f3s: Kubernetes with FreeBSD - Part 4: Rocky Linux Bhyve VMs

Published at 2025-04-04T23:21:01+03:00

This is the fourth blog post about the f3s series for self-hosting demands in a home lab. f3s? The "f" stands for FreeBSD, and the "3s" stands for k3s, the Kubernetes distribution used on FreeBSD-based physical machines.

2024-11-17 f3s: Kubernetes with FreeBSD - Part 1: Setting the stage
2024-12-03 f3s: Kubernetes with FreeBSD - Part 2: Hardware and base installation
2025-02-01 f3s: Kubernetes with FreeBSD - Part 3: Protecting from power cuts
2025-04-05 f3s: Kubernetes with FreeBSD - Part 4: Rocky Linux Bhyve VMs (You are currently reading this)
2025-05-11 f3s: Kubernetes with FreeBSD - Part 5: WireGuard mesh network
2025-07-14 f3s: Kubernetes with FreeBSD - Part 6: Storage
2025-10-02 f3s: Kubernetes with FreeBSD - Part 7: k3s and first pod deployments
2025-12-07 f3s: Kubernetes with FreeBSD - Part 8: Observability
f3s logo

Table of Contents

Introduction

In this blog post, we are going to install the Bhyve hypervisor.

The FreeBSD Bhyve hypervisor is a lightweight, modern hypervisor that enables virtualization on FreeBSD systems. Bhyve's strengths include its minimal overhead, which allows it to achieve near-native performance for virtual machines. It's efficient and lightweight, leveraging the capabilities of the FreeBSD operating system for performance and network management.

Bhyve supports running various guest operating systems, including FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows, on hardware platforms that support hardware virtualization extensions (such as Intel VT-x or AMD-V). In our case, we are going to virtualize Rocky Linux, which will later in this series be used to run k3s.

Check for `POPCNT` CPU support

POPCNT is a CPU instruction that counts the number of set bits (ones) in a binary number. CPU virtualization and Bhyve support for the POPCNT instruction are important because guest operating systems utilize this instruction to perform various tasks more efficiently. If the host CPU supports POPCNT, Bhyve can pass this capability to virtual machines for better performance. Without POPCNT support, some applications might not run or perform sub-optimally in virtualized environments.

To check for `POPCNT` support, run:

paul@f0:~ % dmesg | grep 'Features2=.*POPCNT'
  Features2=0x7ffafbbf

So it's there! All good.

Basic Bhyve setup

For managing the Bhyve VMs, we are using `vm-bhyve`, a tool not part of the FreeBSD operating system but available as a ready-to-use package. It eases VM management and reduces a lot of overhead. We also install the required package to make Bhyve work with the UEFI firmware.

The following commands are executed on all three hosts `f0`, `f1`, and `f2`, where `re0` is the name of the Ethernet interface (which may need to be adjusted if your hardware is different):

paul@f0:~ % doas pkg install vm-bhyve bhyve-firmware
paul@f0:~ % doas sysrc vm_enable=YES
vm_enable:  -> YES
paul@f0:~ % doas sysrc vm_dir=zfs:zroot/bhyve
vm_dir:  -> zfs:zroot/bhyve
paul@f0:~ % doas zfs create zroot/bhyve
paul@f0:~ % doas vm init
paul@f0:~ % doas vm switch create public
paul@f0:~ % doas vm switch add public re0

Bhyve stores all it's data in the `/bhyve` of the `zroot` ZFS pool:

paul@f0:~ % zfs list | grep bhyve
zroot/bhyve                                   1.74M   453G  1.74M  /zroot/bhyve

For convenience, we also create this symlink:

paul@f0:~ % doas ln -s /zroot/bhyve/ /bhyve

Now, Bhyve is ready to rumble, but no VMs are there yet:

paul@f0:~ % doas vm list
NAME  DATASTORE  LOADER  CPU  MEMORY  VNC  AUTO  STATE

Rocky Linux VMs

As guest VMs I decided to use Rocky Linux.

