My home server runs Truenas Core, a natural choice since I’ve been partial towards BSD since I accidentally overwrote my main disk with OpenBSD back in the 90s. To get some ease of mind I want to back up photos and other important files and CrashPlan is (was when I looked last time) the only cloud backup service that ran on Linux and mounted disks it is what I use.
Mouse not working in BHyve
I found this guide Setting up TrueNAS with Crashplan Pro Backup that very clearly explains the process of creating a Bhyve VM and installing OS and Crash Plan. But I got stuck when trying to get VNC to work, the mouse wouldn’t move or react to any buttons.
At first I thought it was some bug with Firefox and the web-based VNC client so tested Chrome but the result was the same. Then I whipped out the trusty TightVNC client but still, the mouse didn’t move.
After some googling i realized that it is a known problem with BHyve and some linux distros (Debian and Ubuntu was mentioned). One workaround seems to be to alter the number of CPU-cores to make sure it’s an odd number 🤯, but that didn’t work for me. So after trying many combinations of CPUs, cores and threads I was about to give up.
Using XServer instead of VNC
But then a distant memory from my friend the Arch zealot Jake the Snake hit me, you can run X11 apps on other machines! I found some guide for using Xming and Putty on Windows to run remote GUI applications.
The install and setup took easily a quarter of the time I already spent debugging and trying different settings to get the mouse up and running in VNC. So if you have trouble with mouse control on BHyve, just use X-forwarding!