
OpenBSD on Digital Ocean - jorgecastillo
http://www.tubsta.com/2015/04/openbsd-on-digital-ocean/
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walterbell
What is the technical blocker to installing OpenBSD without a FreeBSD shim,
e.g. is there incompatible code in the OpenBSD installer?

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TheDong
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
anything non-linux, so it's necessary to start from freebsd.

Edit: It looks like the kernel limitation has been lifted for some linux
instances too. See: [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-
upda...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-update-a-
digitalocean-server-s-kernel)

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

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justincormack
Has anyone got kexec to boot a non Linux kernel?

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api
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/](https://vultr.com/)

Just be sure you use miniroot58.fs -- OpenBSD 5.8 wasn't released when this
was written.

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aaron_m04
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.

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protomyth
"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.

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jlgaddis
Okay, I know someone here is trying this... success or failure?

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

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

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

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

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laumars
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).

