Hyper-V VM (NUC image) starting up but not downloading application

Product support balenaOS
1

I’ve created a virtual machine in Windows 10 using Hyper-V, and converted the Balena .img file (NUC) to a Hyper-V .vhdx file using qemu-img. The VM starts up fine, and I get to the Balena logo screen, but that’s where it stops each time. The device registered with Balena Cloud, but it shows as being “Online (VPN only)” - but never actually downloads the app, nor can I connect to its terminal through the Balena Cloud terminal. I am able to access the device by directly logging in to its terminal (alt-F2) and can confirm it has internet access. Has anyone successfully got this working - and if so could they share how it was done?

4

Hi David,
Reading up about Hyper-V it might not be the best choice for Linux systems generally. We have instructions on how to run balena on VirtualBox here https://www.balena.io/blog/no-hardware-use-virtualbox/ .
If your device shows up in the dashboard it is likely working. The balena logo screen is what you see if you are using a production version.
You can try to establish a ssh session to your device by opening a web console from the dashboard or by using the balena-cli ( https://github.com/balena-io/balena-cli ).
You can establish a ssh session directly after adding your ssh-key to config.json or if you use a development image of balena.
Regards Thomas

5

Hi. Just to add to what Thomas said, when you are able to login, can you also check the status of openvpn using the journalctl --no-pager -u openvpn command?

6

I am actually able to connect to the terminal on the local Hyper-V machine by pressing alt-F2 and logging in as root (no password since it is in dev mode). See screenshot below of the output of the journalctl --no-pager -u openvpn command. It looks like there is an error relating to a route add, towards the bottom, not sure if this is the issue?

Unfortunately I am stuck with Hyper-V because I’m using WSL2 for my local Ubuntu dev environment, and WSL2 requires Hyper-V, which conflicts with VirtualBox.

image
image1024×768 9.63 KB

7

So it looks like it connected fine. Can you also run curl https://api.balena-cloud.com/ping ?

8

Got the response “OK”

9

So it can reach the API. Now can you check journalctl --no-pager -u resin-supervisor ?

11

Looks like no entries for resin-supervisor – see below:

image
image1024×768 1.08 KB

12

@floion I found the issue - looks like I hadn’t created the second drive for downloading data. I had mistakenly assumed it would just expand the Balena image, but everything is now working fine. Thank you!

And to others who are interested in doing this - it’s pretty simple:

  1. Download qemu-img, extract it to a folder, and place your balena image (NUC) in that folder
  2. Run qemu-img.exe convert balena-image.img -O vhdx -o subformat=dynamic hyperv-balena-image.vhdx
  3. Create a virtual machine in Hyper-V (I used the second generation setup), disable secure boot, and ensure it has network connectivity
  4. Create a new (empty) hard drive for your first drive, and load the hyperv-balena-image.vhdx for the second (the order is important, it doesn’t work the other way around)

These are the steps that worked for me, hopefully it works for others too.

1 Like
13

@drcnyc that is super cool! Glad you figured it out and came back to share your solution with the community!