Creating a Virtual OPNsense Firewall

[spetrillo]

Hello all,

I am in the process of trying to build a virtual OPNsense firewall, on my VMware virtualization server. I get thru the boot and when in the installer I get the following error msg when trying to begin the install on the disk partition I have assigned to the vm configuration. I have no idea why I am getting stuck on the GPT/UEFI part. What am I missing?

Thanks,
Steve

[cookiemonster]

If you are setting up a VM with EFI then you need to add a UEFI disk as part of the VM, i.e. in the hypervisor.
You can of course set the VM as BIOS and still use GPT as a partitioning scheme.

[spetrillo]

Stupid question...

I do not see any place in the VMware GUI that lets me change from UEFI to BIOS. Where is that?

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Settings, VM options, boot ... or similar. I'm writing from memory.

[cookiemonster]

My homelab ESXi hosts are powered down to save electricity (beasty guzzlers) and I re-created most VMs on smaller and consumer parts for now. I'm using Proxmox on them. On proxmox it is as simple as "Add EFI disk"

[spetrillo]

Found it...but here is the funky problem. It is set to BIOS, so UEFI should not be called up. So a few more questions:

1) Should I be installing with ZFS or UFS?
2) Has anyone tried to build a vm with the 23.1 iso? I wonder if I have found a bug?

[cookiemonster]

I tend to use GPT for partitioning scheme anyways and all my machines that can use ZFS, I default to it. It's just great as a filesystem, even if I won't benefit from the volume management on single disk.
Just make sure the image you're using is right.
And in my opinion, I hardly ever am on the latest of systems unless it is for testing.
I'd go for 22.7

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Keep in mind that you should thick provision your virtual disk for ZFS, not thin.

[spetrillo]

Just found that out...I am picking ZFS with the stripe option, since I am using one disk. It looks like UFS option does not work for a vm any longer.