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Anyone know why OpenBSD VMs aren't provisionable by the big cloud companies like AWS or DigitalOcean? I've always found it to be a curious omission given OpenBS

Anyone know why OpenBSD VMs aren't provisionable by the big cloud companies like AWS or DigitalOcean? I've always found it to be a curious omission given OpenBSDs sterling reputation for security.

tyingq 8y ago
Probably just the amount of support tickets vs revenue. OpenBSD doesn't support Xen PV, for example. I thought there was an AWS AMI for OpenBSD though. Vultr does let you boot up and install any ISO, so that's an option. Not a big provider, but...
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y ago
  In principle, if the provider does support full-virtualization and has a debug console, one could install any operating system of their choice, manually. It may be possible even without one, if you can somehow figure out how the boot process works. The most crazy successful attempt I made was performing deletion of the entire Linux root filesystem with a busybox shell running in RAM over SSH, and replacing it with to another unsupported distribution, then rewrite the grub.cfg, configure the network settings and trigger a clean filesystem sync and reboot via proc. Finally pray you'll see the server coming online again soon. It worked. But providing a template is all it needs for the provider to support OpenBSD, unfortunately it is still unavailable. Is it that hard to provide a template?
- Mikealcl 8y ago
  Vultr has it listed now officially. Don’t think you even need to upload the iso anymore.
  - protomyth 8y ago
    Can confirm OpenBSD works fine on Vultr. No weird install problems.
technofiend 8y ago
Now that Digital Ocean has added custom image support, it's at least potentially possible. No idea if OpenBSD supports all the cloud components needed but it does at least support ext2 which may be close enough. https://blog.digitalocean.com/custom-images/ https://blog.digitalocean.com/custom-images/
pyritschard 8y ago
I expect the situation to change over time, OpenBSD has invested a lot in working well with KVM which most providers are relying on now anyway. OpenBSD also has cloud-init support now[1] which makes interaction with terraform and ansible much simpler. While the big three do not have officially supported templates, a few providers do, including Exoscale (disclaimer: CTO there). [1]: https://github.com/exoscale/openbsd-cloud-init https://github.com/exoscale/openbsd-cloud-init
sirmac1k 8y ago
While there isn't many companies supporting obsd officially it took me a little over 5 minutes to spin it on my own VPS at OVH. So if your provider gives you the access to kvm console you just need to download bsd.rd, add GRUB entry and reboot. Do your install and you're a happy OpenBSD user in the cloud. In the next step I think I'll automate that process with bash/ansible and autoinstall file.
h1d 8y ago
Vultr has it but to be honest when I was considering to switch my personal server from Linux as it can be anything, I wanted to run OpenBSD for providing the leading tools like OpenSSH and I'm a fan of pf and to support them by running it but when I deployed, it just lacked packages which means you need to compile stuff from source but typically OpenBSD isn't in those deployment target and they just don't compile even though some support FreeBSD. In the end I just settled with FreeBSD when most stuff I used to use in Linux worked fine. I really wish I could stay with OpenBSD. I don't want to call it but it does feel like it's becoming more of a research OS.

Anyone know why OpenBSD VMs aren't provisionable by the big cloud companies like AWS or DigitalOcean? I've always found it to be a curious omission given OpenBSDs sterling reputation for security.

tyingq 8y ago

Probably just the amount of support tickets vs revenue. OpenBSD doesn't support Xen PV, for example. I thought there was an AWS AMI for OpenBSD though. Vultr does let you boot up and install any ISO, so that's an option. Not a big provider, but...

bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y ago
In principle, if the provider does support full-virtualization and has a debug console, one could install any operating system of their choice, manually. It may be possible even without one, if you can somehow figure out how the boot process works. The most crazy successful attempt I made was performing deletion of the entire Linux root filesystem with a busybox shell running in RAM over SSH, and replacing it with to another unsupported distribution, then rewrite the grub.cfg, configure the network settings and trigger a clean filesystem sync and reboot via proc. Finally pray you'll see the server coming online again soon. It worked. But providing a template is all it needs for the provider to support OpenBSD, unfortunately it is still unavailable. Is it that hard to provide a template?
Mikealcl 8y ago
Vultr has it listed now officially. Don’t think you even need to upload the iso anymore.
- protomyth 8y ago
  Can confirm OpenBSD works fine on Vultr. No weird install problems.

technofiend 8y ago

Now that Digital Ocean has added custom image support, it's at least potentially possible. No idea if OpenBSD supports all the cloud components needed but it does at least support ext2 which may be close enough. https://blog.digitalocean.com/custom-images/ https://blog.digitalocean.com/custom-images/

pyritschard 8y ago

I expect the situation to change over time, OpenBSD has invested a lot in working well with KVM which most providers are relying on now anyway. OpenBSD also has cloud-init support now[1] which makes interaction with terraform and ansible much simpler. While the big three do not have officially supported templates, a few providers do, including Exoscale (disclaimer: CTO there). [1]: https://github.com/exoscale/openbsd-cloud-init https://github.com/exoscale/openbsd-cloud-init

sirmac1k 8y ago

While there isn't many companies supporting obsd officially it took me a little over 5 minutes to spin it on my own VPS at OVH. So if your provider gives you the access to kvm console you just need to download bsd.rd, add GRUB entry and reboot. Do your install and you're a happy OpenBSD user in the cloud. In the next step I think I'll automate that process with bash/ansible and autoinstall file.

h1d 8y ago

Vultr has it but to be honest when I was considering to switch my personal server from Linux as it can be anything, I wanted to run OpenBSD for providing the leading tools like OpenSSH and I'm a fan of pf and to support them by running it but when I deployed, it just lacked packages which means you need to compile stuff from source but typically OpenBSD isn't in those deployment target and they just don't compile even though some support FreeBSD. In the end I just settled with FreeBSD when most stuff I used to use in Linux worked fine. I really wish I could stay with OpenBSD. I don't want to call it but it does feel like it's becoming more of a research OS.