Free LES Community Server from Hosteroid via MetalVPS!

babywhale · April 3

@Not_Oles said:
@cmeerw @babywhale

I didn't know that ssh sets locales! TIL:
chronos@penguin:~/servers/hosteroid$ cat -n /etc/ssh/ssh_config
  [ . . . ]
    51      SendEnv LANG LC_*
  [ . . . ]
chronos@penguin:~/servers/hosteroid$ 
When I log to hlcs as root in via ssh and run env, I can see LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8.

FWIW, on my local machine, LC_ALL isn't set, but I do have LANG=en_US.UTF-8.

LANG=en_US.UTF-8 also is set on hlcs.

I haven't yet made a user account for myself on hlcs. The idea is that hlcs is supposed to be for other LESbians.

Off topic, maybe. There was a short time, years ago, when I used to use the C locale. There was something that didn't work right otherwise, but, haha, I don't remember what that old problem was. I wonder whether, nowadays, I should be using C.utf-8.

Thanks @cmeerw! Thanks @babywhale! Thanks @Hosteroid!

yeah they were not there before but i was the one that added those lines i also got v6 working on the sever after using the manual option under network

cmeerw · April 13

Rebooted the server to apply the Linux image update to linux-image-6.1.0-33-amd64

youself64 · April 13

I just want this Free LES Community Server from MetalVPS for creating KVM VMs. my key is:

ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIG+Adsg9+0GvdvyBWMh+mrZ/shof+EmWvvZxr61H5n/i [email protected]

Not_Oles · April 13

Hello @youself64!

Please read the original post in this thread, especially the Rules and How To Apply, where it says:

When you post in this thread about what you want to do on the server, please also post in this thread or email @Not_Oles at the address on his profile: links to your website, to your source code repository, and to other online profiles. Please remember that, quoting from the Rules above, "@Not_Oles must know who and where you are." Some people send scans of government and university ID. Other people send other or additional things.

Thanks! Best wishes!

Tom

youself64 · April 13

@Not_Oles said:
Hello @youself64!

Please read the original post in this thread, especially the Rules and How To Apply, where it says:

When you post in this thread about what you want to do on the server, please also post in this thread or email @Not_Oles at the address on his profile: links to your website, to your source code repository, and to other online profiles. Please remember that, quoting from the Rules above, "@Not_Oles must know who and where you are." Some people send scans of government and university ID. Other people send other or additional things.

Thanks! Best wishes!

Tom

I followed this. here's following links:

My website: https://sites.google.com/view/youself64smainsite/home
My Source Code Repsoitory: https://github.com/youself64github/youself64-stuff
My Twitter Profile: https://x.com/youself64

Not_Oles · April 13

Hi @youself6!

I will keep trying to give you an account.

@youself64 said:

@Not_Oles said:
Hello @youself64!

Please read the original post in this thread, especially the Rules and How To Apply, where it says:

When you post in this thread about what you want to do on the server, please also post in this thread or email @Not_Oles at the address on his profile: links to your website, to your source code repository, and to other online profiles. Please remember that, quoting from the Rules above, "@Not_Oles must know who and where you are." Some people send scans of government and university ID. Other people send other or additional things.

Thanks! Best wishes!

Tom

I followed this. here's following links:

My website: https://sites.google.com/view/youself64smainsite/home

You website doesn't seem to show much information. In particular, it doesn't seem to show who and where you are.

My Source Code Repsoitory: https://github.com/youself64github/youself64-stuff

Your Github Repository doesn't seem to show much information. In particular, it doesn't seem to show who and where you are.

My Twitter Profile: https://x.com/youself64

Unfortunately I can't see many pages on Twitter and on LinkedIn because logins are required. I will update the OP to add this. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Best wishes!

Tom

cmeerw · April 14

@Not_Oles said: Unfortunately I can't see many pages on Twitter and on LinkedIn because logins are required.

https://nitter.poast.org/ usually works quite well for Twitter, e.g., https://nitter.poast.org/youself64

Not_Oles · April 14

@cmeerw said:

@Not_Oles said: Unfortunately I can't see many pages on Twitter and on LinkedIn because logins are required.

https://nitter.poast.org/ usually works quite well for Twitter, e.g., https://nitter.poast.org/youself64

Thanks @cmeerw!

