8 ms·

Should I run OpenBSD or Debian on my VPS, with arguments about security and (some) ease of usability?

by fxfan 8y ago

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
Is there a good option for VPS hosting with OpenBSD? It receives minimal support from major providers which I'm aware. Which is unfortunate, since I personally find it to be a much nicer system to work with than the more popular operating systems.
- ioddly 8y ago
  Vultr will let you spin up an OpenBSD VPS easily, although as to how supported it is I'm not sure. I'm certainly happy with their Linux offerings.
  - gorbypark 8y ago
    I actually have an OpenBSD instance with 512mb of ram that costs $2.50/mo on Vultr and their support has been amazing. A while after upgrading OpenBSD to a new version, I noticed IPV6 wasn't working anymore. I didn't initially think it was the upgrade that did it, because I rarely ever thing about IPV6, so I opened a support ticket. I got a response back by someone obviously very familiar with OpenBSD with step-by-step instructions on what I needed to do after the upgrade to get back IPV6. It was pretty amazing for $2.50/mo!
    - snazz 8y ago
      I got $10 in free credit at sign up too. Very impressed with their service so far and OpenBSD is equally well supported as Linux. In case someone is looking for the very cheap plans, make sure to select Atlanta as the data center because some other locations in the US don’t have the cheapest plans.
    - JdeBP 8y ago
      Out of curiosity: Was it the IPv6 regression in 5.9? * https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/299580/5132 https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/299580/5132
      - gorbypark 8y ago
        Hmm, I can't remember exactly. It was either 5.9->6.0 or 6.0->6.1. I'm leaning towards the latter.
- protomyth 8y ago
  I use Vultr, and it works pretty well for a budget provider.
- lelf 8y ago
  KVM (not joking)
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    If I had colo space, why not just run OpenBSD on bare metal and optionally use vmm? I want this precisely because I'm not in a position to host stuff physically myself.
    - lelf 8y ago
      I mean (forgive my heresy) using kvm(-the-hypervisor) under GNU/Linux to run guest OpenBSD. That is at least a very fast way to get started, spin up €2 instance somewhere, qemu -cdrom openbsd.iso and that's it.
- gigatexal 8y ago
  You can upload a custom image to your digital ocean droplet.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- meruru 8y ago
  Perhaps https://openbsd.amsterdam https://openbsd.amsterdam
- platform 8y ago
  https://openbsd.amsterdam/setup.html https://openbsd.amsterdam/setup.html this was posted here. I was intrigued but have not tried it (because my software relies on java 11, which is not on OpenBSD)
- pimeys 8y ago
  https://console.hetzner.cloud/ https://console.hetzner.cloud/ has OpenBSD 6.4. You must purchase a server with one of the four official Linux images first, then go server settings and from the iso images you can mount the OpenBSD install ISO and reboot. Use the server console to continue the installation.
  - cyberpunk 8y ago
    As someone who was a heavy OVH user -- well, 100 or so dedicated servers -- and who just abandoned an attempt to migrate them to hetzner (who were slightly cheaper and offered NVME) -- let me suggest that you avoid Hetzner. They blocked several critial IPs of mine without any warning, their support had absolutely no idea what the problem was and refused to unblock my IPs until I could convince them I'd solved the "problem" (which was an extra mac address appearing on one of my router addresses -- not an actual problem) and cost my business about 10k in the process. The email chain was... painful. I've never had such a bad experience with a host before. YMMV of course, but I'm back on OVH and life is easy again...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- snvzz 8y ago
  Any of this should work. https://ramnode.com/vps.php https://ramnode.com/vps.php (kvm) https://www.vultr.com/pricing/ https://www.vultr.com/pricing/ https://www.exoscale.com/compute/ https://www.exoscale.com/compute/ https://openbsd.amsterdam/ https://openbsd.amsterdam/ https://buyvm.net/kvm-dedicated-server-slices https://buyvm.net/kvm-dedicated-server-slices
- vbezhenar 8y ago
  You can install any Linux distro e.g. Centos with grub, copy OpenBSD install image to /boot and start it with grub. From now on you can just install it reformatting disk. You don’t need any particular support, standard KVM should be enough. Here’s guide I used recently and it worked just fine: https://archive.org/details/hpr2181 https://archive.org/details/hpr2181
platform 8y ago
Depends on the software requirements you have, and perhaps on the network throughput you need. For example java 11 is not, yet, a native option in any of the BSDs (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, DF Bsd).
- jbverschoor 8y ago
  This is the reason I switched from FreeBSD to Debian about 20 years ago. Sad that it's still not an option.
  - platform 8y ago
    java is definetely an option on all of the BSDs I mentioned. It just they did not have Java 11 ported to them yet. But now since OpenJDK 11 is ported to FreeBSD, others, will follow. Sorry if my comment was not clear.
- wolrah 8y ago
  IMO not having Java should be considered a positive. Java is wonderful in theory, but in practice it's likely been one of the most common recurring headaches in my IT management career. For a platform where one of the key marketing points has always been "write once, run anywhere" it sure is apparently not only easy but seemingly encouraged to write software that only runs on a specific version of the JVM, often with key security features disabled. Either Java itself sucks or Java encourages its developers to suck. I'm not sure which. Obviously not all Java applications nor all Java developers suck, but there is a larger than normal amount of suckage in the Java universe.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    > "Either Java itself sucks or Java encourages its developers to suck. I'm not sure which." Neither. Java makes it easy for developers that suck to contribute. (The subtle difference here being that it won't make a good developer lose his competency.) Incidentally this is why companies love java so much. Hiring a java developer straight out of college is much easier than hiring a C++ developer straight out of college. Arguably in the last few years Java's niche has been encroached on by other accessible languages with mild learning curves (golang, javascript/node, etc) but for years Java was the obvious choice if you wanted to hire cheap developers that could at the bare minimum fullfil the design requirements.
ekovarski 8y ago
You should run what you are familiar with as security is an ongoing process of updating, applying patches, so familiarity will make these chores easier.
ip26 8y ago
OpenBSD is great for a VPS, especially a small one. The minimal install has an incredibly short list of packages, which I like & feel helps keep everything working even over many years of following updates. It's just so much simpler than most Linux distros. But, familiarity or lack thereof can be very important- it's amazing how much is different about BSD, when we are used to thinking of it as a close cousin to Linux.

