@Crab said: Now more interesting question would be that how small you can actually make them both while still maintaining the features you really need. That will require quite a bit of trial and error with the kernel compilation parameters but could be a fun exercise.
This is what I done for the Toshiba Click Mini but is much simpler when you target just one platform. (I can never understand why Wi-Fi drivers/modules are included in server builds.)
Than=compare;then=sequence:brought=bring;bought=buy:staffs=pile of sticks:informations/infos=no plural. It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away. || NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh).
@Crab said: Now more interesting question would be that how small you can actually make them both while still maintaining the features you really need. That will require quite a bit of trial and error with the kernel compilation parameters but could be a fun exercise.
This is what I done for the Toshiba Click Mini but is much simpler when you target just one platform. (I can never understand why Wi-Fi drivers/modules are included in server builds.)
They weren't always. You used to get a basic kernel with hardware support and had to create your own config and build from there. WiFi really messed things up because hardware now isn't expected to have ethernet (or a cheap USB NIC for installation). It's possible to pare down kernels pretty extreme. I built a very base QEMU VirtIO only kernel that ran on a 64MB VPS with nearly 48MB free with full networking, thttpd and dropbear sshd. It wasn't great for much, but it did give me a place to build a compatible script for Hetrix before Virmach's monitor went insane and kept shutting it down after I got sick of fighting it and literally overwrote the entire 4GB of storage with NOPs so it'd chew through all of that before it died. Still had to beg them to remove it because I got sick of the incessant messages.
ftp on NetBSD finally gets sane defaults, showing huge improvements in file transfer speeds:
322734471 bytes retrieved in 00:14 (21.49 MiB/s)
vs. 322734471 bytes retrieved in 03:28 (1.47 MiB/s)
see PR #59865 for all the details - basically, I was wondering why sysupgrade was always so slow downloading new sets, and it turned out that ftp disabled auto-sizing of the receive socket buffer (limiting the TCP receive window size).
Improvements rolling in as shown by today's CVS output of my Linveo NetBSD-current VPS :
[ . . . ]
P usr.bin/ftp/cmds.c
P usr.bin/ftp/fetch.c
P usr.bin/ftp/ftp.1
P usr.bin/ftp/ftp.c
P usr.bin/ftp/ftp_var.h
P usr.bin/ftp/main.c
P usr.bin/ftp/util.c
P usr.bin/ftp/version.h
[ . . . ]
Thanks for the template! I have added this to our available templates as NetBSD 11 RC1 Minimum. Please give it a try and let me know how well it works.
Slow Servers IPv6-native VPSs hosted on OpenBSD's VMM in Spokane, WA, USA. (I racked these.) SporeStack Resold Vultr VPS/baremetal, DigitalOcean, and a whitelabeled brand in Europe. KYC-free, simple to launch. (I didn't rack these.)
Neither are dirt cheap!
Thanks for the template! I have added this to our available templates as NetBSD 11 RC1 Minimum. Please give it a try and let me know how well it works.
I'm curious . . . may I please ask why you switched from Free to Open?
Best wishes!
Tom
Hi Tom,
Thank you!
I like FreeBSD a lot. I took FreeBSD kernel internals from McKusick, himself!
FreeBSD has some weird memory management issues with Firefox. It will tend to climb and and climb from one tab to another. It did that to me for several releases.
One of the last releases I used, my laptop wouldn't boot with 8GB of memory. I think I could override it down to 4GB (though if installing physical dims, would only boot with 2GB), but then Firefox was practically unusable. It would boot with 8GB if I disabled SMP, but disabling SMP introduced even more serious bugs. I never saw any progress on fixing these bugs and wasn't really sure where to begin, myself.
It just ended up not being possible to use it as a daily driver, so I tried OpenBSD and haven't looked back (too often.)
OpenBSD is definitely a bit weird in some ways, but I think it's a better overall package. For desktop use, far better. For server use, it has a nice collection of utilities and security models that mold together very nicely. OpenBSD handles Firefox much better as well.
