# FreeBSD Hosting/Shared/VPS etc.



## nocentis (Dec 22, 2009)

*What is good and cheap VPS - FreeBSD?*

Looking for servers FreeBSD VPS with the price to $ 15 per month, what do you recommend?


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## vivek (Dec 22, 2009)

I'm not sure about prices (most start with $20 to $30 for basic package). I've used johncompanies in the past and they are really good. 
http://www.johncompanies.com/jc_bsd.html
http://www.rootbsd.net/


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## aragon (Dec 22, 2009)

http://www.joinvps.com


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## Nightweaver (Dec 22, 2009)

I've been using http://www.johncompanies.com for a couple of years now. They are really good and not expensive at all.


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## NQhost (Aug 19, 2010)

Hello,
Also please check our website: FreeBSD VPS.

In additional to "normal" tariffs FreeBSD can be installed at Low Cost VPS packages.


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## nbari (Dec 15, 2010)

*4 good providers*

I have been searching and test lot of providers that support FreeBSD, so far I can only recommend 4 of them:

the 3 of them offer access to a terminal via VNC so you can reinstall the OS if you want 

1: http://arpnetworks.com/   more for advancer users (extreme slow email support) on this I installed a VPS with zfs
2. yisp.nl currently running a shell server with them (sign.io) [ no FreeBSD - Mod. ]
3. http://www.xensmart.co.uk/hvmplans.php after paying you get all running perfect including the VNC access.
4. http://www.vpsfarm.com/ you pay for what you use. 

I couldn't test http://nqhost.com/  I wrote to this guys and telling  them that I wanted to host  sign.io inside a jail, but they were scared knowing that ssh was going to be open and didn't want me to host with them.

There are many other providers, but unfortunately are more interested on making quick money overselling the services that really providing a good solution.


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## Markort (Dec 21, 2010)

http://joinvps.com
VPS-3


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## madonal (Dec 30, 2010)

www.ixwebhosting.com .. good, cheap, reliable!

[ no FreeBSD - Mod. ]


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## SirDice (Dec 30, 2010)

Was looking for something myself and found http://www.tilaa.nl/

No idea how good they are but it looks quite cheap.


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## nekoexmachina (Jan 13, 2011)

**BSD hosting service*

Hello, forum!
Im looking now for maximum-stable and high-availability hosting, based preferably on OpenBSD.
Any suggestions or opinions?

As for me, http://bsdvm.com; http://arpnetworks.com and http://www.rootbsd.net look very interesting. has anyone used them?


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## gordon@ (Jan 13, 2011)

I have a rootbsd host. It works quite nicely. They are supportive of the community as well. I don't know about the other 2.


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## gkontos (Jan 13, 2011)

I use rootbsd VPS for a year now. I am very satisfied with the service.


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## z3R0 (Feb 1, 2011)

Hi,

I'm looking for a good FreeBSD web host. What do you guys recommend?

SSH access and ability to install ports a plus.

Thanks,

z3r0


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## gordon@ (Feb 1, 2011)

I've used a rootbsd.net VPS for over a year now. It's quite stable and I've been happy with it. The company also supports the FreeBSD community.


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## SirDice (Feb 2, 2011)

Thread 20911
Thread 9640


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## DutchDaemon (Feb 2, 2011)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Thread 20911
> Thread 9640



Merged all of them together ... & Stickyfied.


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## mzmzmz (Feb 5, 2011)

*any feedback for this*

anyone has feedback for this vps providers?
http://nqhost.com
http://www.tilaa.nl

Thanks in advance.


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## osman (Feb 6, 2011)

Mostly they provide FreeBSD jail as VPS or anyone offering XEN based?

And anybody knows if openvpn can be installed in jail based FreeBSD VPS? like the openvz has issue with tun/tap and iptables.

I will need a VPS to install openvpn and will need to do NAT.


Regards
usman


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## gordon@ (Feb 7, 2011)

osman said:
			
		

> Mostly they provide FreeBSD jail as VPS or anyone offering XEN based?
> 
> And anybody knows if openvpn can be installed in jail based FreeBSD VPS? like the openvz has issue with tun/tap and iptables.
> 
> ...



RootBSD is a Xen solution.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 7, 2011)

ixwebhosting and yisp do not offer FreeBSD.

[adjusted - Mod.]


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## z3R0 (Feb 7, 2011)

I'm definitely looking at rootBSD though I'm looking to bring the $20 monthly down.



			
				gordon@ said:
			
		

> I've used a rootbsd.net VPS for over a year now. It's quite stable and I've been happy with it. The company also supports the FreeBSD community.



Does anyone recommend Sheer Hosting? http://www.sheerwebhost.com/freebsd.htm

Thanks!


