[HN Gopher] Run FreeBSD 13.1 for ARM64 in QEMU on Apple Silicon ...
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       Run FreeBSD 13.1 for ARM64 in QEMU on Apple Silicon Mac with HVF
       Acceleration
        
       Author : codetrotter
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2022-08-03 21:52 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (gist.github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (gist.github.com)
        
       | jjtheblunt wrote:
       | What does this offer that BSD-mutant MacOS native on Apple
       | Silicon lacks?
        
         | mistrial9 wrote:
         | fewer strings attached?
        
         | Sunspark wrote:
         | For all the criticism MacOS gets, it can't be denied that it
         | actually is a certified Unix.
        
         | linguae wrote:
         | Certain features in FreeBSD are not available in Darwin, such
         | as ZFS and jails. Also, if you're doing software testing, it's
         | nice to be able to spin up a VM of the OS that you're testing
         | your software on.
        
           | xoa wrote:
           | > _such as ZFS_
           | 
           | FWIW, ZFS has actually been available on macOS for a long
           | time in various iterations (MacZFS, Z-410/ZEVO, and now
           | OpenZFS [0]). I ran it for around 11 years on a number of
           | systems with almost all of my data on it (home folder,
           | applications, /opt for MacPorts etc) and it was a tank. Fun
           | project and well worth checking out. I'll always regret the
           | various factors that meant Apple didn't adopt it as their
           | native FS.
           | 
           | ----
           | 
           | 0: https://openzfsonosx.org/
        
         | astrange wrote:
         | FreeBSD is a good server OS in various ways macOS isn't.
         | macOS's networking is good at being a cell phone more than a
         | server.
        
         | xoa wrote:
         | > _What does this offer that BSD-mutant MacOS native on Apple
         | Silicon lacks?_
         | 
         | The ability to test applications in a native FreeBSD
         | environment? This is just running another OS within macOS same
         | as one might run Windows or Linux images. It's useful for
         | development all on one system, certain kinds of isolated
         | deployments and so on. Also I use it for doing another layer of
         | runs of certain things before pushing out to deployment, you
         | can virtualize a router/firewall like OPNsense or VyOS for
         | example, load your live config, and experiment before sending
         | it out to metal. This is just someone playing around with yet
         | another way to do it. I use VMware myself right now on an x86
         | Mac but there are lots of choices and it's nice to see more
         | stuff heading over to AS as well.
         | 
         | From your comment though it's not clear to me if you're
         | confusing this with running an alternative OS on the metal, as
         | the Asahi Linux folks are working on? If that's what you were
         | thinking, then the answer would be that longer term having
         | Linux and FreeBSD on AS hardware could help extend its life
         | (Apple won't support them forever anymore then they do any
         | Macs), Mac Minis at least might be useful little appliance
         | systems (eyeballing numbers so far an M1 Mini could in
         | principle compare favorably as a firewall say to a lot of x86
         | systems in the same power/heat/physical size), and of course
         | some people simply would prefer to stick to another OS they're
         | at home in but also like the Apple hardware. Nothing wrong with
         | that.
        
       | sitkack wrote:
       | This is super cool, but I see folks having problems with
       | networking. Maybe I'll try in a month.
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | Most of the comments are from past versions of the document. I
         | debated removing them but the issue with ping acting weird
         | remains so I decided to leave the comments for now.
         | 
         | But networking in general appears to work, aside from the ping
         | strangeness.
         | 
         | For example, using pkg to install packages works fine.
         | Likewise, portsnap fetch extract, and when you build packages
         | from ports the system is able to fetch over the network without
         | apparent issues.
         | 
         | Edit: I cleaned up the comments on the gist a little, leaving
         | the ones that are still relevant (the ones about ping), while
         | removing some comments that were talking about problems that
         | are out of date.
        
           | sitkack wrote:
           | Cool. I'll give it a try then.
           | 
           | I didn't even know you could remove comments on a gist. TIL.
        
       | IronWolve wrote:
       | When I saw qemu/utm on m1 mac, I was wondering how hard it would
       | be to run the same utm arm images on windows with qemu,
       | surprisingly, not bad. Hardest part was the missing documentation
       | to get everything working, as UTM is pretty automated on osx.
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-03 23:00 UTC)