@youself64 Thanks to @cmeerw I now can see on Nitter what looks like your Twitter/X page, including mention of "CollabVM Discord got banned for me. thats because of wintercarl unsafe user and death threats. ban appeal also rejected."

Nevertheless, I still am left wondering what is your real name and where is more context about what you have been doing.

I will keep trying to give you an account. Best wishes!

Tom

cmeerw · April 27

Another kernel update:

Linux hlcs.metalvps.com 6.1.0-34-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.135-1 (2025-04-25) x86_64 GNU/Linux

somik · April 28

@Not_Oles said:

@cmeerw said:

@Not_Oles said: Unfortunately I can't see many pages on Twitter and on LinkedIn because logins are required.

https://nitter.poast.org/ usually works quite well for Twitter, e.g., https://nitter.poast.org/youself64

Thanks @cmeerw!

@youself64 Thanks to @cmeerw I now can see on Nitter what looks like your Twitter/X page, including mention of "CollabVM Discord got banned for me. thats because of wintercarl unsafe user and death threats. ban appeal also rejected."

Nevertheless, I still am left wondering what is your real name and where is more context about what you have been doing.

I will keep trying to give you an account. Best wishes!

Tom

CurryLover69420, is that you? https://www.reddit.com/r/ksi/comments/141pjv4/jj_im_a_small_youtuber_who_posts_clips_please/

Origin of the photo:

Link: https://ie.pinterest.com/pin/751397519049980648/

Seems to be a edited & balded photo from/of KSI or JJ ?

Olajide Olayinka Williams "JJ" Olatunji, better known by his online alias KSI, is an English influencer, professional boxer, and musician.

cmeerw · April 28

Debian trixie is already in Soft Freeze and will go into Hard Freeze mid May. So we could start thinking about upgrading, maybe once Debian trixie is in Hard Freeze? @Not_Oles, @babywhale what do you think?

Not_Oles · April 28

@cmeerw @babywhale I had been thinking about asking whether we could run NetBSD or any other OS that might be fun for everyone. Of course I'm also delighted to continue with Debian. Staying as we are or upgrading soon to trixie or sid are all fine with me.

atdx · April 30

hi @Not_Oles , I'm a new member here, I want to find new activities, like playing with vps, not just playing around, but activities that might increase my knowledge about the linux system. I hope to get a free VPS from here.

After this I will send an Email according to the instructions.

Not_Oles · April 30

Hi @atdx!

Welcome to LES! Thanks for your request here, and for your email!

Perhaps because I wasn't logged in, Facebook didn't show me what you have (or previously had?) there.

I was able to see the other pages linked in your email, but nobody else here can see them, since the links were sent by email only to me. Is there a chance you might want to share all the links publicly here in this thread?

You know that my name is Tom Miller, right? May we please know your name?

Could you please tell us more exactly what you want to do on the server?

Thanks again! Thanks also to Hosteroid for our nice server!

Tom

cmeerw · May 11

@Not_Oles said:
@cmeerw @babywhale I had been thinking about asking whether we could run NetBSD or any other OS that might be fun for everyone. Of course I'm also delighted to continue with Debian. Staying as we are or upgrading soon to trixie or sid are all fine with me.

I'll then plan to do the upgrade to Debian trixie (likely) next weekend (mainly just to test the upgrade), unless anyone is opposed to that.

We can then still move to another OS a bit later.

noackhosting · May 11

how to get access ?

Not_Oles · May 11

@noackhosting said:
how to get access ?

Hi Mikael!

Thanks for your question!

From the OP:

@Not_Oles said:

How To Apply:

Please post in this thread. Please explain what you want to do on our server.

So, could you please explain what you want to do on our server?

Thanks to @Hosteroid for our lovely server!

Always best wishes and kindest regards,

Tom

cmeerw · May 17

Just updated to Debian 12.11, but will soon move the server to Debian trixie.

Not_Oles · May 17

Hi @cmeerw!

I saw that the Trixie RC 1 installer was made available yesterday.

So, yeah, please take all the time you want before Trixie and then with Trixie.

Thanks again for all your help with system administration and everything else! Thanks also to @Hosteroid!