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## vivek (Apr 26, 2011)

FreeBSD vps with ipv6 - http://www.verio.com/web-hosting/freebsd-vps/ 
Yahoo webhosting with shared hosting ftp+php+perl+mysql only but no root or shell access - http://business.yahoo.com/webhosting/details (they don't say FreeBSD but I've talked with their support and they confirmed it FreeBSD 4.x UNIX)


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## roddierod (Apr 26, 2011)

I've been using these guys for my personal stuff for the last 2 years:

http://www.pairlite.com/

FreeBSD 7.x
      ssh access
      ftp uploads
      5 MySQL dbs, PHP, Python, Perl
      50GB per month

They are owned by http://www.pair.com/ who offer VPN, Co-Location, etc. Also running FreeBSD.


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## fwaggle (Apr 26, 2011)

Thought I'd chime in:

ARP Networks are pretty good - server is solid in terms of crashing, but their network drops every so often (I have nagios on it that frequently complains about five hosts in five DCs simultaneously, so I'm guessing it's their network) and while the support can be less-than-instant I've never been tearing my hair out waiting for them. Oh, they have native IPv6 too, if that's your thing.

I'm also running FreeBSD 8.2 on a Linode, and it's been fantastic. No v6, but it's been pretty solid under low-load. I'm about to fire up another one and flog it, to see if it barfs chunks or not... cperciva@ (and I'm guessing some others?) has done a ton of work on Xen-PV stuff for AWS, which Linode has benefited from significantly.

Both start at $20/mo for pretty reasonable quotas.

Oh, since I mentioned it, AWS' free tier isn't too bad, depending on what you want to do with it. The I/O quota is pretty low (I hit it enough to get charged 1~3c each month, which they then cancel because I'm guessing I'd be costing them money to collect it at that point), and IIRC there's been periods where performance is less than stellar but it can work out pretty cheap depending on what you actually want from it.


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## Carpetsmoker (Apr 29, 2011)

http://signet.nl
They offer quality business-oriented services.


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## abonk (May 7, 2011)

I tried FreeBSD with KVM (for my Plone site), so interesting .. . This provider is a newcomer http://pyramidserver.com/.. so far so good.


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## thuglife (Aug 8, 2011)

FreeBSD on rackspace.

Status just got updated:


> FreeBSD is coming soon.



Spead the word.


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## rainer_d (Aug 11, 2011)

*In Germany...*

I was renting a dedicated server from http://www.ip-exchange.de to run my FreeBSD server.
Recently (after 10 years), I switched to a KVM provided by http://www.hetzner.de (64bit, 2GB RAM, 160GB disk).
I save 75% on monthly charges.
The only downside is that for KVMs they don't offer IPV6 (yet).

They advertise FreeBSD as available OS, but the shopping-cart doesn't offer it as a choice.
Just choose the rescue system instead. It takes about 10-20 minutes after the purchase and the system is ready. You can then login to their control-panel, boot the FreeBSD rescue-system and run their automated installer which installs a fresh FreeBSD in 5 minutes.

Then, you can install ports etc.


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## Ben (Sep 11, 2011)

http://www.edis.at


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## cbrace (Sep 27, 2011)

*TransIP VPS hosting*

I see that this Dutch hosting company is now offering VPS with FreeBSD (v8.2), from â‚¬10/month: https://www.transip.nl/vps/prijzen-en-bestellen/. Perhaps of interest to people in the Netherlands and possibly elsewhere?


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## Carpetsmoker (Sep 27, 2011)

TransIP Doesn't just provide FreeBSD VPS, the entire company runs on FreeBSD


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## fefaya (Oct 5, 2011)

I use hostigation, kvm based.
$3/month for 128MB of RAM


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## gkontos (Oct 6, 2011)

rainer_d said:
			
		

> I was renting a dedicated server from http://www.ip-exchange.de to run my FreeBSD server.
> Recently (after 10 years), I switched to a KVM provided by http://www.hetzner.de (64bit, 2GB RAM, 160GB disk).
> I save 75% on monthly charges.
> The only downside is that for KVMs they don't offer IPV6 (yet).
> ...



Can this be real ???

http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-produktmatrix-ex/


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## gkontos (Oct 7, 2011)

gkontos said:
			
		

> Can this be real ???
> 
> http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-produktmatrix-ex/



Apparently not! 

It seems that they have a shortage on IPs (good luck trying to get some)
They also don't allow you to put you NIC in promiscuous mode.


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## may (Oct 31, 2011)

$35: http://tinykvm.com/

Good service, good support, good machines. Only been with them a few days thus far, trying to see how much web serving I can squeeze out of 128mb of RAM.


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## geodni (Nov 6, 2011)

There is http://www.online.net also known as "dedibox" in France starting at 14.99â‚¬/month, I used this service since 3 years whithout any problem Intel Core 2 Duo with 3GB of RAM and two 500GB of SATA2 hard drives geom mirrored under FreeBSD 7.2.


