Zero luck creating a VM

[RoadHazard]

Call me stupid, but I can't get even a rudimentary VM to start and connect with VNC.

I create a new VM using all the defaults. It's got the default NIC and VNC with a randomly assigned port. 'Wait to Boot' is enabled. No disk or CD-ROM yet.

I open RealVNC's VNC Viewer app v6.1.1, create a new connection, accept all the defaults *except* for picture quality, which is set to High.

I start the VM, point VNC Viewer to IP : port (where IP is the same IP address as the FreeNAS web UI, and port is the randomly assigned port number for the VNC device), and VNC Viewer responds with "The connection was refused by the computer." Retrying the connection over and over gives the same result. Stop the VM and try again. More of the same.

I then create a zvol, add it to the VM, and try again. No change. Add a CD-ROM and point it to an .iso (a Windows installation CD). No change. Remove the disk and/or the CD-ROM from the VM. Nuthin'.

So... I'm obviously leaving out something really basic. Any hints?

 

[dlavigne]

VNC Viewer responds with "The connection was refused by the computer."

Is there a firewall between the VM and the client (or running on the client)?

 

[RoadHazard]

Alas, no. No firewall or VPN.

Back in my 9.3 days I used VNC Viewer to talk to a VirtualBox jail all the time with no problems. This is the same FreeNAS system (updated to FN11 now), the same PC client, and the same network as before. The big difference is the switch to FN11 and bhyve VM instead of FN9.3 and VirtualBox.

Starting the VM produces a "tap0: Ethernet address: 00:bd:e2,.." etc. on the console, but that's it for diagnostic messages. No message when I stop it, and no errors or other messages when i try to connect.

 

[RoadHazard]

What *should* I be seeing on VNC when a VM starts up?

I've tried this both with and without CD-ROM boot media (really an .ISO) as part of the VM. If the VM starts without a CD-ROM to boot from, presumably it just displays its equivalent of a power-up self-test? Diagnostic messages? What happens if it doesn't like the .ISO it's asked to boot from? What happens if it does?

 

[taaangy234]

Same issue, realize after reading this thread, I have McAfee AV, so RDP to my DC and run VNC Viewer from there works.

 

[RoadHazard]

"...to my DC..." Huh?

I'm running Norton AV and when I temporarily disabled it, VNC Viewer *almost* connected to the VM for the one and only time. I got a black screen, as if the VM was trying to boot. But I could never recreate it again. Just the same ol' "connection was refused" message.

I even installed and ran VMC Viewer on a completely different PC that never had Norton (or McAfee) installed on it, but still no luck.

Apart from that one near-miss, I've had 100% failure rate. Surely there's something obvious I'm forgetting to do? It can't be this hard to bring up a very basic VM.

 

[RoadHazard]

I do notice the FreeNAS console often displays, "/etc/rc.d/dhclient: WARNING: failed to start dhclient. This is in among the regular tap0: UP/DOWN messages when I start/stop the VM.

Is that a clue, or just unrelated noise?

 

[TheAllen]

For what it's worth (I'm just trying this myself for the first time), I didn't get a VNC connection to "stick" until I'd added a cd-rom iso and a zvol disk. As for what is *supposed* to happen, I don't know. I'm using tightVNC as a client.

Seen elsewhere: be sure indicate an adequate amount of RAM. The form is asking for RAM size in MiB, not GiB. (2,000 instead of what I initially input: 2).

Hope this helps you even a little bit.

 

[RoadHazard]

Thanks. Yeah, I've tried it both with and without a CD-ROM and a zvol. There's no apparent difference. I suppose if my CD-ROM .iso was somehow incompatible, incorrect, or missing it might cause the VM to fail, but that's just a guess. I've tried RAM values between 500 and 2000, which ought to cover a decent range.

The odd flakiness of the VNC connection makes me think it's either (a) a timing issue, where I have to connect at *just* at the right time; or (b) a networking issue where DHCP isn't working reliably; or (c) my hardware is somehow unable to run FN11 VM but I just don't know it yet. But those are also just guesses. I had no problem getting VNC to connect to the old VirtualBox with its own IP address. The new VM that shares its IP address with FreeNAS makes me suspicious something isn't set up right.

I'll keep banging away at it. What choice do I have...

 

[RoadHazard]

Just updated from 11.0-U1 to 11.0-U2 this morning. Same symptoms. Here are the last few lines of console output:

Code:

Jul 22 07:01:24 freenas tap0: Ethernet address: 00:bd:01:dd:fb:00
Jul 22 07:01:24 freenas kernel: tap0: promiscuous mode enabled
Jul 22 07:01:24 freenas kernel: tap0: link state changed to UP
Jul 22 07:01:24 freenas kernel: tap0: link state changed to UP
Jul 22 07:01:27 freenas dhclient[38812]: Interface tap0 is down, dhclient exiting
Jul 22 07:01:27 freenas dhclient[38815]: connection closed
Jul 22 07:01:27 freenas dhclient[38815]: exiting.
Jul 22 07:01:27 freenas root: /etc/rc.d/dhclient: WARNING: failed to start dhclient
Jul 22 07:01:27 freenas kernel: tap0: link state changed to DOWN
Jul 22 07:01:27 freenas kernel: tap0: link state changed to DOWN

From the VNC side, I see a black screen, a "spinner," and the messages:
"Attempting to reconnect to VNC Server..."
"The connection was closed remotely"

 

[RoadHazard]

Uh-oh. :(

The 11.0-U2 User Guide (http://doc.freenas.org/11/vms.html) includes this sentence: "To verify that an Intel processor has the required features, use Shell to run grep VT-x /var/run/dmesg.boot. If the EPT and UG features are shown, this processor can be used with bhyve." [emphasis mine]

The UG feature wasn't required in 11.0-U1, if I remember correctly. Or at least, it wasn't mentioned. And since my i7-860 processor supports EPT but not UG, I guess I'm official unsupported. That's a bummer.