OpenBSD seems to be developed by more people who use it as a daily driver than FreeBSD. I do think ZFS and bhyve are very impressive, though.
I wish it was developed with git, but overall I'm glad I switched.
Slow Servers IPv6-native VPSs hosted on OpenBSD's VMM in Spokane, WA, USA. (I racked these.) SporeStack Resold Vultr VPS/baremetal, DigitalOcean, and a whitelabeled brand in Europe. KYC-free, simple to launch. (I didn't rack these.)
Neither are dirt cheap!
Next I got the NetBSD-current userland and kernel source code with CVS, patched /usr/src/sys/arch/x86/x86/cpu_topology.c as per @cmeerw's PR58693, built everything, installed the kernel, and rebooted.
The VPS came back up again, seemingly fine! Next up is to install the userland, check for any post install issues, and run etcupdate. We will see what happens next. . . .
The tech-kern email conversation linked in PR58693 is interesting! Haha, I have a lot more studying to do! But, apparently it might not be fully clear about the fundamental cause of the boot issue or which of two possible fixes should be applied.
Thanks to @cmeerw for incredible work isolating the issue and finding a fix! Thanks to @linveo for making @cmeerw's images available and for a great Intel VPS at only $2.85/month.
@cmeerw said:
Not sure where exactly it's stuck there, but it's likely something in VirtFusion still. Maybe you could have just retried?
Just to make sure I did a quick test with my VPS, and it's working as expected. I don't think it's the Intel issue at this point, as that would only affect the NetBSD boot after installation has finished.
Comments
This is what I done for the Toshiba Click Mini but is much simpler when you target just one platform. (I can never understand why Wi-Fi drivers/modules are included in server builds.)
Than=compare;then=sequence:brought=bring;bought=buy:staffs=pile of sticks:informations/infos=no plural.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away. || NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh).
They weren't always. You used to get a basic kernel with hardware support and had to create your own config and build from there. WiFi really messed things up because hardware now isn't expected to have ethernet (or a cheap USB NIC for installation). It's possible to pare down kernels pretty extreme. I built a very base QEMU VirtIO only kernel that ran on a 64MB VPS with nearly 48MB free with full networking, thttpd and dropbear sshd. It wasn't great for much, but it did give me a place to build a compatible script for Hetrix before Virmach's monitor went insane and kept shutting it down after I got sick of fighting it and literally overwrote the entire 4GB of storage with NOPs so it'd chew through all of that before it died. Still had to beg them to remove it because I got sick of the incessant messages.
My pronouns are like/subscribe.
ftpon NetBSD finally gets sane defaults, showing huge improvements in file transfer speeds:322734471 bytes retrieved in 00:14 (21.49 MiB/s)vs.
322734471 bytes retrieved in 03:28 (1.47 MiB/s)see PR #59865 for all the details - basically, I was wondering why
sysupgradewas always so slow downloading new sets, and it turned out thatftpdisabled auto-sizing of the receive socket buffer (limiting the TCP receive window size).@cmeerw Another congrats!
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
And talking about NetBSD, we now have an RC1 for NetBSD 11
@linveo I have now built an image for NetBSD 11.0 RC1
@cmeerw
My Linveo NetBSD-current VPS is now rebuilding with patches fixing the ftp bug you found!
From https://gnats.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=59865 :
Improvements rolling in as shown by today's CVS output of my Linveo NetBSD-current VPS :
Thanks @linveo!
Thanks @cmeerw! 
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
@cmeerw Excellent job! Do you know whether the Intel bug you fixed is finally mainlined into v11?
I am afraid there are no updates here - probably no one else has seen that.
Thanks for the template! I have added this to our available templates as NetBSD 11 RC1 Minimum. Please give it a try and let me know how well it works.
linveo.com | Shared Hosting | KVM VPS | Dedicated Servers
My daily driver is OpenBSD. I was using FreeBSD for a number of years before that.
