Just noticed that a VPS I bought on Friday to replace my InceptionHosting VPSes also has this weird CPU configuration that makes NetBSD crash (interestingly, it's based on Virtualizor)
Updated NetBSD-current and also added /usr/xsrc, the X Window System sources. After compiling and rebooting, X "just worked" with no configuration other than the built-in default, which displayed a small xterm, but here's a screenshot as displayed on the Linveo VNC viewer seen on my Chromebook:
By "built-in default" I mean just what's in /usr/xsrc -- without any of the numerous additional goodies from usr/pkgsrc/x11 and without any additional X configuration. /etc/X11 exists but has empty subdirectories. There is no .Xauthority and no .xinitrc in either /root or /home/tom.
So far, 22 GB disk space has been used. That includes all the sources and all the build objects.
linveo# df -h .
Filesystem Size Used Avail %Cap Mounted on
/dev/dk2 48G 22G 24G 47% /
linveo#
I would like to learn more, any recommendations? I have been Ubuntu my entire life after I found it just naturally easier to use compared to Centos.
I think all the Linux distributions are great! I think all three of the best known BSDs also are equally great!
For me, I occasionally find that some little thing or another doesn't quite work when I use one of the Linux distributions. But, when I use BSD, everything usually works. More important, if something doesn't work with BSD, they seem to fix it promptly.
OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and NetBSD all are slightly different from each other. Each one has its vaunted advantage, Open = security, Free = performance, and Net = runs everywhere. Under the hood, the way each BSD handles its sources a little differently. The communities are a little different too. Free is the biggest community, and, seems to me the most friendly. Open is a smaller commuity than Free, and, to me, seems intensely focussed. Net is the smallest community. Net attracts qualified developers who want to use BSD for commercial projects where the GPL can't be used. Net seems to me like low drama, quiet, and high quality.
For all the BSDs, maybe you might be interested in the UnitedBSD Forum.
I recommend that you try all three of the major BSDs. Invest a few weeks with each one. Read the sites, read the Wikipedia articles, check the mailing list archives, and take a look at the sources. Install each one. Have fun!
@huntercop I'd definitely start with FreeBSD. It is the easiest to get into in my opinion due to the size of the community and amount of good information available online. Once you have been able to get your feet wet a bit, you should definitely try them all out like @Not_Oles mentioned. He summarized the differences between the flavors pretty nicely above, so the selection depends on what your ultimate goals are. What comes to FreeBSD, the handbook is a good way to get in which you can find at https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/.
Good luck for your adventures and keep us posted with the progress of your journey!
If someone would like to donate yet another free bare metal Community server to run BSD VMs for LESbians, that might be, as far as I know, rare or even unique.
Yesterday i upgraded two of my recently acquired vps (I have nothing but a base configuration at the moment on these vps.) and my laptop (I had just installed 14.1 two days ago). i did not encounter any problems so far.
Today i upgraded my vps which runs tailscale and a jail with uptimekuma.
The only problem I had was with tailscale but I think it was not due to the upgrade, but to the typical problems with tailscale and the dns servers in resolv.conf.
i solved the problem by just stopping tailscale, adding a dns server in the resolv.conf (apart from the one tailscale uses) and starting tailscale again.
Instead of posting a new discussion I am going to ask here. So @Not_Oles has been kind enough to guide me into learning more about BSD. As part of this, I want to play around with it in a few environments and maybe even put a few production services on it. Don’t worry, I do AB releases so it’ll be safe with a failover.
I reached out to @crunchbits support and asked them to add the BSD distros and I got a super fast response, asking me for the ISOs. Another example of how awesome Crunchbits is.
So now I took to the internet and started to find the ISOs. I pulled the 3 pages below that I think are correct.
@huntercop said:
I am not sure about the checksums. I found the below but looking for guidance from the community here if my research is going to > the right place.
I don't usually bother with checksums as long as I download the ISOs from the main site.
For FreeBSD they are per release and for 14.2 you can find them here:
As @crunchbits appears to be using VirtFusion, another option could be to ask them to add my NetBSD template directly as an installation option to their VPS - this would have the benefit that (if everything works out correctly) it would automatically apply network configuration and SSH keys from VirtFusion (I believe the configuration template in VirtFusion would need to use vioif0 as the network interface name, as that's how it should appear in NetBSD). netbsd-10.0-v4.qcow2 (SHA256 5aa5ea80e182283adf32028082069fd104d1d4c61398f3528c2734dd44690ae3)
Okay, not having much experience with X, I took a quick look at the NetBSD wiki X page and put Section 9.6's example .xinitrc into my (root's) home directory. Haha, X again seemed to work, this time with CTWM. Please see the example .xinitrc and my screenshot below. Thanks Linveo!
