FreeBSD guest VM panic - handle_el1h_sync

[Will Dormann]

I had a FreeBSD 14 VM in my guest list, and I recently noticed that it panics on boot. It didn't do this in the past, so perhaps it's some sort of regression?

I attempted a FreeBSD 15 intstall, and it panics on boot in the same way.

 

[Will Dormann]

Apparently this is a known (to the Parallels support chat bot) issue:

If you truly need FreeBSD support, you'll probably will need to dig to find 26.1.2-57293, as the download page only allows selection of major version. Not minor.
But be aware that choosing to continue to use an old version is probably unwise, as you'll miss out on bug and vulnerability fixes and the like.

 

[JamesF23]

I do not know why Parallels would drop support for FreeBSD, probably because it was much better than Linux.

 

[AndrewT47]

This is because Parallels has a broken interrupt controller when selecting the "Other" machine type. I can boot FreeBSD using "Other Linux" with no issues. There should be no incompatibility with FreeBSD as most arm64 changes were pushed to the FreeBSD git repo from a Parallels machine.

The "Other" type causes an external data abort on all accesses to the GICv2 CPU interface registers. I have a patch to detect this in FreeBSD, but it won't allow the kernel to boot as the CPU interface is used to find the current interrupt, so without it no interrupts are possible.

 

[JamesF23]

So it seems like Parallels is making Parallels Desktop less useful for virtualization with every release.

 

[Katherine4]

Sounds like a regression for sure, if both 14 and 15 panic on boot now, something in the host or VM config likely changed and is worth reporting upstream.

 

[Will Dormann]

So, apparently the AI chat was wrong (imagine that! )
The problem isn't that FreeBSD support was dropped, it's that Parallels accidentally broke the "Other" preset for guest OS type. If you want to be able to install FreeBSD, you should:
1. Select "Other Linux" as the OS type at VM creation time
2. In the config.pvs for the VM, go to the <Video...> section of the file and change <Type>1</Type> to <Type>0</Type>

If you want to edit an existing FreeBSD VM that was created as "Other" type and have it work in the current Parallels version, in the config.pvs file for the VM:
1. Change <OsType>255</OsType> to <OsType>9</OsType>
2. Change <OsNumber>65535</OsNumber> to <OsNumber>2559</OsNumber>
3. Go to the <Video...> section of the file ensure that it has <Type>0</Type> to ensure that the video works in the VM

 

[JamesF23]

So, apparently the AI chat was wrong (imagine that! )
The problem isn't that FreeBSD support was dropped, it's that Parallels accidentally broke the "Other" preset for guest OS type. If you want to be able to install FreeBSD, you should:
1. Select "Other Linux" as the OS type at VM creation time
2. In the config.pvs for the VM, go to the <Video...> section of the file and change <Type>1</Type> to <Type>0</Type>

If you want to edit an existing FreeBSD VM that was created as "Other" type and have it work in the current Parallels version, in the config.pvs file for the VM:
1. Change <OsType>255</OsType> to <OsType>9</OsType>
2. Change <OsNumber>65535</OsNumber> to <OsNumber>2559</OsNumber>
3. Go to the <Video...> section of the file ensure that it has <Type>0</Type> to ensure that the video works in the VM

Thank you very much, it worked. Of course AI will always be wrong.

 

[AlexandruP4]

Thank you, this has helped me too.