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## SirDice (Nov 25, 2011)

mzmzmz said:
			
		

> anyone has feedback for this vps providers?
> http://nqhost.com
> http://www.tilaa.nl


I can for Tilaa now. I just created one.

After creating an account you need to create a new VPS. This will take you to an order form where you can choose the size of VPS you want. Payment was easy using iDeal (Mastercard, Visa and American Express also accepted). Few minutes later things where set up. 

I thought the initial order would automatically start the installation of my operating system of choice (FreeBSD obviously :e) but this wasn't the case. After waiting about half an hour my VPS was still "queued". Turns out you need to create a new 'order' to start the installation. Ten minutes later I was able to login using the webbased serial console. 

The default install creates one large root filesystem but so far everything just works 'out of the box'.

Ordered on a friday night, half drunk. Yes, I give these guys the thumbs up :beergrin


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## Martillo1 (Dec 4, 2011)

Carpetsmoker said:
			
		

> TransIP Doesn't just provide FreeBSD VPS, the entire company runs on FreeBSD



Unfortunately for me, their web page is only in Dutch, no English at all. I have seen the list of supported OS and liked it.


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## may (Dec 10, 2011)

Via LowEndBox - FreeBSD & IPV6 only (jails): http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/vds6-1-95-128mb-freebsd-ipv6-only-vps-in-germany/


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## rblon (Dec 11, 2011)

I can recommend pcextreme.nl, they offer KVM-based VPS for 4 euro (excl VAT) per month.

I was wondering if someone knows a VPS host in the UK with similar pricing (only one I can find is Exonetric, but that is using Jails)?


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## JackOfAllTrades (Jan 7, 2012)

rainer_d said:
			
		

> I was renting a dedicated server from http://www.ip-exchange.de to run my FreeBSD server.
> Recently (after 10 years), I switched to a KVM provided by http://www.hetzner.de (64bit, 2GB RAM, 160GB disk).
> I save 75% on monthly charges.
> The only downside is that for KVMs they don't offer IPV6 (yet).
> ...



I recently bought the smallest package VQ 7 and I can recommend it. Simple setup.


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## rblon (Jan 14, 2012)

rblon said:
			
		

> I was wondering if someone knows a VPS host in the UK with similar pricing (only one I can find is Exonetric, but that is using Jails)?



Using now thehosthouse.co.uk. Seems to work all fine and can't beat the price: 3 pounds per month using a discount coupon that I found online.


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## sappi (Jan 22, 2012)

I'm currently buying FreeBSD Jails from http://vds6.net/
I started with their IPv6 only VDS offer you can't go wrong with - 0.95$/month and recently got their new IPv4&IPv6 VDS.
Not so many BSD hosts our there. Everybody's stuck with linux.


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## folivora (May 2, 2012)

I have used http://tilaa.nl. Pretty good stuff.


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## Jose (Jul 14, 2012)

*My Experience with NQhost*

I've had a server with rootbsd for some years now, and I'm reasonably happy with it.  I'm running out of disk space, and I was hoping to get one a little closer to home in California, so I decided to give NQhost a try. That was a mistake.

1. They claim to offer one extra IP address at a nominal charge. However, they will hassle you when you request one, and if you finally get one, it will be in a different subnet from your main IP. This can be a real pain to deal with, so be ready.

2. They don't offer breaks if you pay in advance, and there's no way to set up automatic payments. Be ready to log in to their site, credit card in hand each and every month. There's an option to pre-pay, but then you're essentially loaning them money for free.

3. If you're 10 days late with your payment, they will DELETE your server. That's right, not just suspend it like most other providers, but out-and-out delete it. Any data you might have had on it will be gone forever.


How professional is their support staff? See for yourself:


View Ticket #290426
Department 	Date 	Subject 	Status 	Urgency
VPS Support 	14/07/2012 20:04 	Please un-terminate my VPS 	Closed 	Medium

Jose Q
Client 	14/07/2012 20:04
I've paid my past due bill.

Thanks,
Jose Q.

----------------------------
IP Address:
Pavel A.
Staff 	14/07/2012 20:05
Hello,

It's not possible to restore the deleted server. If you want, we can create a new one for you.

--
Pavel A.

Jose Q
Client 	14/07/2012 20:09
I just want to make sure I understand this correctly.

1. I was 10 days late on my payment.
2. Because of 1, you have deleted my server with all the configuration I spent hours doing on it.

Is this an accurate account of the facts?

Thanks,
Jose Q.

Pavel A.
Staff 	14/07/2012 20:11
Your invoice has been generated 16/06/2012 04:14 (about month ago). We have sent 7 notifications and have no any feedback from you. Even after the suspension, you haven't contacted us.

This is your responsibility to manage the invoices and pay in time. We have no any reasons to keep the unpaid servers for months or years.

