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DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

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Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#181
post #174
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…

the PF available on FreeBSD is woefully out of date. If you use FreeBSD regularly and don't mess with pf, learn ipfw. it is quite powerful and much more performant.

I'm surprised this is the case, since pfsense is a very capable FW built upon the pf version on FreeBSD. I've been running it for years with nary a problem. Would you say the outdated version of pf puts people running pfsense at risk?

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there, Sam here from the DO Product team. You're right, we dropped the ball on UserVoice. There aren't any excuses to be made. I know it's a lot to ask, but please trust that going forward we will be much more transparent through UserVoice & elsewhere. We'll also be much more intentional in communicating our priorities through that medium, as this seems to be at the root of the concern about missing deadlines. Ag…

that's what you (pl.) said last year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7723751

The You (pl.) has been expanded, changed, and we're working with better processes (and more people!) to make sure that doesn't happen anymore. Trust is a lot to ask for, but do stay tuned. There will be a lot of pleasant surprises this year.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#183

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...

There is no way to boot into single user mode for now (or at least instructions provided aren't working).

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there, Sam here from the DO Product team. You're right, we dropped the ball on UserVoice. There aren't any excuses to be made. I know it's a lot to ask, but please trust that going forward we will be much more transparent through UserVoice & elsewhere. We'll also be much more intentional in communicating our priorities through that medium, as this seems to be at the root of the concern about missing deadlines. Ag…

Do you have a timetable on when tickets and announcements will be set up? There are outstanding issues with hundreds/thousands of votes with zero updates, and promises made 12 months ago with no progress. I've heard DO reps in the past say they were going to update things but lack of follow-up is always what happened. I think I speak for a lot of DO users who have to rely on AWS/Linode for larger clients that we'd mo…

The biggest mistake we've made previously was promising dates where none really existed. We don't have concrete dates for you. When we do, and _only_ when we do, we'll update those UserVoice items. Bear with us, it won't be long before I have more for you.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#185
post #111
post #56

Just deployed a FreeBSD droplet and I'm not sure if it's just because the host network is busier than my other droplets, but I seem to be getting about half the network performance that I can in a default linux droplet. They are using Virtio, which is good since it doesn't require hardware emulation like the E1XXX devices on KVM. I should probably use a better test than cachefly but just wondering if theres any known…

It's not only DO. I had to create a Linux VPS in order to run a Sinatra application because when deployed on FreeBSD it took more than 60 seconds to send a response to the remote API and the connection was timed out! After performing some tests[2] I figure out that the problem was not FreeBSD per se, but the FreeBSD deployment on the specific virtual server... I think that *BSDs should be avoided because they tend to…

I disagree with this. FreeBSD is running fine and speedy at other providers in a virtualized platform.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#186

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...

I just use Vultr and install from a FreeBSD downloaded ISO. No modifications to the base install at all and works as expected.

DO have screwed something up with their configuration if they need to make so many changes to make it work. No other VPS provider I have used that support FreeBSD (or OpenBSD for that matter) require any changes to the default install.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#187

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?

Running ps in a jail will show the processes in the jail only.

Processes in the jail will only see network interfaces and other devices that have been explicitly exposed to the jail.

As others have said, it's like a vm with no virtualization overhead. You can set up jails with the entire Freebsd fs hierarchy so it runs like another host with its own users. Note that even the root user in a jail is not the same as the real root user. You can then use pkg to install packages within the jail too.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#188
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

There is no way to boot into single user mode for now (or at least instructions provided aren't working).

And the reason was invalid /boot/loader.conf:

console="vidconsole,comconsole" autoboot_delay="10" console="comconsole,vidconsole" autoboot_delay="1"

Second console actually disables access from web console access, which is fatal.

Autoboot is not critical, although default to 3 sec should work much better for opportunity to change boot options from web console.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my naivety, but why do you need more than 16 addresses per droplet?

Here is a good explanation: http://etherealmind.com/allocating-64-wasteful-ipv6-not/ .

That article completely ignores NDP exhaustion attacks. As autoconfiguration has no place in a server environment anyway, which is the protocol that breaks, there's absolutely no need to assign a /64. The more important goal is to avoid fragmentation; it makes more sense to allocate a single larger subnet than multiple smaller ones so as not to fill up routing tables. Externally to your network, you'd aggregate anyway, but it helps to keep routing tables lean on layer 3 switches which aren't capable of as many routes. Also, some vendors' IPv6 implementations have FIBs that use /64's, and may need buckets for multiple subnets within, which can be inefficient. A good compromise is to reserve a /64, but only assign something more reasonable like a /121, with 123-125 usable IPv6 addresses being more than enough in most cases.

Re: DigitalOcean now supports FreeBSD

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I'm a long time FreeBSD vps user. It'd be great to check if DO droplets can support CARP failover within the same datacentre, and then expand to be able to do this across datacentres. https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/carp.html My use cases so far haven't involved CARP but I'd like to start experimenting with that!

Any recommendations of other BSD VPS providers?

RootBSD is insanely awesome and is the one I'd recommend whole heartedly.

Compile your own kernels, your own world, and they are always on hand for assistance for things that you need help with.

I've been a happy customer for a number of years.

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