Tom

Of course, this fine server continues to be available to the LES community. Please review the OP section on how to apply.

cmeerw · May 17

The server has been upgraded to Debian trixie now. @Not_Oles @babywhale

The upgrade went fairly well; initially, I thought it was almost boring, but then after rebooting, ssh took a long time (a few minutes) to become available again. So I did panic a bit and logged in view the IPMI console (only to then find out that SSH was finally up at that point). Turned out, the server had cloud-init installed, and that started causing issues (maybe because both cloud-init and a static network configuration in /etc/network/interfaces wanted to configure the network interfaces?). I am really not sure why cloud-init was installed, so I just removed it - unfortunately, that also seems to have removed the host's SSH keys (which got re-generated on the next boot).

Two more issues then surfaced:

the upgrade removed the /etc/sysctl.conf file (I guess the proper way would be to create individual files in /etc/sysctl.d instead now) - but that caused the bashvm-ipv6-accept-ra service to fail (as there now wasn't any /etc/sysctl.conf file). Looking at /etc/sysctl.conf.dpkg-bak: that was supposed to set net.ipv6.conf.enp1s0f1.accept_ra = 2. Well... /etc/network/interfaces was actually setting accept_ra 0 - so I guess the proper way to achieve that is to actually set accept_ra 2 in /etc/network/interfaces (which I have done now and removed the bashvm-ipv6-accept-ra service) @babywhale
another minor issue was that the console-setup service failed to start - that's really just cosmetic, but it turned out that /etc/default/keyboard for some reason contained XKBLAYOUT="GB" (maybe that somehow got set from by environment variables during the upgrade) - using XKBLAYOUT="gb" seems to have fixed that.

So we now have:

● hlcs
    State: running
    Units: 402 loaded (incl. loaded aliases)
     Jobs: 0 queued
   Failed: 0 units

and

Linux hlcs 6.12.27-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.12.27-1 (2025-05-06) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Not_Oles · May 17

@cmeerw Wow! Congrats!

babywhale · May 17

Thats very interesting about the systemd service, i had a look in the /etc/network/interfaces file and i didnt see anything that enables ra for the v6 configuration. i see that accept ra is present in the /etc/sysctl.conf file. If i remember correctly there was an issue with simply adding into the /etc/sysctl.conf file so i created a systemd service to apply ra on startup. im not sure what virtfusion will do with bashvm since i have not tested this before but it looks to be working fine @cmeerw

cmeerw · May 24

@Not_Oles said:
@cmeerw @babywhale I had been thinking about asking whether we could run NetBSD or any other OS that might be fun for everyone. Of course I'm also delighted to continue with Debian. Staying as we are or upgrading soon to trixie or sid are all fine with me.

I am now thinking of trying to install NetBSD in some of the remaining disk space, so we could dual-boot either Linux or NetBSD (I am kind of curious how the tilemaker stuff I was trying earlier would work on NetBSD compared to Linux).

If there are no objections (@Not_Oles, @babywhale ), I'd like to give it a try starting on Thursday, May 29 (hopefully, the Linux installation will remain intact, so we can switch back as needed, but no guarantees)

Not_Oles · May 24

@cmeerw Okay with me! You could delete / reformat / use the xfs partition that I made. If you have time, it would be great to post a little summary of what you did and how you did it. Thanks!

Not_Oles · May 24

@cmeerw @babywhale

Okay to install wtmpdb? I miss last(1)!

root@hlcs:~# date
Sat May 24 07:39:50 PM UTC 2025
root@hlcs:~# last | head
-bash: last: command not found
root@hlcs:~#

root@hlcs:~# apt search wtmpdb
libpam-wtmpdb/testing 0.73.0-3 amd64
  wtmp database PAM module

libwtmpdb-dev/testing 0.73.0-3 amd64
  libwtmpdb development files

libwtmpdb0/testing,now 0.73.0-3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
  wtmp database shared library

wtmpdb/testing 0.73.0-3 amd64
  utility to display login/logout/reboot information

root@hlcs:~#

root@lol ~ # zcat /usr/share/doc/util-linux/NEWS.Debian.gz
util-linux (2.40.1-2) unstable; urgency=medium

  * last(1) has been split off to the wtmpdb package.
    If you find last(1) useful, please install wtmpdb and accept the default
    PAM configuration changes from libpam-wtmpdb.
  * lastb(1) is removed. Please see syslog/journal for failed login attempts.

 -- Chris Hofstaedtler <[email protected]>  Wed, 29 May 2024 23:52:19 +0200
root@lol ~ #

cmeerw · May 24

@Not_Oles said:
@cmeerw @babywhale

Okay to install wtmpdb? I miss last(1)!

