SmoothWall NetworkGuardian on Hyper-V

[IanIsBaffledAgain]

Hi,

 

I'm trying to install SmoothWall's NetworkGuardian on a Hyper-V VM and having a few issues. First up the installer didn't seem to like the (default) dynamicaly expanding HDD. Having got round that with a fixed size HDD I ran into the problem that it didn't detect the default virtual NIC. Using a 'legacy' virtual NIC appeared to get round that during the install but on reboot the machine hung at the line 'Bring up NIC Port 1', and that's where I'm stuck.

 

Anyone else trying to do this and any ideas?

 

Ta, Ian.

[tom_newton]

Er... I know it has been done.

Think ZeroHour has had a go. Unfortunately Smoothwall's "king of hyperV", Rob is off next week but I will see if I can find anything out.

 

It's not _officially_ supported yet, but we will do what we can.

[IanIsBaffledAgain]

Thanks for getting back Tom.

 

I've only tried installing Windows OSs on Hyper-V to-date which, perphaps unsurprisingly, goes without a hitch (did I just say that?). As a result I've not taken the trouble to get my head round much of what's going on.

 

I'd be really interested to know if the problems I seemed to be having with the dynamically expanding disk are reproduced on other people's setups or/and if there's a workaround. Using the dynamic disks is such a relief after grappling with the huge files that fixed disks inevitably create. And I'm not seeing performance problems with the dynamic disks so far.

 

I assumed that the problems with the virtual NICs were to do with drivers.

 

I'm trying to trial NetworkGuardian but really don't want to have to fire up any more hardware to run it and Hyper-V is the virtualisation solution we're going with just now.

 

Cheers, Ian.

[tom_newton]

Ian, we could always lend you some tin if HyperV proves unreliable. Not in the office yet (few problems this morning...) but when I get in i'll go hunting answers

 

If you could PM and let me know who you are, then I can put you in touch with the right people in support if need be.

[IanIsBaffledAgain]

Tom, Very kind of you to offer a 'tin' but that's not the problem - we have tins but I don't want to switch them back on again - we recently got a monster new HP G5 machine to run Hyper-V making most of them redundant and the server room's now the quietest and coldest it's ever been! Ian.

[ZeroHour]

Hi

I had the adventure of Smoothwall on Hyper-V

Currently the fix I had for that nic issue was to hit tab at the boot select screen and entering:

SmoothWall-up noapic pci=nommconf

the -up bit is uniprocessor mode. We found that it did not like multicore being enabled.

Eventually we went and used a hardware box as single core was a bit of a limitation for us.

If you use that command it should get you booted but you may find at times when you reboot it scans the FS (scandisk basically) and that could take far longer then normal on hyper-v (not 2008 r2) but I am not sure if that still occurs.

[tom_newton]

Zero: Thanks a lot! We'll see how that plays out. I'll continue to hunt better solutions for Ian, but that should at least allow him to evaluate the product.

 

Your scandisk issue may have been due to many reboots - that can tempt it into doing a scan.

[ZeroHour]

Your scandisk issue may have been due to many reboots - that can tempt it into doing a scan.

 

Yeh thats why it triggered but on a fresh NG it took 1 and a half hours to do the scan. The scan takes considerably longer then it would on our bare metal setup.

[tom_newton]

Hm. Wonder if the hyper-v disk controller is not best pals with Mr Linux.

 

We will have to look at the drivers MS have released, see if we can do a driver disk with em on.

[IanIsBaffledAgain]

Hi ZeroHour,

 

Many thanks for that. I'll give it a whirl. I saw some mention of this -up switch somewhere and a warning that performance isn't great. Coupled with using the legacy NIC, which MS warn doesn't perform terribly well, it doesn't sound too promising but may be sufficient for a trial. If Tom et al can come up with a driver fix that would be great. I can't be the only person wanting to run this software on Hyper-V... can I?

 

Cheers, Ian.

[tom_newton]

Ian,

 

You are a small but growing band - so I will see what we can do to make the drivers work. My sources tell me they aren't great, but they may do a job for us.

