opnsense 22.1 for VMware ESXi ARM Fling on raspberry pi4B 8gb

Started by sharezone, November 23, 2021, 04:34:38 PM

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i have VMware ESXi ARM Fling on raspberry pi4B 8gb , exist ther vmdk or ova for this device ?

Quote from: sharezone on November 23, 2021, 04:34:38 PM
i have VMware ESXi ARM Fling on raspberry pi4B 8gb , exist ther vmdk or ova for this device ?

I don't know if any exists, but you can to create your own image using the opnsense tools.
A good starting point would be here https://github.com/opnsense/tools

You will need some adjustments though, e.g. a slightly modified device config file for you RPi 4B,
adjust some build scripts and so on. I can already tell you that cross compiling the development version 22.1 (based on FreeBSD 13) works for me.

If you don't mind helping me out with some testing (just some basic stuff like stability, booting process, ...) I can provide an image. I won't be able to offer you any repo as I have no means to host one right now, but if the packages are not too large, I could upload them somewhere so that you can download and install them on demand.

PM me if you're interested so that we can talk about further details.

BR




I can provide space for repository and available for testing. have you then installed opnsense on arm fling pi4 8gb?
did you also manage to get openvmtools or vmware tools to work?
I remain at your disposal

Quote from: sharezone on November 30, 2021, 05:48:44 PM
I can provide space for repository and available for testing. have you then installed opnsense on arm fling pi4 8gb?
did you also manage to get openvmtools or vmware tools to work?
I remain at your disposal

In that case, let me setup the packages first (compiling takes a long time). I gave away my RPi 4 and currently own a RPi CM4.
Booting from an sd card works without issues. The image both for the RPi4 and RPi CM4 is essentially the same where the latter just requires an additional line in /etc/rc.conf to boot.

Afaik ESXi-Arm Fling doesn't work on the CM4 (or maybe it does? haven't seen it in the supported devices list). I could test it, but would take some time. Maybe it's easier if I just provide a vmdk image for the RPi4 and you can tell me whether it works or not on ESXi-Arm Fling. I can't say much about open-vm-tools. Technically speaking, it should work and it's also available as FreeBSD port. We won't know unless we try :)

I will let you know once I am done creating the image (should't take too long, I have everything ready more or less).
Can't give you a time for the ports though (might have to face compiling errors etc.). Will get there eventually :)

By the way, do you have any requirements for the image and swap size? The standard is 20G and 1G for swap.
For testing we can just go for smaller values I guess.

UPDATE:
For starters I created a vmdk image for you. It boots up fine on my host (amd64) with qemu.
I turned off swap and the image size is 5 GB. Here is the link: https://we.tl/t-QawChIcscD
(Don't get surprised about the small archive size, it's just compressed)


sorry for the delay but my first baby was born.

i try you image but after uncompress i need execute vmkfstools -i  sourcedisk.vmdk  destdisck.vmk . after this i create a new virtual machine add the exting vmdk disk and now is up .

now how do i set the ip of the gui to access? ..

how can i set ip of interfaces so that i can assign ip and permit you access if you want on SSH

UPDATE
set ip on interface EM0 for internet access and execute pkg update and pkg install open-vm-tools
add on rc.conf the line vmware_guest_vmxnet_enable="YES"

see on vmware "VMware Tools   Running, version:2147483647 (Guest Managed) " and the interface vmxnet is up

now i need set interface gui but


Congratulations! You and your family have all my blessings :)

I am glad to hear that the image works for you. As mentioned in my previous post, the image only contains the base and kernel. It was just to see whether it's gonna boot up on your device or not. Since it boots up, we can proceed with the next steps.

Did some research and found out that with open-vm-tools 11.3.0 they added support for arm64 (vmci is not working). You can read more about it here https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools/pull/474 and https://vincerants.com/open-vm-tools-on-freebsd-under-vmware-esxi-arm-fling/

As you are not using a graphical desktop, I recommend you to use "open-vm-tools-nox11".

The reason why you don't have a GUI for opnsense is that I haven't built it. There is good news though. I finally managed to build the packages, but ran into some issues (as expected). Apparently some packages required to build the opnsense core depend on "go" where the latter is not build as per settings. I will try to build go and the remaining packages and eventually provide you a final vmdk image.

If you have time and want to get your hands dirty, you can have a look at this repo:
https://ftp.yrzr.tk/opnsense/FreeBSD%3A12%3Aaarch64/21.7/latest/All/?C=N&O=A

Most of the packages are available here (my one is missing around 15 of them due to build errors).

thanks so much.

i will absolutely try to get my hands dirty, i like it.
So I await the defined image ok?
I use this thread to update my tests

I managed to solve the build issues. The GUI should be available now. Let me know if this image works for you. If it doesn't, I might have to add a few quirks (wouldn't take long). You can also use the packages as local repo (:

VMDK image: https://we.tl/t-yMPVbYgqnt
Packages: https://we.tl/t-X0K01nBY1V

so ..


  • untar the file on datastore
    execute on esxi sheel  vmkfstool -i source.vmdk target.vmdk
    create a new virtual machine
    assign vmxnet3 interface
    attached disk target.vmdk
    start vm success
    vm up and running
    configure wan interface
    enter on GUI with success
    delete on /boot/loader.conf the entry hw.uart.console the reboot success
    after tesh shutwn not boot show the message "EFI framebuffer information... "

    i try to debug but not i understand where is the error






GREAAATTT function i removed the unsupported entry from gui and reboot and shutdown funtion .

Not function update . See the image for error

I am glad to hear it worked out in the end. It would be great if you tell me more about overall stability.

Well, updating is not possible which is why I provided you the packages archive. The image I created for you is from the development branch and arm64 is not "officially" supported by opnsense yet. In other words, an official opnsense repo for aarch64 does not exist. The provided image itself is experimental, so you can expect bugs, stability issues etc.

22.1 is scheduled for release in January, but I can't tell how soon official arm64 images will be available. Nevertheless, community builds for different arm devices will for sure be available either on the same day or shortly after.

The packages I uploaded are all up to date (I have compiled them yesterday). If you want to use a small repo to install packages, you can also create your own with the archive I provided you.

For more info and details, feel free to follow this thread:
https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=12186.0


EDIT: Yeah, I expected you to face these issues (that's my fault actually, I have commented out  something inside the code which most likely caused it, but I can easily fix that).

you did a wonderful job. I will start the tests in these days since I have a few hours free. I'll do various tests and update the thread. I keep you informed

UPDATE:
you think is possible include on next build vmdk the opnvmtools

UPDATE TEST:
simple routing ok
routing vlan ok
dmz ok
ha ok

where is possible enable feature

That sounds like a plan!  8)

open-vm-tools-nox11 is actually available in the packages archive. I haven't tried to include certain packages in the image, but what I can do is to simply add these packages to a certain folder (/usr/ports/packages) within the image and create a local repo for you. You can then install the required packages on demand (even without internet access).

So for the next vmdk image, I will just adjust the quirks and add the repo :)

thank .. great

today i execute a revert snapshot and now i hve this problem. i prupose insert in next vmdk image check FS auomatically