# start some programs - a basic clock
xclock -geometry 50x50-1-1 &
# change the color of the "root window" ("desktop background")
xsetroot -solid bisque4 &
# spawn a terminal
uxterm -geometry 80x34-1+1 -bg OldLace &
exec ctwm -W # no '&' here
Hi @Crab! I'm curious about the reasons why you settled on Mate for your boxes. Want to share what else you tried and your reasons for choosing Mate? Thanks!
@linveo could you update the templates when you get some time (and I believe to NetBSD 9.4 template was still missing the configuration meta-data from VirtFusion - should just be the same as for the 10.0 image)
BTW, a coworker was just wondering whether big endian ARM was just a hypothetical architecture or something real. Well, it's properly supported by NetBSD 10.0 and works out of the box on a Raspberry Pi 3; it's even mentioned in the release notes:
Added support for booting the Raspberry Pi 0-3 in big endian mode.
@Not_Oles said:
Hi @Crab! I'm curious about the reasons why you settled on Mate for your boxes. Want to share what else you tried and your reasons for choosing Mate? Thanks!
I'm sure there's a lot of opinions on this matter. Naturally everybody knows GNOME3 which looks great and is very modern and all over the place. When it comes to systems more towards the Low End, it can be sluggish and takes quite a bit of resources. I have left KDE to the past for no real particular reason, but it is also modern and very customizable and a lot of folks still like it over GNOME.
When you look at the other end of the spectrum, you'll always find XFCE4 which is still very usable and super lightweight, so it'll work anywhere.
When you look at something in the middle, there are things like MATE and Cinnamon and of course bunch of others, so in the end the decision is very much personal. I like MATE since it has the GNOME feel which I like, but it is lighter since it is based on GNOME2. Works great and has been very stable for me. I use it mostly in localhost VNC which I tunnel over SSH.
Definitely give them a try and see how you like about them. Great thing with @linveo 's snapshots is that you can always give them a try and go back if you want to keep your system clean and clutter-free.
Today, I had a lot of fun trying x11vnc on my Linveo VPS running self-compiled NetBSD-current. Previously I was using VNC from the Linveo control panel -- which has a clear warning that the VNC connection might be insecure. To increase security, I set up VNC over an ssh tunnel to a remote X frame buffer running on the headless Linveo VPS.
On NetBSD-current I had to compile Xvfb and x11vnc out of pkgsrc. For extra fun, I also compiled Dillo 3.1.1.
I still need to try other window managers besides CTWM, and other browsers besides Dillo, but, for now, I think that I probably can VNC into Linveo securely.
Maybe it's time to try Wireshark too!
Below are notes and screenshots from today's VNC fun:
Here's a screenshot of the initial remote CTWM desktop:
Here's LES viewed in Dillo. We can see FrankZ's avatar!
I'm unsure why Remmina says it can't authenticate. Remmina did ask for and accept the correct password. Remmina also successfully refused to accept wrong passwords. Any hints about why Remmina says it can't authenticate?
One awesome feature of VNC is its steadfast refusal to work with copy and paste input. I just now saw
linveo# cd sysutils/spice-server/
linveo# ls
CVS DESCR Makefile PLIST buildlink3.mk distinfo patches
linveo# cat DESCR
SPICE is a remote display system built for virtual environments which
allows you to view a computing 'desktop' environment not only on the
machine where it is running, but from anywhere on the Internet and
from a wide variety of machine architectures.
linveo#
and my Chromebook has a Spice client! Maybe I should try Spice? Is there a better or a more simple way than Spice to get something like VNC, but with copy and paste? Thanks for any hints!
Thanks Linveo! Thanks also to cmeerw for the NetBSD 10 image that I upgraded to NetBSD-current!
Comments
Just noticed that a VPS I bought on Friday to replace my InceptionHosting VPSes also has this weird CPU configuration that makes NetBSD crash (interestingly, it's based on Virtualizor)
Updated NetBSD-current and also added
/usr/xsrc, the X Window System sources. After compiling and rebooting, X "just worked" with no configuration other than the built-in default, which displayed a small xterm, but here's a screenshot as displayed on the Linveo VNC viewer seen on my Chromebook:I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
By "built-in default" I mean just what's in
/usr/xsrc-- without any of the numerous additional goodies fromusr/pkgsrc/x11and without any additional X configuration./etc/X11exists but has empty subdirectories. There is no.Xauthorityand no.xinitrcin either/rootor/home/tom.So far, 22 GB disk space has been used. That includes all the sources and all the build objects.