Using Rocky Linux 9 as a VM-based OS is beneficial primarily because of its long-term support and stable release cycle. This ensures a reliable environment that receives security updates and bug fixes for an extended period, reducing the need for frequent upgrades.

Rocky Linux is community-driven and aims to be fully compatible with enterprise Linux, making it a solid choice for consistency and performance in various deployment scenarios.

ISO download

We're going to install the Rocky Linux from the latest minimal iso:

paul@f0:~ % doas vm iso \
 https://download.rockylinux.org/pub/rocky/9/isos/x86_64/Rocky-9.5-x86_64-minimal.iso
/zroot/bhyve/.iso/Rocky-9.5-x86_64-minimal.iso        1808 MB 4780 kBps 06m28s
paul@f0:/bhyve % doas vm create rocky

VM configuration

The default Bhyve VM configuration looks like this now:

paul@f0:/bhyve/rocky % cat rocky.conf
loader="bhyveload"
cpu=1
memory=256M
network0_type="virtio-net"
network0_switch="public"
disk0_type="virtio-blk"
disk0_name="disk0.img"
uuid="1c4655ac-c828-11ef-a920-e8ff1ed71ca0"
network0_mac="58:9c:fc:0d:13:3f"

The `uuid` and the `network0_mac` differ for each of the three VMs (the ones being installed on `f0`, `f1` and `f2`).

But to make Rocky Linux boot it (plus some other adjustments, e.g. as we intend to run the majority of the workload in the k3s cluster running on those Linux VMs, we give them beefy specs like 4 CPU cores and 14GB RAM). So we run `doas vm configure rocky` and modified it to:

guest="linux"
loader="uefi"
uefi_vars="yes"
cpu=4
memory=14G
network0_type="virtio-net"
network0_switch="public"
disk0_type="virtio-blk"
disk0_name="disk0.img"
graphics="yes"
graphics_vga=io
uuid="1c45400b-c828-11ef-8871-e8ff1ed71cac"
network0_mac="58:9c:fc:0d:13:3f"

VM installation

To start the installer from the downloaded ISO, we run:

paul@f0:~ % doas vm install rocky Rocky-9.5-x86_64-minimal.iso
Starting rocky
  * found guest in /zroot/bhyve/rocky
  * booting...

paul@f0:/bhyve/rocky % doas vm list
NAME   DATASTORE  LOADER  CPU  MEMORY  VNC           AUTO  STATE
rocky  default    uefi    4    14G     0.0.0.0:5900  No    Locked (f0.lan.buetow.org)

paul@f0:/bhyve/rocky % doas sockstat -4 | grep 5900
root     bhyve       6079 8   tcp4   *:5900                *:*

Port 5900 now also opens for VNC connections, so I connected it with a VNC client and ran through the installation dialogues. This could be done unattended or more automated, but there are only three VMs to install, and the automation doesn't seem worth it as we do it only once a year or less often.

Increase of the disk image

By default, the VM disk image is only 20G, which is a bit small for our purposes, so we have to stop the VMs again, run `truncate` on the image file to enlarge them to 100G, and restart the installation:

paul@f0:/bhyve/rocky % doas vm stop rocky
paul@f0:/bhyve/rocky % doas truncate -s 100G disk0.img
paul@f0:/bhyve/rocky % doas vm install rocky Rocky-9.5-x86_64-minimal.iso

Connect to VNC

For the installation, I opened the VNC client on my Fedora laptop (GNOME comes with a simple VNC client) and manually ran through the base installation for each of the VMs. Again, I am sure this could have been automated a bit more, but there were just three VMs, and it wasn't worth the effort. The three VNC addresses of the VMs were `vnc://f0:5900`, `vnc://f1:5900`, and `vnc://f0:5900`.

I primarily selected the default settings (auto partitioning on the 100GB drive and a root user password). After the installation, the VMs were rebooted.

