DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD • Hacker News Board

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#141

Post by thiagowfx » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 4:39 AM UTC

oscargrouch wrote: post #137

atmosx wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. From my experience: * PF (default on OpenBSD, a fork exists on FreeBSD) configuration is way more human-readable than iptables. Makes a lot easier to create custom complex rulesets. * Documentation is much cleaner on FreeBSD (or OpenBSD) compared to GNU/Linux. Again helps you deploy complex solutions easily. * The upgrade process (using ports or pkg) is well documented, easy to execute[1]. * ZFS makes FreeBSD a…

+ Dtrace + Jails + Capsicum [1] + Netmap [2] + Most performing network stack + Resource Management (pretty low memory usage) + The userspace tools come with the source (no GNU/Linux duality) + Clang/LLVM as default compiler stack [1] - https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=capsicum&sektion=4 [2] - https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=netmap&sektion=4

I never understood the main differences between jails and chroots. Would you be willing to explain?

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#142

Post by dewarrn1 » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 4:41 AM UTC

TheDong wrote: post #139

The fact that DO had to make this announcement at all is a sign that things have gotten worse for VPSs. Before, when a company provided Xen or Kvm, you generally would get to have low-level access such as the ability to virtually connect to a serial port or vnc session of your box as it booted. You also, typically, could provide your own ISO images. Even if you couldn't provide your own iso, being able to interact wi…

Regarding custom kernels, DO says that BSD will be able to boot them: http://disq.us/8lqxh7.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#143

Post by newaccountfool » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 4:45 AM UTC

dhaivatpandya wrote: post #140

TheDong wrote: post #139

The fact that DO had to make this announcement at all is a sign that things have gotten worse for VPSs. Before, when a company provided Xen or Kvm, you generally would get to have low-level access such as the ability to virtually connect to a serial port or vnc session of your box as it booted. You also, typically, could provide your own ISO images. Even if you couldn't provide your own iso, being able to interact wi…

If DO users don't need the ability to upload their own images, why is this a problem?

Some DO users will want this, others who aren't DO customers will also want this. As a growing company DO want to attract as many new customers as possible.

They're still in early stages though, I'm sure this is in the pipeline.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#144

Post by aurelien » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 4:52 AM UTC

A service that is a bit ugly, here is what I feel about, you register, you give your credit card, and you just don't know how it will cost. That point is just bad and make me feel that will cost an eye.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#145

Post by thelibrarian » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 4:59 AM UTC

thiagowfx wrote: post #141

oscargrouch wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+ Dtrace + Jails + Capsicum [1] + Netmap [2] + Most performing network stack + Resource Management (pretty low memory usage) + The userspace tools come with the source (no GNU/Linux duality) + Clang/LLVM as default compiler stack [1] - https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=capsicum&sektion=4 [2] - https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=netmap&sektion=4

I never understood the main differences between jails and chroots. Would you be willing to explain?

chroot (often referred to as a "chroot jail") limits a process to a certain subset of the filesystem - e.g. you could limit a httpd process so that it can only see /var/www, and it would not be able to see anything outside that, so if there was a security compromise of the web server, an attacker would not be able see anything outside that folder tree.

A FreeBSD jail is a like a lightweight virtual machine, and is very similar to a Docker container in Linux (though it has been around for about a decade longer than Docker). It provides isolation for processes etc., but uses less resources than a full virtual machine. It is limited in that it has to be the same operating system as the host.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#146

Post by rhizome » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 5:05 AM UTC

thiagowfx wrote: post #141

oscargrouch wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+ Dtrace + Jails + Capsicum [1] + Netmap [2] + Most performing network stack + Resource Management (pretty low memory usage) + The userspace tools come with the source (no GNU/Linux duality) + Clang/LLVM as default compiler stack [1] - https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=capsicum&sektion=4 [2] - https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=netmap&sektion=4

I never understood the main differences between jails and chroots. Would you be willing to explain?

Chroots only lock you to a particular part of the filesystem. Jails add process and network resource restrictions.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#147

Post by vbit » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 5:17 AM UTC

xhrpost wrote: post #28

As a web developer who knows enough Linux to do minimum dev-ops, could anyone recommend some things worth playing around with in FreeBSD? Like "do this and see how easy it is vs Ubuntu!". Or are the gains more long term like better stability?

As a developer you might find jails useful. I use them to create multiple isolated 'virtual machines' on the same machine. In each one I can install a different set of packages and I like the my base system in clean. With zfs, I also snapshot each jail before major changes so rollback is easy. Try this and see how easy, well-integrated it is as opposed to something similar on linux.

I use ezjail, btw.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#148

Post by ltofbss » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 5:18 AM UTC

I have so much experience with Linux I feel like FreeBSD I would have so much to re-learn. What makes it worthwhile and how transferable is my knowledge?

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#149

Post by mietek » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 5:37 AM UTC

andrewthetechie wrote: post #127

sullrich wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also seeing really poor write speeds when comparing to my Linux droplets. 11MB/sec vs. 216MB/sec on Linux

With FreeBSD, in order to be able to have automatic backups work, we were required to disable journaling on the disk. This will cause the disk speed to be much slower than our Linux distributions. If you wish to have higher disk speeds, but not use backups, we recommend for you to remount your disk with journaling. https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/gjournal-desktop/con...

This should be done by default on droplets which do not have backups enabled.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#150

Post by alberth » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 5:44 AM UTC

shiftpgdn wrote: post #136

alberth wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DO disabling journaling is a big deal. What else has DO disabled and/or modified from a vanilla install?

DO modifies a lot of stuff on vanillas installs. They're one of the only providers I know of that removes the swap partition.

Where does DO document all of the modifications they make to a vanilla FreeBSD install?