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Sylve – Proxmox Alternative by FreeBSD

sylve.io

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Re: Sylve – Proxmox Alternative by FreeBSD

#21

This looks promising. I might swap my Proxmox install for this. Now we only need Sylve Community Scripts! Although creating a new jail (I guess FreeBSD alternative for LXC containers?) doesn't seem difficult.

LXCs are pretty similar to jails, and Sylve makes them really easy to use. One nice trick is that you can template a base jail and clone it any number of times straight from the UI, no need to drop into a shell and script it like I used to.

Another underrated part of FreeBSD is pkg. It’s often simpler than Linux package management. For example, installing Jellyfin on Debian or Ubuntu means adding a third party repo and dealing with updates, but on FreeBSD it’s just `pkg install jellyfin`. With pkgbase, even system updates are simple, just `pkg update && pkg upgrade` and you’re done, without worrying about breaking your system.

Re: Sylve – Proxmox Alternative by FreeBSD

#22
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve tried using it on a desktop before and rolling that back cleanly isn’t exactly straightforward. Well, sure, but Proxmox was never intended to be a desktop solution. It was always intended as a server solution, installed on bare-metal, and therefore "rolling-back" is a re-format and re-install (or shredding the drives if the server is being decommissioned).

That’s fair, but that kind of reinforces my point. If the expected recovery path is “wipe and reinstall,” then it’s clearly not just a thin layer on top of Debian. It’s effectively its own platform with its own assumptions, lifecycle, and upgrade path. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s a very different model from something that can coexist with or cleanly detach from the base system. That distinction matters…

Well said, you get what I'm looking for. This might be the reason for me to give freebsd a go. Though my current hardware probably wouldn't play nice with it.

Re: Sylve – Proxmox Alternative by FreeBSD

#23
post #21

This looks promising. I might swap my Proxmox install for this. Now we only need Sylve Community Scripts! Although creating a new jail (I guess FreeBSD alternative for LXC containers?) doesn't seem difficult.

LXCs are pretty similar to jails, and Sylve makes them really easy to use. One nice trick is that you can template a base jail and clone it any number of times straight from the UI, no need to drop into a shell and script it like I used to. Another underrated part of FreeBSD is pkg. It’s often simpler than Linux package management. For example, installing Jellyfin on Debian or Ubuntu means adding a third party repo a…

One problem with pkg and jails, is that there aren't good instructions for how you separate the "this is the current list of pkg and their status in the repo" from "this is the current list of INSTALLED pkg and their specific state and version in this host"

If this can be documented, and work with an exterior common pkg repo state, then every jail can be updated on pkg upgrade, for it's specific pkg, when the exterior state is updated for pkg update, to get refreshed for what needs to be updated.

Right now, under bastille, I do pkg update && pkg upgrade inside each jail and I therefore have n copies of the state of the pkg repo.

Trivial attempts at this wind up with every jail having identical pkg state. I don't want that: one for plex, one for vaultwarden, one for adguard, they should have the minimum attack surface of just the pkg and the necessary dependencies.

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