After install

We perform the following steps for all three VMs. In the following, the examples are all executed on `f0` (the VM `r0` running on `f0`):

VM auto-start after host reboot

To automatically start the VM on the servers, we add the following to the `rc.conf` on the FreeBSD hosts:


paul@f0:/bhyve/rocky % cat <


The `vm_delay` isn't really required. It is used to wait 5 seconds before starting each VM, but there is currently only one VM per host. Maybe later, when there are more, this will be useful. After adding, there's now a `Yes` indicator in the `AUTO` column.



paul@f0:~ % doas vm list
NAME   DATASTORE  LOADER  CPU  MEMORY  VNC           AUTO     STATE
rocky  default    uefi    4    14G     0.0.0.0:5900  Yes [1]  Running (2063)




Static IP configuration



After that, we change the network configuration of the VMs to be static (from DHCP) here. As per the previous post of this series, the three FreeBSD hosts were already in my `/etc/hosts` file:



192.168.1.130 f0 f0.lan f0.lan.buetow.org
192.168.1.131 f1 f1.lan f1.lan.buetow.org
192.168.1.132 f2 f2.lan f2.lan.buetow.org




For the Rocky VMs, we add those to the FreeBSD host systems as well:



paul@f0:/bhyve/rocky % cat <


And we configure the IPs accordingly on the VMs themselves by opening a root shell via SSH to the VMs and entering the following commands on each of the VMs:



[root@r0 ~] % dnmcli connection modify enp0s5 ipv4.address 192.168.1.120/24
[root@r0 ~] % dnmcli connection modify enp0s5 ipv4.gateway 192.168.1.1
[root@r0 ~] % dnmcli connection modify enp0s5 ipv4.DNS 192.168.1.1
[root@r0 ~] % dnmcli connection modify enp0s5 ipv4.method manual
[root@r0 ~] % dnmcli connection down enp0s5
[root@r0 ~] % dnmcli connection up enp0s5
[root@r0 ~] % hostnamectl set-hostname r0.lan.buetow.org
[root@r0 ~] % cat <>/etc/hosts
192.168.1.120 r0 r0.lan r0.lan.buetow.org
192.168.1.121 r1 r1.lan r1.lan.buetow.org
192.168.1.122 r2 r2.lan r2.lan.buetow.org
END




Whereas:



    

  • `192.168.1.120` is the IP of the VM itself (here: `r0.lan.buetow.org`)
    • 

  • `192.168.1.1` is the address of my home router, which also does DNS.
    • 




Permitting root login



As these VMs aren't directly reachable via SSH from the internet, we enable  `root` login by adding a line with `PermitRootLogin yes` to `/etc/sshd/sshd_config`.



Once done, we reboot the VM by running `reboot` inside the VM to test whether everything was configured and persisted correctly.



After reboot, we copy a public key over. E.g. I did this from my Laptop as follows:



% for i in 0 1 2; do ssh-copy-id root@r$i.lan.buetow.org; done




Then, we edit the `/etc/ssh/sshd_config` file again on all three VMs and configure `PasswordAuthentication no` to only allow SSH key authentication from now on.



Install latest updates



[root@r0 ~] % dnf update
[root@r0 ~] % reboot




Stress testing CPU



The aim is to prove that bhyve VMs are CPU efficient. As I could not find an off-the-shelf benchmarking tool available in the same version for FreeBSD as well as for Rocky Linux 9, I wrote my own silly CPU benchmarking tool in Go:



package main

import "testing"

func BenchmarkCPUSilly1(b *testing.B) {
	for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
		_ = i * i
	}
}

func BenchmarkCPUSilly2(b *testing.B) {
	var sillyResult float64
	for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
		sillyResult += float64(i)
		sillyResult *= float64(i)
		divisor := float64(i) + 1
		if divisor > 0 {
			sillyResult /= divisor
		}
	}
	_ = sillyResult // to avoid compiler optimization
}




You can find the repository here:






