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OpenBSD on Digital Ocean

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11–20 of 23 posts

Re: OpenBSD on Digital Ocean

#11
post #8

Tangentially related at best...anybody here succeed doing PXE with virtualbox's tftp and openbsd? I get an unhelpful error msg.

I have done a few bits with PXE booting inc OpenBSD, so I might be able to help if you can provide more detail. (I do feel your pain as PXE error messages are largely pretty vague, but not posting the error message is even less helpful).

Re: OpenBSD on Digital Ocean

#12
post #10

What is the technical blocker to installing OpenBSD without a FreeBSD shim, e.g. is there incompatible code in the OpenBSD installer?

On digital ocean you get a very limited set of boot options. You can't provide them your own installer, boot image, kernel, iso, or any of that jazz. You also don't get a pre-boot console. For linux, they don't even let you provide your own kernel in userland or the like, so there's actually no way to install a BSD from a linux shim on DO. FreeBSD on DO is the only way to get an instance that is capable of booting an…

If yoy want to run your own kernel you can always use kexec (not ideal, but works): https://gist.github.com/cpuguy83/6143347

Re: OpenBSD on Digital Ocean

#13
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used these instructions a few weeks ago and they worked. You will need to download miniroot58.fs (not miniroot57.fs).

True indeed, the article was written a week before the release of 5.8...

Huh, 5.8 hasn't been released? What you mean is that snapshots / current are now using that version number.

Re: OpenBSD on Digital Ocean

#14
post #12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On digital ocean you get a very limited set of boot options. You can't provide them your own installer, boot image, kernel, iso, or any of that jazz. You also don't get a pre-boot console. For linux, they don't even let you provide your own kernel in userland or the like, so there's actually no way to install a BSD from a linux shim on DO. FreeBSD on DO is the only way to get an instance that is capable of booting an…

If yoy want to run your own kernel you can always use kexec (not ideal, but works): https://gist.github.com/cpuguy83/6143347

Has anyone got kexec to boot a non Linux kernel?

Re: OpenBSD on Digital Ocean

#15
post #5

This also probably works on other cloud providers if they support a virtualization layer that OpenBSD will work with. I've heard of successes here too: https://vultr.com/ Just be sure you use miniroot58.fs -- OpenBSD 5.8 wasn't released when this was written.

5.8 is still currently in development/snapshot - not for amateur users. 5.7 is the latest official release. 5.8 is due on Nov 1.

Worth noting though that if you use the release, you get no updates, security or otherwise, till the next release in 6 months.

And using -stable (release + patches) is a hassle of manually applying patches and re-compiling - no binary updates are available.

If running snapshots is not for amateurs, neither is running stable.

Re: OpenBSD on Digital Ocean

#16
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5.8 is still currently in development/snapshot - not for amateur users. 5.7 is the latest official release. 5.8 is due on Nov 1.

Worth noting though that if you use the release, you get no updates, security or otherwise, till the next release in 6 months. And using -stable (release + patches) is a hassle of manually applying patches and re-compiling - no binary updates are available. If running snapshots is not for amateurs, neither is running stable.

If you cannot run stable, then I'm pretty sure you should let others do your system administration for you. Stable is very easy to follow with simple instructions: http://www.openbsd.org/stable.html

If you need binaries there is always http://opensource.mtier.org/binpatchng.html

Re: OpenBSD on Digital Ocean

#17
post #5

This also probably works on other cloud providers if they support a virtualization layer that OpenBSD will work with. I've heard of successes here too: https://vultr.com/ Just be sure you use miniroot58.fs -- OpenBSD 5.8 wasn't released when this was written.

Vultr allows installing from ISO, so no need to shim. I can verify that OpenBSD 5.7-stable will run with no issues. One thing to watch out for is that outgoing TCP connections to port 25 are blocked until you ask them to open it up.

"connections to port 25 are blocked until you ask them to open it up"

Thanks for that info, that seems like a fairly reasonable policy.

Re: OpenBSD on Digital Ocean

#18
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5.8 is still currently in development/snapshot - not for amateur users. 5.7 is the latest official release. 5.8 is due on Nov 1.

Worth noting though that if you use the release, you get no updates, security or otherwise, till the next release in 6 months. And using -stable (release + patches) is a hassle of manually applying patches and re-compiling - no binary updates are available. If running snapshots is not for amateurs, neither is running stable.

Stable will cleanly build though, where running current snapshots you could come across something temporarily broken or have to debug a tough build if doing it from source. FWIW I just built 5.7 stable and the whole process took an hour and a half for kernel + userland + xenocara with no build issues. Often for stable security patches you just have to rebuild the kernel which is 15 mins work on my older AMD server.

Re: OpenBSD on Digital Ocean

#20
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5.8 is still currently in development/snapshot - not for amateur users. 5.7 is the latest official release. 5.8 is due on Nov 1.

Worth noting though that if you use the release, you get no updates, security or otherwise, till the next release in 6 months. And using -stable (release + patches) is a hassle of manually applying patches and re-compiling - no binary updates are available. If running snapshots is not for amateurs, neither is running stable.

One can receive updates to binary packages for the current -stable release from M:Tier[0] . They also host binpatches for security vulnerabilities in base which can either be installed manually via pkg_add or automatically with their openup[1] tool.

0: https://stable.mtier.org/

1: http://www.mtier.org/index.php/solutions/apps/openup/

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