--
Pavel A.

Jose Q
Client 	14/07/2012 20:20
I understand that it is my reponsibility to pay my bill. However, you do not offer a price break if you pay several monts in advance like most other providers do, which is why I was paying month-to-month.

I'll take your non-responsive response to mean that yes, all my data and hours of hard work are gone.

I will no longer do business with you and plan to write the following about your service in as many review sites as I can find.

1. See above...

Sincerely,
Jose Q.

Pavel A.
Staff 	14/07/2012 20:24
I'm sorry, but this is your and only your fail. If you even have no backup of your 'important' data, I have nothing to say.

We provide discounts in case of quarterly, semi-annual or annual term - just ask us.
We provide automatically billing (recurring subscription) - just ask us.
We provide the due date move in case if you have any issues with the payment - just ask us.

As for now, you forgot to pay (but you have about one month to pay) and have no even contacted us.

--
Pavel A.

Pavel A.
Staff 	14/07/2012 20:30
Also it's so basely, meanly, despicably to speak about the 'review writing'... I'd recommend to write also everywhere for example that the gas stations don't provide the gas for your car for free - this is unacceptable!!! also, that McDonalds doesn't provide the food for free - unbelievable!

We are not a charitable company.

--
Pavel A.


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## FIlIPy65 (Jul 18, 2012)

sappi said:
			
		

> I'm currently buying FreeBSD Jails from http://vds6.net/
> I started with their IPv6 only VDS offer you can't go wrong with - 0.95$/month and recently got their new IPv4&IPv6 VDS.
> Not so many BSD hosts our there. Everybody's stuck with linux.



I have looking on it...
Can you (or anyone that bought) tell about?

Sounds very interesting. =)


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## paulfrottawa (Jul 23, 2012)

http://smart-serv.net/?page=services#

France VPS Hosting / Unmanaged

USA VPS Hosting / Unmanaged


Available OS's / Distributions:
      Gentoo
      CentOS
      Ubuntu
      Debian

      FreeBSD
      NetBSD
_____________________________-
my favorite for prices.


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## mwatkins (Jul 23, 2012)

I've been a customer of http://www.arpnetworks.com/ since December 2009. I use it for secondary DNS, backup email, and backing up apps and data running on other real servers I own. I've not hosted any big apps on it but have a few long running apps on this VPS just the same. Over the years there has been very little downtime. 

Arp provides you with two, no three, different types of out of band access - a serial console over ssh; VNC, and tunneled VNC.  They aren't the cheapest nor the most expensive. LA based.

I obtained an account back when Gary was still ironing out some SMP kinks in the system and was impressed with his dedication to getting it right. Arp targets their offering to those who know what they are doing rather than the BSD/Linux newbie.


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## ddaley (Aug 15, 2012)

*FreeBSD available at Rackspace.*



			
				thuglife said:
			
		

> FreeBSD on rackspace.
> 
> Status just got updated:
> 
> ...



FreeBSD is now available at Rackspace.  Just spun up a FreeBSD VM.  Haven't seen any announcement about it yet, but it is there!


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## manas (Aug 24, 2012)

I have a virtual machine hosted by Host Virtual. FreeBSD is supported. Good uptime, good support. A number of data centers to choose from around the world.

http://www.vr.org/

http://www.vr.org/os/bsd-hosting/freebsd-vps


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## okeeblow (Aug 25, 2012)

I host my blog/email/xmpp/quake3 on a 1024MiB Prgmr Xen VPS running FreeBSD 9.0. The installation is sort of a huge pain, but their prices are great and #prgmr on Freenode is just a /join away. There's an installation guide available over here.


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## AlexJ (Oct 3, 2012)

http://www.ramhost.us/?page=virtual-dedicated-server


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## johnsmith123 (Oct 4, 2012)

*john Smith*

I thinks go4hosting is a platform for finding affordable dedicated server.


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## cbrace (Oct 4, 2012)

I am pretty happy now with my VPS at tilaa.nl, but I ran into a really bizarre problem with the clock freezing, which I detailed here. Upgrading to two CPUs seem to have fixed it (as Tilaa support suggested), at the cost of a few more euri per month (No longer a Low End Box). Still wondering though whether anyone else has seen this problem with single-core FreeBSD VPSs.


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## bigearsbilly (Oct 17, 2012)

*UK Virtual hosting advice requested*

This isn't a FreeBSD particular question but there may be some expertise here and I would
appreciate any advice.

I need to move my company's infrastructure, in London, out of the building in a few months.
We have quite a few servers, 20-30, linux, FreeBSD and Bill Gates, I was thinking of
virtual/cloud type stuff rather than dedicated hosted servers.
We need to minimise man hours but obviously we can consolidate some of our services.