Silly FreeBSD host benchmark



To install it on FreeBSD, we run:



paul@f0:~ % doas pkg install git go
paul@f0:~ % mkdir ~/git && cd ~/git && \
  git clone https://codeberg.org/snonux/sillybench && \
  cd sillybench




And to run it:



paul@f0:~/git/sillybench % go version
go version go1.24.1 freebsd/amd64

paul@f0:~/git/sillybench % go test -bench=.
goos: freebsd
goarch: amd64
pkg: codeberg.org/snonux/sillybench
cpu: Intel(R) N100
BenchmarkCPUSilly1-4    1000000000               0.4022 ns/op
BenchmarkCPUSilly2-4    1000000000               0.4027 ns/op
PASS
ok      codeberg.org/snonux/sillybench 0.891s




Silly Rocky Linux VM @ Bhyve benchmark



OK, let's compare this with the Rocky Linux VM running on Bhyve:



[root@r0 ~]# dnf install golang git
[root@r0 ~]# mkdir ~/git && cd ~/git && \
  git clone https://codeberg.org/snonux/sillybench && \
  cd sillybench




And to run it:



[root@r0 sillybench]# go version
go version go1.22.9 (Red Hat 1.22.9-2.el9_5) linux/amd64
[root@r0 sillybench]# go test -bench=.
goos: linux
goarch: amd64
pkg: codeberg.org/snonux/sillybench
cpu: Intel(R) N100
BenchmarkCPUSilly1-4    1000000000               0.4347 ns/op
BenchmarkCPUSilly2-4    1000000000               0.4345 ns/op




The Linux benchmark is slightly slower than the FreeBSD one. The Go version is also a bit older. I tried the same with the up-to-date version of Go (1.24.x) with similar results. There could be a slight Bhyve overhead, or FreeBSD is just slightly more efficient in this benchmark. Overall, this shows that Bhyve performs excellently.



Silly FreeBSD VM @ Bhyve benchmark



But as I am curious and don't want to compare apples with bananas, I decided to install a FreeBSD Bhyve VM to run the same silly benchmark in it. I am not going through the details of how to install a FreeBSD Bhyve VM here; you can easily look it up in the documentation.



But here are the results running the same silly benchmark in a FreeBSD Bhyve VM with the same FreeBSD and Go versions as the host system (I have the VM 4 vCPUs and 14GB of RAM; the benchmark won't use as many CPUs (and memory) anyway):



root@freebsd:~/git/sillybench # go test -bench=.
goos: freebsd
goarch: amd64
pkg: codeberg.org/snonux/sillybench
cpu: Intel(R) N100
BenchmarkCPUSilly1      1000000000               0.4273 ns/op
BenchmarkCPUSilly2      1000000000               0.4286 ns/op
PASS
ok      codeberg.org/snonux/sillybench  0.949s




It's a bit better than Linux! I am sure that this is not really a scientific benchmark, so take the results with a grain of salt!



Benchmarking with `ubench`



Let's run another, more sophisticated benchmark using `ubench`, the Unix Benchmark Utility available for FreeBSD. It was installed by simply running `doas pkg install ubench`. It can benchmark CPU and memory performance. Here, we limit it to one CPU for the first run with `-s`, and then let it run at full speed (using all available CPUs in parallel) in the second run.



FreeBSD host `ubench` benchmark



Single CPU:



paul@f0:~ % doas ubench -s 1
Unix Benchmark Utility v.0.3
Copyright (C) July, 1999 PhysTech, Inc.
Author: Sergei Viznyuk 
http://www.phystech.com/download/ubench.html
FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE-p1 FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE-p1 GENERIC amd64
Ubench Single CPU:   671010 (0.40s)
Ubench Single MEM:  1705237 (0.48s)
-----------------------------------
Ubench Single AVG:  1188123





All CPUs (with all Bhyve VMs stopped):



paul@f0:~ % doas ubench
Unix Benchmark Utility v.0.3
Copyright (C) July, 1999 PhysTech, Inc.
Author: Sergei Viznyuk 
http://www.phystech.com/download/ubench.html
FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE-p1 FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE-p1 GENERIC amd64
Ubench CPU:  2660220
Ubench MEM:  3095182
--------------------
Ubench AVG:  2877701




