Re: NetBSD11: networking with bhyve

[César Catrián C. <ccatrian%eml.cc@localhost>]

I am running FreeBSD 15's bhive with two NetBSD 10 guests (not upgraded to 11 for time issues), and one Devuan Linux guest, inside a vlan networking setup in the host.

No problem with networking, except pf configuration sorted out looking at blocked pflog traffic.

vioif0: flags=0x8b43<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,ALLMULTI,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        ec_capabilities=0x1<VLAN_MTU>
        ec_enabled=0
        address: 58:9c:fc:01:49:d0
        status: active
        inet6 fe80::5a9c:fcff:fe01:49d0%vioif0/64 flags 0 scopeid 0x1
        inet 192.168.3.4/24 broadcast 192.168.3.255 flags 0

I don't know if you are using vm-bhive for your setup, I did and it was pretty straightforward, even with the switch (bridge) configuration. https://github.com/churchers/vm-bhyve

May your firewall pf setup be blocking some traffic.

At the host side, the switch is attached to the vlan interface, the tun interfaces belonging to each VM are added by vm-bhive.

root@SAT0:/zroot/vm/devuan # vm switch list
NAME    TYPE      IFACE      ADDRESS  PRIVATE  MTU  VLAN  PORTS
public  standard  vm-public  -        no       -    -     em1.3
root@SAT0:/zroot/vm/devuan # ifconfig vm-public
vm-public: flags=1008843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=10<VLAN_HWTAGGING>
        ether be:10:fd:eb:ab:33
        id 00:00:00:00:00:00 priority 32768 hellotime 2 fwddelay 15
        maxage 20 holdcnt 6 proto rstp maxaddr 2000 timeout 1200
        root id 00:00:00:00:00:00 priority 32768 ifcost 0 port 0
        bridge flags=0<>
        member: tap2 flags=143<LEARNING,DISCOVER,AUTOEDGE,AUTOPTP>
                port 17 priority 128 path cost 2000000 vlan protocol 802.1q
        member: tap1 flags=143<LEARNING,DISCOVER,AUTOEDGE,AUTOPTP>
                port 16 priority 128 path cost 2000000 vlan protocol 802.1q
        member: tap0 flags=143<LEARNING,DISCOVER,AUTOEDGE,AUTOPTP>
                port 15 priority 128 path cost 2000000 vlan protocol 802.1q
        member: em1.3 flags=143<LEARNING,DISCOVER,AUTOEDGE,AUTOPTP>
                port 7 priority 128 path cost 20000 vlan protocol 802.1q
        groups: bridge vm-switch viid-4c918@
        nd6 options=9<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED>

May vm-bhive facilitate your setup.


Regards
-- 
  César Catrián C.


On Wed, Aug 19, 2026, at 11:16 AM, Ede Wolf wrote:
> Am 19.08.26 um 13:00 schrieb Ede Wolf:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> has anyone by chance had any success so far getting NetBSD11 and 
>> networking going with bhyve?
>> 
>> vioif is telling me, otherwise reachable hosts on the same subnet are 
>> down and I have also not been able to  get vioif to work reliably with 
>> virtualbox either.
>> Using pcn0 instead with vbox did the trick.
>> 
>> Hence I have then tried the e1000 driver for bhyve, but ping then 
>> complains:
>> 
>> e82545: packet too small for writable header
>> 
>> Not sure, wether this message is being generated by host or by the guest.
>> 
>> Is there anything I might have missed? AFAIK there are no other cards 
>> bhyve can emulate.
>> Of course, the tap interface for the NetBSD client is connected to the 
>> bridge on the host and other guests on that bridge can talk to each other.
>> 
>> A passed through network cards works also fine.
>> 
>> Thanks
>> 
>> Ede
>> 
>
> I missed one crucial information: I am running a vlan interface ontop of 
>   wm0 or vioif0.
>
> That sentence did somehow not make it into the original mail. Sorry for 
> that.