What are remote install options on a cheap vps?
I got a cheap VPS without out-of-band access (only ssh or similar) and wanted to install OpenBSD on it. According to the archives yaifo would be an option in this case, but the last version seems to be a year old and doesn't compile for me (with 4.8-release). The yaifo mailing list seems discontinued aswell. Another idea would be to make a local install and dd it directly to the remote hardisk via a rescue system. Anyone ever tried this? Are there any other options i am not aware of?
Re: What are remote install options on a cheap vps?
On Tue, 7 Jun 2011 15:56:44 +0200 Benjamin Nadland wrote: I got a cheap VPS without out-of-band access (only ssh or similar) and wanted to install OpenBSD on it. According to the archives yaifo would be an option in this case, but the last version seems to be a year old and doesn't compile for me (with 4.8-release). The yaifo mailing list seems discontinued aswell. There is a 4.9 version of yaifo in cvs. The ramdisk kernel works but the .fs installer built but failed at boot for me, but you could give it a try on a test system, though I'm not sure that's even safe, the .fs seemed to work on my test system when using OpenBSDs dd but not debians dd and on my server it failed with OpenBSDs install cd too, weird!! The yaifo .rd kernel always worked. Another idea would be to make a local install and dd it directly to the remote hardisk via a rescue system. Yep, I hope you've got decent upload bandwidth though. Alternatively you could make a minimal install image with ssh, like yaifo, but a few more files for ssh etc. and then download the rest onto the server afterwards or add the yaifo.rd set to boot assuming the so far unexplained yaifo.fs problem doesn't hit, I don't see how it could but it is unexplained. You could also ask someone at the host to whack openbsd on and give you the pass so you can ssh in and boot yaifo.rd or build up the system via http from there.
Re: What are remote install options on a cheap vps?
On Tue, 7 Jun 2011 15:56:44 +0200, Benjamin Nadland wrote: I got a cheap VPS without out-of-band access (only ssh or similar) and wanted to install OpenBSD on it. You could save yourself the hassle and go with RootBSD. They advertise as a FreeBSD VPS provider but will put the latest OpenBSD release on anything they've got. They do SSH and VNC for console access. http://www.rootbsd.net/virtual-hosting/
Re: What are remote install options on a cheap vps?
On 06/07/2011 09:56 AM, Benjamin Nadland wrote: I got a cheap VPS without out-of-band access (only ssh or similar) and wanted to install OpenBSD on it. According to the archives yaifo would be an option in this case, but the last version seems to be a year old and doesn't compile for me (with 4.8-release). The yaifo mailing list seems discontinued aswell. Another idea would be to make a local install and dd it directly to the remote hardisk via a rescue system. Anyone ever tried this? Are there any other options i am not aware of? The general trick is get the first OpenBSD install in place. After that, you can do almost anything you want afterwards. It may be tricky, you may end up making a stupid error that causes you to lose the system, but in theory, you can do almost anything. :) So.. use yaifo with whatever version of OpenBSD you can, then update to 4.9 or -current. Or a binary overwrite of a very minimal system Or whatever. If you can get a 500M or 1G root partition with a kernel, baseXX.tgz and etcXX.tgz, you can build out the rest AFTER you have ssh access to the system. I'd suggest setting up a similar local system which you can practice with -- more similar, the better, but even just a computer will help a lot. Nick.
Re: What are remote install options on a cheap vps?
The general trick is get the first OpenBSD install in place. After that, you can do almost anything you want afterwards. It may be tricky, you may end up making a stupid error that causes you to lose the system, but in theory, you can do almost anything. :) So.. use yaifo with whatever version of OpenBSD you can, then update to 4.9 or -current. Or a binary overwrite of a very minimal system Or whatever. If you can get a 500M or 1G root partition with a kernel, baseXX.tgz and etcXX.tgz, you can build out the rest AFTER you have ssh access to the system. I'd suggest setting up a similar local system which you can practice with -- more similar, the better, but even just a computer will help a lot. I second Nick's suggestion. Initially, on this system only 4.7 release would install due to some NVIDIA USB 2.0 issues. Once I got 4.7 installed, I figured out the problem, and then upgraded to current. good luck
Re: What are remote install options on a cheap vps?
On Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:16:14 -0600 Mark Solocinski wrote: On Tue, 7 Jun 2011 15:56:44 +0200, Benjamin Nadland wrote: I got a cheap VPS without out-of-band access (only ssh or similar) and wanted to install OpenBSD on it. You could save yourself the hassle and go with RootBSD. They advertise as a FreeBSD VPS provider but will put the latest OpenBSD release on anything they've got. They do SSH and VNC for console access. http://www.rootbsd.net/virtual-hosting/ arpnetworks, corenetworks, are a lot cheaper, there's lots listed in the mailing list archives.