I am currently looking at UKFast and Elastichosts.
Does anyone have any experience/advice in this field?
Any recommendations for suppliers?


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## bigearsbilly (Oct 18, 2012)

I plumped for elastichosts.
You can install any PC operating system at all, they have a selection of pre-installed linux and DOS out of the box drives but they have a FreeBSD install DVD you can step through. You can even upload your own ISO boot image. 
They are a very good price too, no upfront contract.
You can configure everything through a web interface, disks, RAM, CPU.


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## abefar (Oct 18, 2012)

If you're located in Europe, I can only vouch for Hetzner, and especially their server bidding if you're looking for a dedicated server. They also have some nice features, e.g. vKVM (enabling you to remote control your server from early boot, allowing single user mode etc.) and a mfsBSD based rescue system via PXE.
I pay â‚¬35 (~$45) a month for an Athlon64 X2 6000+ (2x3GHz) with 8GB RAM, 100/100 mbit with 5TB traffic and two 750GB SATA 7200rpm drives, on which I run FreeBSD 9.1 with ZFS.

For VPS hosting, I have had good experiences with Tilaa, although it becomes quite expensive if you need more than ~100GB of space.


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## abefar (Oct 18, 2012)

cbrace said:
			
		

> I am pretty happy now with my VPS at tilaa.nl, but I ran into a really bizarre problem with the clock freezing, which I detailed here. Upgrading to two CPUs seem to have fixed it (as Tilaa support suggested), at the cost of a few more euri per month (No longer a Low End Box). Still wondering though whether anyone else has seen this problem with single-core FreeBSD VPSs.



I only had a single core VPS for a few days before upgrading to dual-core, but I didn't notice any problems in the meantime. With both machines however, I experienced extreme clock drift even with ntpd running, which was easily fixed by adding kern.timecounter.hardware=i8254 to /etc/sysctl.conf.
This is apparently a common problem with FreeBSD running under KVM, but I didn't know of it until contacting Tilaa's customer support.

I also had them enable VirtIO on my VPS for use with the emulators/virtio-kmod drivers, but it resulted in kernel call traces on their KVM host, so I had to switch back to IDE emulation. I don't know if it was caused by a bug in the FreeBSD driver or the Linux host kernel, but in either case it is possible that it has been fixed in the meantime (I haven't had the time to bug search). It should give a pretty nice performance boost however, so it's probably worth looking into for Tilaa customers.


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## k1piee (Jan 4, 2013)

I've been using OVH for a year or so, though I've been using a dedicated server as they don't offer FreeBSD on their VPS's. However they have very cheap dedicated servers as well that are cheaper than most VPS's out there.
I really like OVH, they have really good service and you get a lot for the money. I had 2 drives in a raid and one of them crashed, they changed it within the hour. You also get a /64 block IPv6 and 1 public IP where you can buy more.

If you want a dedicated server I could really recommend OVH. If you don't have OVH in your country you have to register on ovh.com and it's french, but translate in Chrome should do the trick.


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## bsdvm (Jan 13, 2013)

*bsdvm.com FreeBSD VPS*

Worth to mention that http://bsdvm.com FreeBSD VPS has also native IPv6 support
and starts from $9.95/month or $8.95/month if paid annually.


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## chanceller (Jan 18, 2013)

http://vds6.net/
only 1$ per month


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## fred974 (Jan 23, 2013)

*FreeBSD Hosting in UK*

Does anyone know if there is any web hosting provider based in the *UK*?

Thank you


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## Savagedlight (Apr 22, 2013)

Anyone have any experience with https://www.ubiquityservers.com/?


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## Anoniem (Apr 28, 2013)

Using cloudboxes from Versio.nl in the Netherlands - they did a good job on those[red].[/red]


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## time4e (May 4, 2013)

RootBSD.net hands down.


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## gkontos (Jun 6, 2013)

I have been complaining about Hetzner regarding their retarded support system as well as their bandwidth and security issues. 

I remember once that when I asked for remote console they gave me another customer's server. I could reboot it, mount my own ISO and change the root password. Now comes this:



> Dear Client
> 
> At the end of last week, Hetzner technicians discovered a "backdoor" in one
> of our internal monitoring systems (Nagios).
> ...


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## Crest (Jun 6, 2013)

Sounds like a professional response to discovering compromised systems. They stored their password databases as salted hashs, didn't keep too much credit card data around and informed their customers by mail.


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## gkontos (Jun 6, 2013)

Crest said:
			
		

> Sounds like a professional response to discovering compromised systems. They stored their password databases as salted hashs, didn't keep too much credit card data around and informed their customers by mail.



Right!



> *How about bank data (debit note)? Is this compromised?*
> 
> Bank details are encrypted (two-way) in the database. However, it cannot be excluded that the attacker/s have also been able to obtain access to the key.