I host VPSs under OpenBSD's VMM. Currently only offering OpenBSD 7.8 and Debian 13.
I haven't tested FreeBSD or NetBSD yet to see how easy it would be to support them.
Slow Servers IPv6-native VPSs hosted on OpenBSD's VMM in Spokane, WA, USA. (I racked these.)
SporeStack Resold Vultr VPS/baremetal, DigitalOcean, and a whitelabeled brand in Europe. KYC-free, simple to launch. (I didn't rack these.)
Neither are dirt cheap!
Hi @slowservers!
Welcome to LES!
I'm curious . . . may I please ask why you switched from Free to Open?
Best wishes!
Tom
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
Thanks, worked absolutely fine.
Hi Tom,
Thank you!
I like FreeBSD a lot. I took FreeBSD kernel internals from McKusick, himself!
FreeBSD has some weird memory management issues with Firefox. It will tend to climb and and climb from one tab to another. It did that to me for several releases.
One of the last releases I used, my laptop wouldn't boot with 8GB of memory. I think I could override it down to 4GB (though if installing physical dims, would only boot with 2GB), but then Firefox was practically unusable. It would boot with 8GB if I disabled SMP, but disabling SMP introduced even more serious bugs. I never saw any progress on fixing these bugs and wasn't really sure where to begin, myself.
It just ended up not being possible to use it as a daily driver, so I tried OpenBSD and haven't looked back (too often.)
OpenBSD is definitely a bit weird in some ways, but I think it's a better overall package. For desktop use, far better. For server use, it has a nice collection of utilities and security models that mold together very nicely. OpenBSD handles Firefox much better as well.
OpenBSD seems to be developed by more people who use it as a daily driver than FreeBSD. I do think ZFS and bhyve are very impressive, though.
I wish it was developed with git, but overall I'm glad I switched.
-Slow Servers
Slow Servers IPv6-native VPSs hosted on OpenBSD's VMM in Spokane, WA, USA. (I racked these.)
SporeStack Resold Vultr VPS/baremetal, DigitalOcean, and a whitelabeled brand in Europe. KYC-free, simple to launch. (I didn't rack these.)
Neither are dirt cheap!
@slowservers Thanks for the detailed reply! Now I know why you switched! 🤠
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
Hello!
I bought a nifty Linveo Intel Xeon Gold VPS to compare with my nifty Linveo Ryzen VPS!
I tried reinstalling from Debian 13 to the NetBSD 11 RC1 Minimum image. The install process stuck for 30 minutes.
Happily, @cmeerw's NetBSD 10.1 Minimal for Intel (PR58693) booted just fine.
I grabbed the compiler via ftp by following @cmeerw's previous instructions.
Next I got the NetBSD-current userland and kernel source code with CVS, patched /usr/src/sys/arch/x86/x86/cpu_topology.c as per @cmeerw's PR58693, built everything, installed the kernel, and rebooted.
The VPS came back up again, seemingly fine! Next up is to install the userland, check for any post install issues, and run etcupdate. We will see what happens next. . . .
The tech-kern email conversation linked in PR58693 is interesting! Haha, I have a lot more studying to do! But, apparently it might not be fully clear about the fundamental cause of the boot issue or which of two possible fixes should be applied.
Thanks to @cmeerw for incredible work isolating the issue and finding a fix!
Thanks to @linveo for making @cmeerw's images available and for a great Intel VPS at only $2.85/month. 
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
Might have managed to get through postinstall checks and etcupdate plus another reboot.
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
Not sure where exactly it's stuck there, but it's likely something in VirtFusion still. Maybe you could have just retried?
Just to make sure I did a quick test with my VPS, and it's working as expected. I don't think it's the Intel issue at this point, as that would only affect the NetBSD boot after installation has finished.
NetBSD 11.0 RC2 has appeared, so there is now a NetBSD 11.0 RC2 image @linveo
Jails for NetBSD looks like a really interesting project - something I'll likely have a closer look at soon.