I am interested in running OpenBSD on my linode (I am currently running Slackware). Ideally this will be the only operating system running on my Linode. However, OpenBSD is not offered as an automatic distro install, and I do not know how to go about installing my own distro on my Linode. Does anyone have experience with this? I would greatly appreciate any help you can offer on installing your own distro on a VPS.

I'm afraid that's not going to work.

Kernels effectively are programs that run directly on the host, so you'll never be allowed to run a kernel besides the ones that Linode provides.

Also, the whole service is based on User Mode Linux, which I believe precludes a non-Linux kernel. I'm not sure if Xen would allow BSD kernels, or if Linode would be interested in supporting them.

Xen supports NetBSD. However, even if Linode are interested in supporting multiple operating systems under Xen, I imagine they will want to finish testing Linux under Xen and roll it out before they take on another OS.

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/ Peter

I would love to have a BSD box on Linode. There are two main reasons:

* First, the BSD kernels seem to use resources in a better way than Linux. An old/small machine running FreeBSD does wonders!

* Second, the BSD kernels don't seem to have as many vulnerabilities and bugs as Linux. I have seen BSD boxes in production, serving dynamic pages in a large Internet company, running for more than 1.5 years without ever having to reboot! (And I have to reboot my Linux boxes every time something wrong is found in the kernel) You know... With FreeBSD and OpenBSD, for example, your hardware may fail before you need to fix a bug in your kernel (and I have actually seen that!)

More reasons here: http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD_why

What I don't like in the BSD's is software management system. I have been using Debian for several years, and moving away from its very organized and robust package management system would be a bit frustrating, I think.

So... Caker, any change of getting any of the BSD Debian ports on a Linode after the Xen+Linux is stable?

Debian GNU/NetBSD: http://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/
Debian GNU/kFreeBSD: http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/

The NetBSD port is in a very early stage and would probably not work -- but the kFreeBSD one seems to be a nice idea!

It's a definite possibility, once Xen is stable. The other thing holding us back is that there aren't any (good) ways to manage *BSD filesystems under Linux, and vice-versa, at least the last time I looked.

-Chris

Even ext2?

BTW, what filesystem is in the Xen host? If the host already has journalling, then I suppose that the nodes themselves wouldn't need it... But this seems to be tricky, so I'm not sure.

Anyway... Now that I think of it, would the stability argument still make sense if the BSD kernel would run in a Xen machine that also runs other kernels?