Sure. I was actually already wondering where it went.

Not_Oles · May 24

@cmeerw last(1) is back!

@Not_Oles said:

root@hlcs:~# date
Sat May 24 07:39:50 PM UTC 2025
root@hlcs:~# last | head
-bash: last: command not found
root@hlcs:~#

Now:

root@hlcs:~# apt-get install wtmpdb
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  libpam-wtmpdb
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libpam-wtmpdb wtmpdb
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 32.8 kB of archives.
After this operation, 123 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
Get:1 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian trixie/main amd64 libpam-wtmpdb amd64 0.73.0-3 [10.6 kB]
Get:2 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian trixie/main amd64 wtmpdb amd64 0.73.0-3 [22.2 kB]
Fetched 32.8 kB in 0s (234 kB/s)   
Selecting previously unselected package libpam-wtmpdb:amd64.
(Reading database ... 142420 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libpam-wtmpdb_0.73.0-3_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libpam-wtmpdb:amd64 (0.73.0-3) ...
Selecting previously unselected package wtmpdb.
Preparing to unpack .../wtmpdb_0.73.0-3_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking wtmpdb (0.73.0-3) ...
Setting up libpam-wtmpdb:amd64 (0.73.0-3) ...
Setting up wtmpdb (0.73.0-3) ...
Created symlink '/etc/systemd/system/default.target.wants/wtmpdb-update-boot.service' → '/usr/lib/systemd/system/wtmpdb-update-boot.service'.
wtmpdb-rotate.timer is a disabled or a static unit, not starting it.
Processing triggers for man-db (2.13.1-1) ...
root@hlcs:~# which last
/usr/bin/last
root@hlcs:~#

Fun fact: last(1) is now a symbolic link!

root@hlcs:~# file $(which last)
/usr/bin/last: symbolic link to wtmpdb
root@hlcs:~#

Back when this wtmpdb(1) change originally was introduced into sid, there didn't seem to be any symbolic link added. So one had to read the news about the updates to know to call wtmpdb(1) directly. For a while I made the symbolic link myself. Then the symbolic began appearing again, in sid.

Thanks to @Hosteroid for our lovely community server! It's free to use. Please check the How To Apply section of the OP.

Thanks to @cmeerw for great sysadmin work and to @babywhale for BashVM!

cmeerw · May 29

Tried installing NetBSD, but didn't really get that far.

Making some space available went according to plan:

resizing the physical volume: pvresize /dev/nvme0n1p5 --setphysicalvolumesize=500G (just use a conservative guess, so we don't have to get the exact numbers right)
creating new partitions for NetBSD and swap:

    Device           Boot      Start        End    Sectors   Size  Id Type
    /dev/nvme0n1p1   *          2048    2000895    1998848   976M  83 Linux
    /dev/nvme0n1p2           2002942 1075744765 1073741824   512G   5 Extended
    └─/dev/nvme0n1p5         2002944 1075744767 1073741824   512G  8e Linux LVM
    /dev/nvme0n1p3        1075744768 1918799871  843055104   402G  a9 NetBSD
>>  /dev/nvme0n1p4        1918799872 1953525167   34725296  16.6G  b8 BSDI swap

resizing the physical volume again so it uses all the space after repartitioning: pvresize /dev/nvme0n1p5
I then wrote the NetBSD root partition (from the NetBSD 10.1 image I created for VMs) into /dev/nvme0n1p3
that should be pretty much all that's needed, so just reboot into grub
and use chainloader (hd0,msdos3)+1 to now boot into the NetBSD partition
NetBSD boot loader is loading as expected and boots the NetBSD kernel
but that's where it doesn't work: NetBSD now asks for a root device (and it looks like it hasn't detected the disk at all)
worse yet, the keyboard doesn't work, so there is no way to do anything
so for now, rebooted again into Debian trixie

cmeerw · May 29

Managed to install FreeBSD now (via netboot.xyz)

But now back to Debian trixie.

Maybe I should also try OpenBSD, or probably NetBSD HEAD...

cmeerw · May 29

Tried booting a NetBSD HEAD kernel, but doesn't seem to make a difference compared to 10.1.

Replaced FreeBSD again with OpenBSD (installed 7.6 via netboot.xyz, and then upgraded to 7.7). But booted into Debian trixie again now.

Free LES Community Server from Hosteroid via MetalVPS!

Comments