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE Now Available
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
You beat me to it! I was thinking earlier today that it would be a perfect thing to make a post out of that, but dinner time got me distracted
I would like to learn more, any recommendations? I have been Ubuntu my entire life after I found it just naturally easier to use compared to Centos.
I know @FrankZ wanted to do something LES exclusive. Maybe we can do something around this - just ideas.
I think all the Linux distributions are great! I think all three of the best known BSDs also are equally great!
For me, I occasionally find that some little thing or another doesn't quite work when I use one of the Linux distributions. But, when I use BSD, everything usually works. More important, if something doesn't work with BSD, they seem to fix it promptly.
OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and NetBSD all are slightly different from each other. Each one has its vaunted advantage, Open = security, Free = performance, and Net = runs everywhere. Under the hood, the way each BSD handles its sources a little differently. The communities are a little different too. Free is the biggest community, and, seems to me the most friendly. Open is a smaller commuity than Free, and, to me, seems intensely focussed. Net is the smallest community. Net attracts qualified developers who want to use BSD for commercial projects where the GPL can't be used. Net seems to me like low drama, quiet, and high quality.
For FreeBSD, maybe take a look at some of this Netflix video: Why We Run FreeBSD current at Netflix – Drew Gallatin. That video explains why Netflix's 15% of total global internet traffic runs on FreeBSD current.
For all the BSDs, maybe you might be interested in the UnitedBSD Forum.
I recommend that you try all three of the major BSDs. Invest a few weeks with each one. Read the sites, read the Wikipedia articles, check the mailing list archives, and take a look at the sources. Install each one. Have fun!
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
I'm looking for a free bare metal server to share with the LES community. Like Crunchy.
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
@huntercop I'd definitely start with FreeBSD. It is the easiest to get into in my opinion due to the size of the community and amount of good information available online. Once you have been able to get your feet wet a bit, you should definitely try them all out like @Not_Oles mentioned. He summarized the differences between the flavors pretty nicely above, so the selection depends on what your ultimate goals are. What comes to FreeBSD, the handbook is a good way to get in which you can find at https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/.
Good luck for your adventures and keep us posted with the progress of your journey!
Thanks to @Hosteroid for donating a nice server which is running Debian 12.
Please see https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/8725/community-bare-metal-server for all the details.
If someone would like to donate yet another free bare metal Community server to run BSD VMs for LESbians, that might be, as far as I know, rare or even unique.
Thanks!
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
Yesterday i upgraded two of my recently acquired vps (I have nothing but a base configuration at the moment on these vps.) and my laptop (I had just installed 14.1 two days ago). i did not encounter any problems so far.
Today i upgraded my vps which runs tailscale and a jail with uptimekuma.
The only problem I had was with tailscale but I think it was not due to the upgrade, but to the typical problems with tailscale and the dns servers in resolv.conf.
i solved the problem by just stopping tailscale, adding a dns server in the resolv.conf (apart from the one tailscale uses) and starting tailscale again.
I also updated the jail, no problems so far.
Backend Ruby Dev and Linux user
Hey all,
Instead of posting a new discussion I am going to ask here. So @Not_Oles has been kind enough to guide me into learning more about BSD. As part of this, I want to play around with it in a few environments and maybe even put a few production services on it. Don’t worry, I do AB releases so it’ll be safe with a failover.
I reached out to @crunchbits support and asked them to add the BSD distros and I got a super fast response, asking me for the ISOs. Another example of how awesome Crunchbits is.
So now I took to the internet and started to find the ISOs. I pulled the 3 pages below that I think are correct.
FreeBSD - https://www.freebsd.org/where/
OpenBSD - https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html
NetBSD - https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-10.0/images/
I am not sure about the checksums. I found the below but looking for guidance from the community here if my research is going to the right place.
FreeBSD - https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/bsdinstall/
OpenBSD - https://www.openbsdhandbook.com/man/man1/cksum.1/
NetBSD - https://man.netbsd.org/cksum.1
@FrankCastle @Crab @cmeerw
I don't usually bother with checksums as long as I download the ISOs from the main site.
For FreeBSD they are per release and for 14.2 you can find them here:
https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.2R/announce/
I would usually use the boot.iso from https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-10.0/amd64/installation/cdrom/ (checksum is in SHA256 in the same directory) as it's smaller and would then download the installation packages from the Internet (instead of having them bundled in the ISO).