FreeBSD VM @ Bhyve `ubench` benchmark



Single CPU:



root@freebsd:~ # ubench -s 1
Unix Benchmark Utility v.0.3
Copyright (C) July, 1999 PhysTech, Inc.
Author: Sergei Viznyuk 
http://www.phystech.com/download/ubench.html
FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE-p1 FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE-p1 GENERIC amd64
Ubench Single CPU:   672792 (0.40s)
Ubench Single MEM:   852757 (0.48s)
-----------------------------------
Ubench Single AVG:   762774




Wow, the CPU in the VM was a tiny bit faster than on the host! So this was probably just a glitch in the matrix. Memory seems slower, though.



All CPUs:



root@freebsd:~ # ubench
Unix Benchmark Utility v.0.3
Copyright (C) July, 1999 PhysTech, Inc.
Author: Sergei Viznyuk 
http://www.phystech.com/download/ubench.html
FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE-p1 FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE-p1 GENERIC amd64
Ubench CPU:  2652857
swap_pager: out of swap space
swp_pager_getswapspace(27): failed
swap_pager: out of swap space
swp_pager_getswapspace(18): failed
Apr  4 23:02:43 freebsd kernel: pid 862 (ubench), jid 0, uid 0, was killed: failed to reclaim memory
swp_pager_getswapspace(6): failed
Apr  4 23:02:46 freebsd kernel: pid 863 (ubench), jid 0, uid 0, was killed: failed to reclaim memory
Apr  4 23:02:47 freebsd kernel: pid 864 (ubench), jid 0, uid 0, was killed: failed to reclaim memory
Apr  4 23:02:48 freebsd kernel: pid 865 (ubench), jid 0, uid 0, was killed: failed to reclaim memory
Apr  4 23:02:49 freebsd kernel: pid 861 (ubench), jid 0, uid 0, was killed: failed to reclaim memory
Apr  4 23:02:51 freebsd kernel: pid 839 (ubench), jid 0, uid 0, was killed: failed to reclaim memory




The multi-CPU benchmark in the Bhyve VM ran with almost identical results to the FreeBSD host system. However, the memory benchmark failed with out-of-swap space errors. I am unsure why, as the VM has 14GB RAM, but I am not investigating further.



Also, during the benchmark, I noticed the `bhyve` process on the host was constantly using 399% of the CPU (all 4 CPUs).



  PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
 7449 root         14  20    0    14G    78M kqread   2   2:12 399.81% bhyve




Overall, Bhyve has a small overhead, but the CPU performance difference is negligible. The FreeBSD host is slightly faster than the FreeBSD VM running on Bhyve, but the difference is small enough for our use cases. The memory benchmark seems slightly off, but I'm not sure whether to trust it, especially due to the swap errors. Does `ubench`'s memory benchmark use swap space for the memory test? That wouldn't make sense and might explain the difference to some degree, though. Do you have any ideas?



Rocky Linux VM @ Bhyve `ubench` benchmark



Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find `ubench` in any of the Rocky Linux repositories. So, I skipped this test.



Conclusion



Having Linux VMs running inside FreeBSD's Bhyve is a solid move for future f3s hosting in my home lab. Bhyve provides a reliable way to manage VMs without much hassle. With Linux VMs, I can tap into all the cool stuff (e.g., Kubernetes, eBPF, systemd) in the Linux world while keeping the steady reliability of FreeBSD.



Future uses (out of scope for this blog series) would be additional VMs for different workloads. For example, how about a Windows or NetBSD VM to tinker with?



This flexibility is great for keeping options open and managing different workloads without overcomplicating things. Overall, it's a nice setup for getting the most out of my hardware and keeping things running smoothly.



Read the next post of this series:





Other *BSD-related posts:

















E-Mail your comments to `paul@nospam.buetow.org`