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Note that KVM has no trouble hosting FreeBSD as a guest OS. You can also vote on this suggestion on the DigitalOcean website: https://digitalocean.uservoice.co

Note that KVM has no trouble hosting FreeBSD as a guest OS. You can also vote on this suggestion on the DigitalOcean website: https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocean/suggestions/3232571-support-bsd-os https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocea... I've had a lot of luck getting bleeding edge Arch linux kernels running on DigitalOcean using kexec to essentially turn the kernel DO gives you into a bootloader. It should theoretically be possible to get FreeBSD running in a similar manner, but it would obviously not be officially supported. If you're looking for other hosting providers, EC2 does have FreeBSD images available.

justincormack 12y ago
I was wondering about a kexec boot loader for BSD. Never seen one, was wondering exactly what state the hardware is left in.
- paulfurtado 12y ago
  The hardware should theoretically be fine. kexec calls "shutdown" prior to executing the new kernel and some linux distros use kexec for fast reboots. Additionally, you can replace your /sbin/init with a shell script which calls kexec instead of actually calling init, which would probably avoid initializing some hardware altogether. It's actually possible to boot grub4dos via kexec, however it doesn't work out of the box in digital ocean. I'm not sure how to format code on HN so here's a proof-of-concept on pastebin: http://pastebin.com/5jcvG2N9 http://pastebin.com/5jcvG2N9 A kexec bootloader also exists, called petitboot, but I've never used it to boot anything other than linux, though scanning google, it looks like people may have used it to successfully boot FreeBSD on the PS3 or OpenWRT compatible routers. Petitboot can be found here: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/geoff/petitboot/petitboot.html https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/geoff/petitbo...

justincormack 12y ago

I was wondering about a kexec boot loader for BSD. Never seen one, was wondering exactly what state the hardware is left in.

paulfurtado 12y ago
The hardware should theoretically be fine. kexec calls "shutdown" prior to executing the new kernel and some linux distros use kexec for fast reboots. Additionally, you can replace your /sbin/init with a shell script which calls kexec instead of actually calling init, which would probably avoid initializing some hardware altogether. It's actually possible to boot grub4dos via kexec, however it doesn't work out of the box in digital ocean. I'm not sure how to format code on HN so here's a proof-of-concept on pastebin: http://pastebin.com/5jcvG2N9 http://pastebin.com/5jcvG2N9 A kexec bootloader also exists, called petitboot, but I've never used it to boot anything other than linux, though scanning google, it looks like people may have used it to successfully boot FreeBSD on the PS3 or OpenWRT compatible routers. Petitboot can be found here: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/geoff/petitboot/petitboot.html https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/geoff/petitbo...