Running OPNSense on a Mac Mini through VirtualBox

[bluepr0]

Hello!

First of all, let me thank you for this great piece of software! I'm in the process of building my own router and firewall but I'm finding some issues.

I have a Mac mini (late 2012) (specs http://d.pr/i/NbTE/t30pCACe). The HD is not SSD, but I get around 90mb read/write so it should be fine.

I've setup Virtualbox with 8GB of RAM and all available cores. I have a thunderbolt to eth adapter in order to have 2 physical ethernets. You can see an screenshot from Virtualbox setup here http://d.pr/i/18zxd/3fHDY4m8

I get OPNSense to work perfectly, but my problem is that I don't get all my available internet speed (200mbps/20mbps)... I only get about 125mbps/20mbps. Also the CPU goes at 100%

It's very weird because I also have a NAS, and it happens the same there. I thought it will be fine on the Mac Mini due to the great specs, but it's more of the same. Here's an screenshot of PFSense (I had that one running, but as you can see I tried OPNSense and IPFire with same results) http://d.pr/i/Yp9Z/4R14Rq9l

I have also tried to use the Virtual Ethernet adapters on VirtualBox (virtio) but same results. I have no idea what else to try, I don't understand why it uses so much resources and I don't even get my  full internet speed.

Thanks for any help!

[smajor]

I'm not using OPNSense with VB, but I have used VirtualBox on the same model Mac mini you have.

My experience mirrors yours on network thru-put and high CPU usage. Don't get me wrong, VirtualBox is fantastic for needing to run something once in awhile (free!), but for a better experience I'd look at Parallels or VMware (We use the former at work and I use the latter at home.)

I switched to VMware for my 24/7 app and my CPU usage for the same version of Windows dropped to 1/3rd what it was and my transfer speeds improved drastically.

Before I bought, I downloaded the 30 day trial. You might want to give it a try and see if it solves your issues.

Alternately, for home, I picked up one of these small form factor HPs for about $50US on eBay and reused a 100MB USB Ethernet Adapter on my WAN side. OPNsense works wonderfully with it!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883281931

[bluepr0]

Hello!

thanks for your reply!. I've managed to get it working "decently" with VMWare ESXi 6 installed on the Mac Mini. Now I can get all my internet bandwidth with around 30-40% CPU usage. Wondering how much CPU I would use with a native installation of OPNSense!

[smajor]

When I was testing, I ran it on one of the original "white" Mac minis (Core 2, 18.3GHz) I had lying around - the answer is - not much at all for a home router. It's very efficient.

[bluepr0]

Did you run it natively? I have been researching a bit about running FreeBSD on a Mac Mini (late 2012) natively but it seems hard. I tried making a OPNSense bootable USB and it doesn't work with Mac

[smajor]

No, the only thing I made sure to do was set the power options in OS X first so it would never go into sleep. This writes them to PRAM so your firewall won't go into hibernation with a different OS.

I then just used the OPNsense CD I made and installed it by booting from the CD.  When it was done it booted fine.

[bluepr0]

Thanks! I was able to boot from the PFSense img (burned it to my usb pen drive) just fine. But with the OPNSense image I can't boot from it. I guess it not loading disk drives or something?. After holding ALT and selecting my pen drive, I get a black screen with a "_" in the top-left corner. With the PFSense image I get a "/" spinning and then it loads the OS

Any ideas?

thanks!

PD: I have running smoothly PFSense right now, natively on my Mac mini!... but I would prefer to install OPNSense to be honest

[smajor]

It should boot, you're using the 64 bit version?

You might have better luck with a CD image.  Almost any USB external CD drive will work with that mini.

[bluepr0]

Yep, I'm using 64 bits.

I'don't have a external USB drive to try, sadly . But I guess it should work anyway with the USB! It might be just a matter of configuration on the OPNSense img?

[smajor]

It probably should! I don't know for certain, but I just burned the image as is to a CD and it booted fine for me without having to do anything else to it.

[bluepr0]

Could you teem me which one exactly? Thanks!

[smajor]

Certainly, the first one at the top of this page is the exact one I used:

http://mirror.wdc1.us.leaseweb.net/opnsense/releases/15.7.18/

OPNsense-15.7.18-OpenSSL-cdrom-amd64.iso.bz2   204M   09-Nov-2015 06:10

You could probably restore that to a USB drive and boot from it.

[jstrebel]

@smajor, tried some weeks ago make OPNsense work on a macbook. It OPNsense came up nicely by installing from a ISO image. But i was not able to make it run supporting VLAN's. (One phys ethernet , two vlans booth in separate ipaddress ranges) would be great if you could post your config screens vbox & OPNsense network if assignements). I am relly stuck tried and googled for many hours. Thanks jakob


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[jstrebel]

Just realized looking at your initial posting, that you have two physical Ethernet Interfaces.
Q: is somebody on this list who has "virtualized" one physical Interface with VLAN's?
Jakob