Source: http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Security_Issue/en


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## cj (Jun 6, 2013)

DotBlock

I use DotBlock for my FreeBSD 9.1 64bit VPS service.  For 39.95 I get 3GHZ processing, 3GB of RAM!!!, 40GB SSD Raid Storage and unmetered bandwidth.  WOW!  They offer excellent service and I highly recommend them.


http://www.dotblock.com/


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## ShelLuser (Jun 6, 2013)

Just noticed this thread and although my personal favourite has already been mentioned upstream I can't help expanding a little bit on it with some more advocacy.

Another vote for TransIP, especially nice if you're from the Netherlands. However, I'd like to expand a little bit as to why I think this is such a good choice if you look at the price/quality:


Every VPS has console access, it doesn't matter if you pick up the cheapest or most expensive.
Because of the previous point you can cho*o*se how to set up your VPS: either use a pre-defined installation setup *or* simply install the OS yourself. The latter avoids such nastiness such as getting an environment with only one partition (/ which could be a major security issue). You can even set up ZFS this way if you want to.
Optimal specifications. Mid range (at the time of writing) has approximately 4 GB of memory, 150 GB storage, 5 TB traffic per month and will cost you approximately $26,- / month, or E20,- / month.
One snapshot backup. Even if you use ZFS yourself this could be handy to have.
Monitoring: if something goes wrong they can even sent you SMS alerts.
Cancellation per month: and the best part is that you don't have to go through a lot of paperwork either, while they still make sure that your environment is protected against abuse.
_For commercial use_: their API allows you to provide specific services on your own website; it*'*s extremely easy and can be used on most platforms (from PHP right to ASP.NET).
And one specific point I'd like to mention even though I only experienced it once myself.. Earlier this year they changed the specification for their VPS services. Under normal circumstances any existing customers would basically be out of luck. Not so much with TransIP: they provided the option to upgrade your server(s) to the new specifications without additional costs.

And finally the most compelling reason of them all, the one which will most likely massively persuade you guys: You may actually encounter _me_ on their user forums :e  Here's only hoping it doesn't persuade you all to quickly run away now 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





.

Cool thread!


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## alie (Jun 18, 2013)

chanceller said:
			
		

> http://vds6.net/
> only 1$ per month



Are they good if I want to use FTP or NAS?


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## OH (Jun 18, 2013)

ShelLuser said:
			
		

> (...)
> Optimal specifications. Mid range (at the time of writing) has approximately 4 GB of memory, 150 GB storage, *5 GB traffic per month* and will cost you approximately $26,- / month, or E20,- / month.
> (...)



You should add a threesome of zero's to that.


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## ShelLuser (Jun 18, 2013)

OH said:
			
		

> You should add a threesome of zero's to that.


I can do better than that; I simply replaced the G with a T. This way hopefully no one will notice. Oh wait... 

Very dumb mistake on my part, that's what you get for trying to be "smart" and then overlooking the obvious. Thanks for the heads up!


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## bigearsbilly (Jun 19, 2013)

Elastichosts now do FreeBSD install disks.

I have been using them since before Christmas, 24 x 7 financial data. I run about 20 servers. I am using Debian though as FreeBSD wasn't an option at the time and we needed a pronto turnaround, we were being evicted!

I doubt if anyone has an easier to use system. complete control over machines, storage, VLANs, IP adresses etc. from a brilliant web interface. No unscheduled downtime at all yet, and very good price.


----------



## may (Jun 26, 2013)

I will second RamHost (http://www.ramhost.us/) and give a shoutout to their TinyKVM brand (http://tinykvm.com/), for those of you who are OK with something tiny. I have had solid service from them.


----------



## manas (Aug 13, 2013)

may said:
			
		

> I will second RamHost (http://www.ramhost.us/) and give a shoutout to their TinyKVM brand (http://tinykvm.com/), for those of you who are OK with something tiny. I have had solid service from them.



I can third RamHost. Excellent service at a great price. I am currently looking at TransIP https://www.transip.nl/vps/. Their site appears to be in Dutch but thanks to Chrome's translate function I can view their offers which appear to be extremely good on pricing. I am considering a BladeVPS X4.


----------



## manas (Aug 13, 2013)

manas said:
			
		

> Test



Sorry about that. I have had three posts disappear and do not know what is going on. I had this to say:

Tilaa: Smooth order and deployment process. They do not provide access to boot into the installation cd.
RamHost/TinyKVM: Very good price, great service and response times. Provides access to boot into the installation CD.
TransIP: I just got one of their BladeVPS X4. Very quick deployment after order. Provides access to boot into a livecd.


----------



## fonz (Aug 13, 2013)

manas said:
			
		

> I have had three posts disappear and do not know what is going on.


Those posts were stuck in the moderation queue. We try to approve legitimate posts as quickly as we can, but it's still manual labour and sometimes it may take a little while before someone gets around to it. Sorry for the inconvenience.