Should I run OpenBSD or Debian on my VPS, with arguments about security and (some) ease of usability?

by fxfan 8y ago

Should I run OpenBSD or Debian on my VPS, with arguments about security and (some) ease of usability?

Is there a good option for VPS hosting with OpenBSD? It receives minimal support from major providers which I'm aware. Which is unfortunate, since I personally find it to be a much nicer system to work with than the more popular operating systems.

ioddly 8y ago
Vultr will let you spin up an OpenBSD VPS easily, although as to how supported it is I'm not sure. I'm certainly happy with their Linux offerings.
- gorbypark 8y ago
  I actually have an OpenBSD instance with 512mb of ram that costs $2.50/mo on Vultr and their support has been amazing. A while after upgrading OpenBSD to a new version, I noticed IPV6 wasn't working anymore. I didn't initially think it was the upgrade that did it, because I rarely ever thing about IPV6, so I opened a support ticket. I got a response back by someone obviously very familiar with OpenBSD with step-by-step instructions on what I needed to do after the upgrade to get back IPV6. It was pretty amazing for $2.50/mo!
  - snazz 8y ago
    I got $10 in free credit at sign up too. Very impressed with their service so far and OpenBSD is equally well supported as Linux. In case someone is looking for the very cheap plans, make sure to select Atlanta as the data center because some other locations in the US don’t have the cheapest plans.
  - JdeBP 8y ago
    Out of curiosity: Was it the IPv6 regression in 5.9? * https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/299580/5132 https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/299580/5132
    - gorbypark 8y ago
      Hmm, I can't remember exactly. It was either 5.9->6.0 or 6.0->6.1. I'm leaning towards the latter.
protomyth 8y ago
I use Vultr, and it works pretty well for a budget provider.
lelf 8y ago
KVM (not joking)
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  If I had colo space, why not just run OpenBSD on bare metal and optionally use vmm? I want this precisely because I'm not in a position to host stuff physically myself.
  - lelf 8y ago
    I mean (forgive my heresy) using kvm(-the-hypervisor) under GNU/Linux to run guest OpenBSD. That is at least a very fast way to get started, spin up €2 instance somewhere, qemu -cdrom openbsd.iso and that's it.
gigatexal 8y ago
You can upload a custom image to your digital ocean droplet.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
meruru 8y ago
Perhaps https://openbsd.amsterdam https://openbsd.amsterdam
platform 8y ago
https://openbsd.amsterdam/setup.html https://openbsd.amsterdam/setup.html this was posted here. I was intrigued but have not tried it (because my software relies on java 11, which is not on OpenBSD)
pimeys 8y ago
https://console.hetzner.cloud/ https://console.hetzner.cloud/ has OpenBSD 6.4. You must purchase a server with one of the four official Linux images first, then go server settings and from the iso images you can mount the OpenBSD install ISO and reboot. Use the server console to continue the installation.
- cyberpunk 8y ago
  As someone who was a heavy OVH user -- well, 100 or so dedicated servers -- and who just abandoned an attempt to migrate them to hetzner (who were slightly cheaper and offered NVME) -- let me suggest that you avoid Hetzner. They blocked several critial IPs of mine without any warning, their support had absolutely no idea what the problem was and refused to unblock my IPs until I could convince them I'd solved the "problem" (which was an extra mac address appearing on one of my router addresses -- not an actual problem) and cost my business about 10k in the process. The email chain was... painful. I've never had such a bad experience with a host before. YMMV of course, but I'm back on OVH and life is easy again...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
