Freenas with Xen

This howto is based on the excellent work made by My Wired House. It aims at building FreeNAS with Xen PVHVM support and ultimately at putting it into production with PCI passthrough.

Build environment

• Install Freebsd 9.3 (in a domU for example)
• Make a few adjustements
• Build Freenas

Installation of Freebsd 9.3 in a domU

• Install Freebsd 9.3 on a disk / volume of 100 Go (building Frenas requires space !)

• Configuration file for Xl

#
#  Kernel + memory size
#
builder      = 'hvm'
boot         = 'cd'
memory       = '2048'
vcpus        = '1'

#
#  Disk device(s).
#
disk        = [
                  'phy:/dev/system/freebsd-disk,xvda,w', 
                  'file:/opt/ISO/FreeBSD-9.3-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso,hdc:cdrom,r'
              ]


#
#  Hostname
#
name        = 'freebsd'

#
#  Networking
#
vif         = [ 'mac=00:16:3e:xx:xx:xx, model=e1000' ]

#
#  Behaviour
#
on_poweroff = 'destroy'
on_reboot   = 'restart'
on_crash    = 'restart'

sdl=0
vnc = 1
vncunused = 1
vnclisten = '0.0.0.0'
stdvga=0
serial='pty'
usb=0
keymap='fr'
localtime=1

• Note: To speed up the process, add RAM and vCPUs if you can !

Update & PVHVM configuration (to boost performances)

# freebsd-update fetch
# freebsd-update install
# reboot
# cd /usr/src
# make buildkernel KERNCONF=XENHVM
# make installkernel KERNCONF=XENHVM
# sed -i".backup" 's/ada/xbd/g' /etc/fstab
# sed -i".backup" 's/ifconfig_em0/ifconfig_xn0/' /etc/rc.conf
# reboot

Building Freenas

Install Freenas dependencies

Cf Readme on Github

# pkg install poudriere-devel git cdrtools pxz python grub2-pcbsd xorriso py27-sphinx py27-sphinxcontrib-httpdomain-1.2.1

Dowload Freenas 9.3 release

Dowload the latest Freenas 9.3 release on Github (e.g. 9.3-STABLE-201506042008.tar.gz)

# mkdir -p /home && wget --no-check-certificate -O /home/9.3-STABLE-201506042008.tar.gz https://github.com/freenas/freenas/archive/9.3-STABLE-201506042008.tar.gz
# cd /home
# tar xf 9.3-STABLE-201506042008.tar.gz
# mv freenas-9.3-STABLE-201506042008 freenas
# cd freenas
# make git-external

A few adjustements on Freenas sources

• Modify "VERSION" in Makefile to reflect the custom release :

# sed -i".backup" 's/VERSION\?=9.3-STABLE/VERSION\?=9.3-STABLE-xen/' /home/freenas/Makefile

• Edit /home/freenas/build/nanobsd-cfg/FREENAS.amd64 and at the end, add theses lines :

options         NO_ADAPTIVE_MUTEXES
options         NO_ADAPTIVE_RWLOCKS
options         NO_ADAPTIVE_SX

# Xen HVM support
options         XENHVM
device          xenpci

• Remove the "problematic" "set -e" in create_iso.sh (I know, this is bad but the process would stop at this stage if not ...) :

# sed -i".backup" 's/set -e/#set -e/' /home/freenas/build/create_iso.sh

Build !

Depending on the ressources allocated to your Freebsd build machine, it will take a while !

# make checkout
# env _KEY=set NANO_LABEL=FreeNAS VERSION=9.3-STABLE-xen \
GIT_LOCATION=EXTERNAL \
BUILD_TIMESTAMP=`date '+%Y%m%d%H%M'` \
SEQUENCE=FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-xen-201506042008 \
TRAIN=FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-xen \
UPDATE_USER=sef FREENAS_KEYFILE=Keys/ix-nightly-key.key \
CHANGELOG=ChangeLog \
make release

If all went well, you will find the result in /home/freenas/objs/FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-xen-201506052152/x64 :

# ls /home/freenas/objs/FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-xen-201506052152/x64
FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-xen-201506052152.GUI_Upgrade.txz             FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-xen-201506052152.iso
FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-xen-201506052152.GUI_Upgrade.txz.sha256.txt  FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-xen-201506052152.iso.sha256.txt

Installation of Freenas 9.3 in a domU

Installation is done through the following steps :

• boot of the installer with special option hint.hpet.0.clock=0 and without PCI passthrough
• first boot of the fresh Freenas installation with special option hint.hpet.0.clock=0 (yes again ...) and without PCI passthrough
• in Freenas, adding the necessary options for the bootloader and PCI passthrgouh ... And the last reboot with PCI passthrough activated

Xl config file

#
#  Kernel + memory size
#
builder      = 'hvm'
boot         = 'cd'
memory       = '8192'
vcpus        = '2'

#
#  Disk device(s).
#
disk        = [
                  'phy:/dev/system/freenas-disk,xvda,w',
                  'file:/opt/ISO/FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-xen-201506052152.iso,hdb:cdrom,r'
              ]


#
#  Hostname
#
name        = 'freenas'

#
#  Networking
#
vif         = [ 'mac=00:16:3e:xx:xx:xx, model=e1000' ]

#
#  Behaviour
#
on_poweroff = 'destroy'
on_reboot   = 'restart'
on_crash    = 'restart'

sdl=0
vnc = 1
vncunused = 1
vnclisten = '0.0.0.0'
stdvga=0
serial='pty'
usb=0
keymap='fr'
localtime=1

Booting the installer

Because of this little issue, booting the installer requires special option hint.hpet.0.clock=0

• Start the vm

# xl create /etc/xen/freenas.ld

• As soon as the VM boots, open the console (e.g. via VNC), go to the Grub command prompt by pressing "c" and enter the following lines :

• 

  Grub options to start the installer

• Follow the steps to install Freenas ; note the name of the volume (xbd0) which reflects the us of PV drivers

Booting your fresh Freenas installation

Once again, because of this little issue, booting the fresh Freenas installation for the first time requires special option hint.hpet.0.clock=0

• As soon as the VM reboots after Freenas installation, reopen the console (e.g. via VNC), go to the Grub command prompt by pressing "c" and enter the following lines :

test