UTM Build HDMI Issue

Hi, Tom.

I can only reply your Hyper-V question, since I have never tried to setup a Software UTM on a hardware with HDMI display. Maybe someone else can better answer those questions, but, AFIK, there's no workaround for this HDMI issue so far. 

Back to Hyper-V, when virtualized, all "hardware" components for the VM are virtualized as well. It will not matter to your UTM VM what lies on the physical layer of your hypervisor. Since UTM has full support for Hyper-V, it will work just fine. But you will suffer a performance penalty of at least 10% due to virtualization.

Regards - Giovani

I think you will find when you investigate the install logs that the failure has nothing to do with the HDMI interface, but the onboard HPET. I have used that chipset on a couple of very nice boards both failing at 66% and checked the logs to find the HPET is not found.

Ian

Interesting! yeh I had assumed the issue was HDMI purely as it was the most common issue on the community for the stopping at 66% and the fact this board only has HDMI it added up.

So with those boards did you end up getting it working by enabling HPET in the BIOS?

I have the system up and running now via a Windows 10 Hyper-V VM and it works very well. My preference is still to have the Firewall software native on the hardware without virtualization as then it wouldn't have to share the RAM with the Hypervisor and removes a level of complexity and issues with things like Windows updates etc. My assumption is that it would probably reduce power usage as well but I would have to verify that.

In saying that there is the advantage of being able to easily backup the whole machine with VEEAM and the abililty to migrate the VM to new hardware, but realisitically there is not going to be many hardware configs around with as many LAN ports as this setup.

Basically I have found any MB with with the 170 and 150 chipsets will not work with the UTM, but does work with XG.

But XG has limited functionality.

Ian

Damn! Yeh have considered XG and also Pfsense but I really like the UTM 9.x interface and the inbuilt virus scan management etc is an added bonus.

The board is such a perfect setup for UTM solution. Would have been good to try that HPET setting in the BIOS but I can't really do that now its being used.

Am currently waiting for the Vendor to provide feedback from the manufacturer Jetway if they are going to provide drivers for Windows Server 2012R2 as that would be the preferred Hypervisor over Windows 10 the specific Intel lan on board don't have Windows 2012R2 drivers :|

thanks

I tried, but didn't have any luck. Your settings might be different to mine.

ian

Fair enough! probably good enough reason not to worry about trying any time soon. Pity this thread didn't kick off a few days earlier before I had it all up and running but no stress.

thanks for your input, hopefully it will help someone else trawling the forum for answers :)

thanks

When the installer hangs at 66% on the "Hardware Detection" screen try this:

1. Press [Alt]+[F2] to bring up the console window.
2. At the command prompt type cd /usr/lib and press [Enter].
3. At the next prompt type bootstrap --install and press [Enter].  Apparently, this starts a second instance of the installer that does not get stuck on the "Hardware Detection" screen.

More details here:  https://community.sophos.com/products/unified-threat-management/f/52/t/80213

Thanks heaps for this response TheMeridian, sounds like you tried the exact same process of elimination as myself, right down to trying the USB Graphics adapter!

Unfortunately my device is in production now so I can't blow it away and retry now. I did email the hardware provider though as they are likely following this thread as it was a reasonably new specialised bit of hardware which the main use for it would be firewall instances. Hopefully they will have a new build or two on a test bench that they can try this method on and confirm for readers of the thread if it is working or not.

I will update the thread once they respond to my email :)

Finally got around to testing this and had no luck, the install would kick off again but then came up with "Bus error (core dumped) then back to the Bash-3.2 prompt. Tried a few more BIOS settings but to no avail.

While it was working in a virtual machine on Windows 10 (Windows Server 2012 etc doesn't support the I211 network cards on this board which was mega frustrating also). The issue I had was that the Virtual machine didn't seem to be able to use the modem in bridged mode and create PPPOE connections. It is like it wasn't seeing some of the traffic. Anyhow trawling the interwebs I found a few with similar problems. Some resolved it by essentially enabling a pass through mode in Windows that allows the VM direct access to the network card, unfortunately this mode is only available in the Windows Server operating system and so it was back to the drawing board for me or continue to deal with the double NAT connection :| Not to mention the inability stop Windows 10 Updates rebooting the machine occasionally.

In the end I bit the bullet and installed VMWare Sphere 6.5 and setup a new VM and all issues were solved, could connect to router in bridged mode and make a direct internet connection placing the ISP statis IP on the WAN connection like I wanted, no more double NAT!! Also VMWare VSphere detects and can use all of the network cards on this board. Also it managed to solve the connecting to the bridged modem issue without having to enable device passthrough, which I figured would be the next step should the hypervisor cause issues similar to the ones experienced when the VM was on Windows 10.

Anyhow thought I would throw this up here should anyone else come up against this terrible snowball of a problem.

thanks