have any > >impact on ACPI being loaded. Do I need to recompile a new kernel without > >it or is there a new way to disable ACPI? > > Have you tried hint.acpi.0.disabled=1 instead? This is what appears in > acpi(4), and is what is used in various existing boot loader bits when I > grep around. In another reply it was "hint.apic.0.disabled=1". My current loader.conf: vm.kmem_size=536870912 vm.kmem_size_max=536870912 unset acpi_load hint.acpi.0.disabled=1 hint.apci.0.disabled=1 hint.acpi.0.disabled="1" hint.apci.0.disabled="1" vfs.zfs.arc_max=402653184 Booting with this gives me: kernel: Timecounter "ACPI-safe" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 1000 and ACPI enabled. > >I should add that FreeBSD 6, with the same setting, is no better and that > >I need to run ntpdate every 5-10 minutes via crontab in order to keep good > >time (timekeeping is *really* bad.) In one instance, i was watching > >"zpool iostat 1" and it appeared like the rows were muching up at a rate > >of 2 a second for a minute or so. How do I disable TSC timekeeping? > >(NetBSD has this disabled by default in their kernels.) Or is there > >somethign else I must do? > > kern.timecounter.hardware: ACPI-fast > kern.timecounter.choice: TSC(800) ACPI-fast(1000) i8254(0) dummy(-1000000) > > I believe you can simply set kern.timecounter.hardware=APCI-fast and it > will do what you expect. An interesting question is why it selects what is > arguably the wrong one; a post to current@ might help resolve that. Hmm. # sysctl kern.timecounter.hardware="ACPI-fast" kern.timecounter.hardware: ACPI-safe sysctl: kern.timecounter.hardware: Invalid argument Or is this a loader.conf setting? > >Second, networking. Prior to FreeBSD-7, the driver to use inside vmware > >workstation was lnc. It has worked and contiues to work great. No > >problemo. FreeBSD-7 uses the "em" driver. To put it simply, it sucks in > >comparison. When things really get bad I start seeing "em0: watchdog > >timeout" messages on the console. I looked and I don't see a lnc driver > >anywhere. Is there another alternative (le?) driver that I can use in > >place of em, if so, how? > > Has VMware changed what network hardware they emulate, and/or does VMware > offer options about what virtual hardware to expose? I don't believe so. It still probes as pcn under NetBSD. > The if_em driver is > for Intel ethernet cards; historically VMware has exposed a Lance ethernet > device supported by the lnc(4) device driver; now that driver has indeed > been replaced with le(4). Right. I believe it still is lance, but somehow em is showing up. > But if if_em is probing, it suggests a VMware > change rather than a FreeBSD change, which you may be able to revert by > telling it to expose a Lance-style device as opposed to an Intel device. There's no way to choose the type of card vmware emulates. > Generally speaking, this would be a discouraged configuration, but you will > probably need to frob two settings: first, PermitEmptyPasswords in > sshd_config, and second, force non-PAM validation by setting UsePAM to > false. Instead of doing this, I would advise instead setting up an SSH key > for the account, and not set a passphrase on the SSH key. This doesn't > require any changing of the global sshd configuration and should offer most > of the same benefits. btw, there are instances where you can be promopted 6 times for a password when logging in with ssh, 3 times with "Password:" prompt and another three with "root@hostname's password:" promopt. Darren
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