Bhyve Boot settings are not saving

[Zaaphod]

I have a Windows 10 Professional VM working in a Bhyve VM, however I am having a problem getting it to save new boot settings. If I hit Esc while booting I get to a bios screen, and I make my changes, like to now boot only from the hard drive, and to not wait for a key to boot. I make sure I press F10 to save changes, and it says the changes have been saved, but then after the next boot, they are all back where they were. It's waiting for a keystroke to boot, but now I really really really need it to not do that anymore, because it's preventing the VM from starting until I go in there and hit a key.... and I can't be here to do that. I prefer to set it to wait 30 seconds then boot. I also need it to not try to boot from the CD anymore, because it also gets stuck on that. Is there a file I can edit with these settings? I have tried a dozen times to set it from the bios screen and it just doesn't take effect.. it always reverts back to what it was.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

As far as I know bhyve currently simply does not save these settings. A good workaround might be to use rEFInd. I use it to boot Ubuntu VMs in FreeNAS.

HTH,
Patrick

 

[Zaaphod]

I still can't get this to work. It's waiting for me to attach with a VNC viewer before it even tries to boot, but I really need it to start while unattended. I don't understand why it even has these settings if they can't be saved?

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

The VNC "problem" is a simple one: go to your VM's settings, Devices, VNC, Edit ... remove the check mark from "Wait to boot" ...
For the next step I still recommend installing rEFInd.

Patrick

 

[Zaaphod]

Thank you very much!!! I guess I was over complicating it.
I'm looking into rEFInd now, it looks like that will solve the problem of which device to boot from etc... I've temporarily removed the CD drive but I would rather it be there. Can I apply that to a drive with windows 10 already installed on it without it deactivating windows?

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Of course - that's the beauty of EFI boot. This is just a FAT32 partition where multiple boot loaders can reside without stepping on each other's feet.

Edited for additional info:

The idea is to install rEFInd into the default location - C:\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI. Then configure rEFInd to auto-boot windows after showing a menu for 10 seconds or some such.

Patrick