Hit installation issue for FreeBSD 13.x/14.x 32bit in a VM with 4GB or above RAM.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides the reason and how to handle this issue.

Symptoms:
To install FreeBSD 13.x/14.x 32bit in a VM with 4GB or above RAM on NVMe controller attached hard disk, the installation cannot be completed and "BTX halted error" is reported.
To install FreeBSD 13.x/14.x 32bit in a VM with 4GB or above RAM on LSI Logic Parallel or LSI Logic SAS controller attached hard disk, the welcome dialog to begin the installation will show up repeatedly after selecting "reboot" at the installation complete dialog, this will cause the installation never to complete.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x

Cause

Refer to https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/i386/, FreeBSD 13.x/14.x 32bit supports up to 4GB of RAM by default.

Resolution

Install FreeBSD 13.x/14.x 32bit in a VM with 3GB or less RAM.

Workaround:
The Two options to resolve the issue are below:

1. Install FreeBSD 13.x/14.x 32bit in a VM with 3GB or less RAM.
2. It is recommended to take FreeBSD 13.x/14.x 64bit instead of 32bit version if 4 GB or more memory is required.