As @crunchbits appears to be using VirtFusion, another option could be to ask them to add my NetBSD template directly as an installation option to their VPS - this would have the benefit that (if everything works out correctly) it would automatically apply network configuration and SSH keys from VirtFusion (I believe the configuration template in VirtFusion would need to use
vioif0as the network interface name, as that's how it should appear in NetBSD). netbsd-10.0-v4.qcow2 (SHA256 5aa5ea80e182283adf32028082069fd104d1d4c61398f3528c2734dd44690ae3)Okay, not having much experience with X, I took a quick look at the NetBSD wiki X page and put Section 9.6's example .xinitrc into my (root's) home directory. Haha, X again seemed to work, this time with CTWM. Please see the example .xinitrc and my screenshot below. Thanks Linveo!
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
You can also try to get Mate compiled, it should look more modern and behave better. That's what I use in my boxes.
https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/meta-pkgs/mate/index.html
Hi @Crab! I'm curious about the reasons why you settled on Mate for your boxes. Want to share what else you tried and your reasons for choosing Mate? Thanks!
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
I have updated my NetBSD images to now use such an additional host route for the gateway instead of widening the subnet mask:
NetBSD 10.0 and NetBSD 9.4
@linveo could you update the templates when you get some time (and I believe to NetBSD 9.4 template was still missing the configuration meta-data from VirtFusion - should just be the same as for the 10.0 image)
BTW, a coworker was just wondering whether big endian ARM was just a hypothetical architecture or something real. Well, it's properly supported by NetBSD 10.0 and works out of the box on a Raspberry Pi 3; it's even mentioned in the release notes:
I'm sure there's a lot of opinions on this matter. Naturally everybody knows GNOME3 which looks great and is very modern and all over the place. When it comes to systems more towards the Low End, it can be sluggish and takes quite a bit of resources. I have left KDE to the past for no real particular reason, but it is also modern and very customizable and a lot of folks still like it over GNOME.
When you look at the other end of the spectrum, you'll always find XFCE4 which is still very usable and super lightweight, so it'll work anywhere.
When you look at something in the middle, there are things like MATE and Cinnamon and of course bunch of others, so in the end the decision is very much personal. I like MATE since it has the GNOME feel which I like, but it is lighter since it is based on GNOME2. Works great and has been very stable for me. I use it mostly in localhost VNC which I tunnel over SSH.
Definitely give them a try and see how you like about them. Great thing with @linveo 's snapshots is that you can always give them a try and go back if you want to keep your system clean and clutter-free.
On my desktops, I'm always torn between MATE and Cinnamon, though tend to use MATE on lower spec machines. Just passing on info.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away.
NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh)
Hello!
Today, I had a lot of fun trying x11vnc on my Linveo VPS running self-compiled NetBSD-current. Previously I was using VNC from the Linveo control panel -- which has a clear warning that the VNC connection might be insecure. To increase security, I set up VNC over an ssh tunnel to a remote X frame buffer running on the headless Linveo VPS.
On NetBSD-current I had to compile Xvfb and x11vnc out of pkgsrc. For extra fun, I also compiled Dillo 3.1.1.
I still need to try other window managers besides CTWM, and other browsers besides Dillo, but, for now, I think that I probably can VNC into Linveo securely.
Maybe it's time to try Wireshark too!
Below are notes and screenshots from today's VNC fun:
Reference
https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-x.html#chap-x-configuration
section 9.9
On Linveo:
Set
X11Forwarding yesin /etc/ssh/sshd_config;service sshd restartecho LESbianz > password
Xvfb :1 &
DISPLAY=:1 ctwm &
x11vnc -display :1 -localhost -passwdfile password &
Locally:
ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900 -p xxxxx [email protected]
remmina localhost:5900
Here's a screenshot of the initial remote CTWM desktop:
Here's LES viewed in Dillo. We can see FrankZ's avatar!
I'm unsure why Remmina says it can't authenticate. Remmina did ask for and accept the correct password. Remmina also successfully refused to accept wrong passwords. Any hints about why Remmina says it can't authenticate?
One awesome feature of VNC is its steadfast refusal to work with copy and paste input. I just now saw
and my Chromebook has a Spice client! Maybe I should try Spice? Is there a better or a more simple way than Spice to get something like VNC, but with copy and paste? Thanks for any hints!
Thanks Linveo!
Thanks also to cmeerw for the NetBSD 10 image that I upgraded to NetBSD-current! 
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!