snvzz 8y ago
Any of this should work. https://ramnode.com/vps.php https://ramnode.com/vps.php (kvm) https://www.vultr.com/pricing/ https://www.vultr.com/pricing/ https://www.exoscale.com/compute/ https://www.exoscale.com/compute/ https://openbsd.amsterdam/ https://openbsd.amsterdam/ https://buyvm.net/kvm-dedicated-server-slices https://buyvm.net/kvm-dedicated-server-slices
vbezhenar 8y ago
You can install any Linux distro e.g. Centos with grub, copy OpenBSD install image to /boot and start it with grub. From now on you can just install it reformatting disk. You don’t need any particular support, standard KVM should be enough. Here’s guide I used recently and it worked just fine: https://archive.org/details/hpr2181 https://archive.org/details/hpr2181

platform 8y ago

Depends on the software requirements you have, and perhaps on the network throughput you need. For example java 11 is not, yet, a native option in any of the BSDs (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, DF Bsd).

jbverschoor 8y ago
This is the reason I switched from FreeBSD to Debian about 20 years ago. Sad that it's still not an option.
- platform 8y ago
  java is definetely an option on all of the BSDs I mentioned. It just they did not have Java 11 ported to them yet. But now since OpenJDK 11 is ported to FreeBSD, others, will follow. Sorry if my comment was not clear.
wolrah 8y ago
IMO not having Java should be considered a positive. Java is wonderful in theory, but in practice it's likely been one of the most common recurring headaches in my IT management career. For a platform where one of the key marketing points has always been "write once, run anywhere" it sure is apparently not only easy but seemingly encouraged to write software that only runs on a specific version of the JVM, often with key security features disabled. Either Java itself sucks or Java encourages its developers to suck. I'm not sure which. Obviously not all Java applications nor all Java developers suck, but there is a larger than normal amount of suckage in the Java universe.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  > "Either Java itself sucks or Java encourages its developers to suck. I'm not sure which." Neither. Java makes it easy for developers that suck to contribute. (The subtle difference here being that it won't make a good developer lose his competency.) Incidentally this is why companies love java so much. Hiring a java developer straight out of college is much easier than hiring a C++ developer straight out of college. Arguably in the last few years Java's niche has been encroached on by other accessible languages with mild learning curves (golang, javascript/node, etc) but for years Java was the obvious choice if you wanted to hire cheap developers that could at the bare minimum fullfil the design requirements.

ekovarski 8y ago

You should run what you are familiar with as security is an ongoing process of updating, applying patches, so familiarity will make these chores easier.

ip26 8y ago

OpenBSD is great for a VPS, especially a small one. The minimal install has an incredibly short list of packages, which I like & feel helps keep everything working even over many years of following updates. It's just so much simpler than most Linux distros. But, familiarity or lack thereof can be very important- it's amazing how much is different about BSD, when we are used to thinking of it as a close cousin to Linux.