 

Tom

[ZeroHour]

Tom: just a FYI there has been a linux general driver release for Hyper-V by MS since I attempted it as a point to start at. I am sure it was under connect but not sure if its live or not yet.

 

Ian: Yeh we evaled on virtual and then stuck it on a desktop pc since it did not need server grade hardware (it takes 30 mins to get it restored by cd) for reliablility.

[IanIsBaffledAgain]

ZeroHour,

 

Thanks. As I've indicated above, I'm really not keen to have to fire up another box, of whatever type, to run this app. So if I can't get it to play properly with Hyper-V I'll have to look at alternatives - maybe something that sits on top of ISA?

 

Just one other thing - did you get it going with a dynamically expanding disk?

 

Cheers, Ian.

[mb2k01]

As these posts were a couple of months ago, does anyone know if there is a permenant fix for this yet?

I had the exact same problem, and like the OP don't want to change our virtualisation platform just for one product.

 

Zerohour's code worked to get us to log in, but I'm still having fiddly issues.

Smoothwall Technical Support seen unable (willing?) to help which is a bit disappointing. Hyper-V isn't going to go away anytime soon.

[tom_newton]

I'm afraid the issue is that tech support are unable to help at the moment - we haven't managed to resolve all the issues between linux and Hyper-V as yet. Until we can get these straight (and some may require updates to hyper-v) I wouldn't recommend using smoothie on there, as there may be performance issues.

[IanIsBaffledAgain]

mb2k01,

 

I've found Smoothwall tech support to be very good. As far as I understand it, the Hyper-V issue is, to some extent, beyond their control as it depends in part on Microsoft's willingness to support non-MS OS's as the guest. I'm sure it'll get sorted in time. Hyper-V is still pretty new technology.

 

Cheers, Ian.

[mb2k01]

Thanks for the reply Tom.

I don't want to be too negative as I know Claire is doing everything she can to help and get us going after talking about it for so long, but the whole Hyper-V thing is disappointing. The impression I'm getting so far is that there isn't much interest in developing a solution/product for Hyper-V?

[tom_newton]

It's not a question of our interest - really it's getting mature support from both the linux kernel and microsoft, two things we have limited control over. It's definitely on our radar and we will have full compatibility just as soon as we can.

[DMcCoy]

While reading up on the Android code being remove from the main linux kernel I noticed people mentioned Hyper-V too.

 

linux kernel monkey log

 

Hm, so, what's up with all of the other staging drivers, and why have they not had any development? What is the status of them? They are now on the short list to be deleted in 2 kernel releases, unless some real development happens on them.

 

This means, unless someone steps up and starts doing real work (not trivial spelling fixes) on the following drivers, they will be removed in the future kernel releases.

 

hv - Microsoft Hyper V drivers. The developers again seem to have disappeared, this is getting old. Slated for removal in 2.6.35

[mb2k01]

Well. I can honestly say I've never had a more depressing, non-achieving, technically cr@p day!

To any people reading this who may like the idea of doing it, but don't know much/anything about Linux - don't go trying to make SmoothWall work on Hyper-V. Save your sanity!

[tom_newton]

@MB - looks from Dave's post that Microsoft's drivers are about to be binned from the kernel due to lack of interest. Thats a shame. Will see if I can find out more in the next few days.

[RobFuller]

Tom, did you find any more information on this?

[tom_newton]

Rob - it seems Microsoft have had finger out - they've updated their code submission to the linux kernel, and it is certainly supposed to allow up to quad-core processors. We've not tested this though - it only happened end of last month.

 

The kernel which has these updates (2.6.32) is too new to even be in our next version of products (for which the kernel is decided long in advance in order to maximise stability) but I will talk to our developers and see if there's any chance of a back-port.

[RobFuller]

That’s fair enough and it sounds like MS should have done this a long time ago.

I think there is a small but growing user base who would like to be able to use your products in hyper-v so keep us updated with any developments!

 

Thanks,

Rob

[RobFuller]

Hi Tom,

 

Trying to keep the hyper-v dream alive, did you manage to get any news from your developers?

 

Waiting in anticipation,

Rob