----------



## TjPhysicist (Oct 5, 2013)

may said:
			
		

> I will second RamHost (http://www.ramhost.us/) and give a shoutout to their TinyKVM brand (http://tinykvm.com/), for those of you who are OK with something tiny. I have had solid service from them.



I just ordered tinyKVM finally got the KVM ready and installing FreeBSD. I have a few questions that are taking a while to answer via support if you don't mind: 

1. I got that you have to install EVERYTHING, nothing is done for you. Right?
2. A few other KVM/BSD hosts mount /usr/ports from elsewhere, so it WON'T use up all you disk usage quota, which is nice, since I cannot seem to install /usr/ports without running out of inodes. Do they do this? This seems like a no-brainer type of idea.
*And most importantly:
*3. What do you do about version? Do you follow -stable or -current and compile once a new release is out? Do you do freebsd-update? I currently have 9.0-RELEASE installed, which is the CD they had for mounting. Unfortunately it seems 9.1 (and maybe 9.2) has an issue with KVM (in fact ramhost specifically downgraded their available iso to 9.0 after finding out that 9.1 has issues). What is a good strategy in general you guys have found? I mean, I don't have a LOT of bandwidth to waste on binary updates..but I  have even less RAM available to waste (currently have only 40MB free).


----------



## manas (Oct 7, 2013)

*TinyKVM...*



			
				TjPhysicist said:
			
		

> I just ordered tinyKVM finally got the KVM ready and installing FreeBSD. I have a few questions that are taking a while to answer via support if you don't mind:
> 
> 1. I got that you have to install EVERYTHING, nothing is done for you. Right?
> 2. A few other KVM/BSD hosts mount /usr/ports from elsewhere, so it WON'T use up all you disk usage quota, which is nice, since I cannot seem to install /usr/ports without running out of inodes. Do they do this? This seems like a no-brainer type of idea.
> ...



1. Yes, you are responsible for setting up the VPS as you see fit. You are given web-based console with which to carry out the installation from the installation disk. There is an unformatted hard drive available so essentially what you get is what you would see if you booted up into a FreeBSD disk with a computer that has a blank hard drive.
2. I do not know if RamHost provides remote copies of the ports tree. I ran into the problem of insufficient inodes for ports tree too. There are three things that you can do: 
 Don't use ports, install using packages. For example `pkg_add -r rsync`
 Ask RamHost for a disk space upgrade. This will give you more room for inodes and you will have the full ports tree. Since I needed the kernel source as well I went with this route. The relevant part of the handbook is here.
 When setting up your drive, specify the number of inodes you need. I tried this at first but when I realized that I needed the kernel source, I got the disk space upgraded and did not run into insufficient inodes issue.
3. I ran into problems while running freebsd-update. Trying to upgrade to 9.1-RELEASE always gave me an error. I asked RamHost about this and they responded that it was due to a KVM issue and that I would not be able to install 9.1-RELEASE on the VPS. I have 9.1-RELEASE on a different KVM based VPS so maybe the problems stems from a specific version of KVM? Since 9.1-RELEASE would not work I went back to the 8.X line. I am running 8.4-RELEASE-p1 on my TinyKVM.

Manas


----------



## TjPhysicist (Oct 8, 2013)

manas said:
			
		

> 1. Yes, you are responsible for setting up the VPS as you see fit. You are given web-based console with which to carry out the installation from the installation disk. There is an unformatted hard drive available so essentially what you get is what you would see if you booted up into a FreeBSD disk with a computer that has a blank hard drive.
> 2. I do not know if RamHost provides remote copies of the ports tree. I ran into the problem of insufficient inodes for ports tree too. There are three things that you can do:
> Don't use ports, install using packages. For example `pkg_add -r rsync`
> Ask RamHost for a disk space upgrade. This will give you more room for inodes and you will have the full ports tree. Since I needed the kernel source as well I went with this route. The relevant part of the handbook is here.
> ...




 Hi thanks for the advice. I ended up going for it anyway, so I did figure out on my own that all they give me was an empty box with an ISO. 
 I went the 'extra disk space' route as well, I was asking them for more disk space because I wanted to host my  (rather sizable) git repo there as well. And it was really cheap so I asked them for 6GB more.
So I ended up building from ports. Which is well enough, I don't really see myself upgrading things very often, or installing a lot of stuff anyway. Though, I am torn between building from ports/RELENG/9.0 (or wherever it is the ports end up pointing to by default on a -RELEASE based install, it certainly is NOT HEAD) or from ports/HEAD.

 I actually *just* posted on [thread=42388]another thread about this[/thread], since I wanted to get some varying opinions on best practice, not just for this particular instance, but in general.


----------



## nanotek (Jan 21, 2014)

LeaseWeb has been really good. Great prices, decent speeds and fully self-managed.


