FreeBSD Bhyve Webadmin | BVCP 1.9.8 Just Released

Published Date: 2023/03/19 by: DaVieS

BVCP 1.9.8 features 

New protocol to transmit VNC/RFB data as encrypted and compressed.
Better, faster and more responsive UI.
Colored CLI Interface
More Secured. 

The VNC/RFB Problem

Many of you reported that VNC suffers sometimes.
This root problem comes from Bhyve itself, because Bhyve only supports raw RFB framebuffers.
The VNC protocol itself is not encrypted though, therefore we had to add TLS back in time.
However the TLS is only uses 16KB frames and compression should be disabled for a security reason, so that means VNC using megabytes of TLS traffic segmented by 16bytes data and control frames. That was the second issue with VNC.

Now we developed a new protocol to handle this issue. The new protocol is uses AES-128 and gzip compression.
The protocol does not have frame limitation, it can be vary on the fly. The second news here is that this allows us to use buffered data transmission. We process the data when we know exactly we have a whole packet. Also buffered input give an opportunity to collect more datas and process them in once. 

This method removed a lot of network lagg. We tested across the world and we can state that, Installing windows across borders remotely using the VNC is no longer hassle. 

Of Corse there is a bit lag due of raw output but totally fine now.
Also we improved the whole codebase and reduced VNC init sessions.

Take It Now

Newer Framework, Better Security

We fixed a lot of bug and also added new layers of security such as the frontend drop itseld to unprivileged users but now allows to use restricted ports. Users no longer affects the problem if they wants use ports below 1024. usually in POSIX systems under 1024 you need root privileges. To bypass this we launch the server process as root but wont accept connections until the whole process drops into unprivileged user. That means the code execution stack is now well protected but the filedescriptor is ready to use lower ports.


Better, faster and more responsive UI.

We added a lot of adaptive cache so the interface should be faster now.
There is still many doors to improve the effectiveness of the cache.
We added new button on the VMS that feels better for the case. 

Colored CLI Interface

Now the main interface is colored. Not a new invention but looks good.

UPCOMING FEATURES with 2.0

We wanted to release 2.0 originally but since the many of feedback about VNC we urged to release an interim and stable version as 1.9.8

• Export & Import Configuration
• Edit custom parameters ( allows use of PCI Passthrough )
• Two-Factor Authentication

Work In Progress

• VNC with Hextile, Tight Modes
• Usage Charts (CPU, Memory, Network)  under VM tab
• TPM Emulation and TPM Support (UEFI Firmware)
• VNC Console preview
• Multi-Session VNC 
• Guest Additions