----------



## cbrace (Jan 29, 2014)

Backupsy has good deals on storage. Although they weren't advertising FreeBSD as an option for their KVM-based storage VPSs, they were offering FreeNAS, so I paid an extra $2 (one-time) for them to add FreeBSD, and now v9.2 is an option among the manual ISO installs!

I have now configured a FreeBSD server with 500MB RAM, 1 CPU, and 250GB storage for which I pay $7/month. The European server location option, which I chose, is Naaldwijk, near Delft, in the Netherlands.

Upload speeds and general response times are entirely adequate, I am running btsync on this server for userland backups of some local machines.


----------



## atmosx (May 8, 2014)

Hello,

For a grand total of 12,70 EUR/month I get TransIP Blade VPS for 1024 MB RAM, 1 Intel XEON cpu, 50 GB of space.

I'm happy with their service, you can install a variety of systems among them FreeBSD too. I've been running 9 and now 10 without problems.

regards


----------



## manas (May 30, 2014)

atmosx said:
			
		

> Hello,
> 
> For a grand total of 12,70 EUR/month I get TransIP Blade VPS for 1024 MB RAM, 1 Intel XEON cpu, 50 GB of space.
> 
> ...



Make sure you take advantage of the snapshot feature that TransIP provides. It takes an image of your VPS which you can restore in case of emergency.


----------



## Eterhost (Jun 2, 2014)

Hello,

We are offering KVM VPS in Europe complete with DDoS protection with several Operating Systems including FreeBSD 9.2 and 10.0

In case you are interested you can visit our website http://eterhost.net


----------



## SirDice (Jun 2, 2014)

Eterhost said:
			
		

> We are offering KVM VPS in Europe complete with DDoS protection with several Operating Systems including FreeBSD 9.2 and 10.0


There's no mention of a monthly datalimit and what the costs are when you go over it. And 100 Mbit is rather low compared to other VPS providers (mine has a 10 Gbps internet connection).


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jun 2, 2014)

Ramnode has FreeBSD 10 available in a KVM http://ramnode.com/ 

The prices are pretty good as are the features but it's a pretty small shop. I've been using them for some small clients for a few months now. They're pretty responsive with tickets (I had two, neither were their fault), there's an IRC channel everyone hangs out on, so they're pretty accessible and easy to work with.


----------



## balanga (Aug 28, 2014)

Does anyone know of anyone offering  FreeBSD VPS services in Poland?


----------



## Crow (Aug 28, 2014)

I just bought (today) VPS from hitme.pl and now I'm installing FreeBSD 10 on it. Check their "XEN HVM (iso)" option.


----------



## balanga (Aug 28, 2014)

Crow said:
			
		

> I just bought (today) VPS from hitme.pl and now I'm installing FreeBSD 10 on it. Check their "XEN HVM (iso)" option.



Interesting, but I can't figure out how that works. Are you supposed to install your own ISO on it? How do you do that remotely?


----------



## Crow (Aug 28, 2014)

I installed FreeBSD using VNC. 
FreeBSD is on the list of ISO images, so I just choosed version (9.0, 9.2 and 10.0 are available). If you want to use your own ISO, probably you have to contact with support.


----------



## balanga (Aug 28, 2014)

Crow said:
			
		

> I installed FreeBSD using VNC.
> FreeBSD is on the list of ISO images, so I just choosed version (9.0, 9.2 and 10.0 are available). If you want to use your own ISO, probably you have to contact with support.



I've never used VNC and don't know anything about it, but I can always learn...

Is the FreeBSD 10.0 ISO the same as you would get here:-

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/10.0/

Can you get support in English?


----------



## Crow (Aug 28, 2014)

For VNC you could use Java applet on VPS control panel (panel is in English). ISO looks exactly the same as that on FreeBSD mirror, but I didn't check MD5 sum.

I'm using this VPS since 7 hours and it's my first contact with hitme.pl, so I can't answer all your questions, but I think their customer support will be more helpful: bok/at/hitme.pl and I think, they handle with English.


----------



## beatgammit (Sep 15, 2014)

*Vultr VPS supports FreeBSD*

I was reviewing DigitalOcean's request for FreeBSD support and one of the users mentioned that vultr is a similar service that supports FreeBSD and allows users to upload their own ISOs if you want to use a different system.

Some highlights from their service:


 More RAM than DigitalOcean for the same price (768MB for $5 a month)
 Fast processors (>= 3GHz)
 Lots of locations
 Either use SSDs for faster I/O or mechanical drives for larger storage capacities

They also have a referral program ($10 credit if a user pays $10), but I don't think it's right to post such things on an open forum. Please PM me if you'd like to create an account and I'll send you a link with my referral code.

Note: I am not in any way affiliated with vultr. I just found out about them today and thought they looked interesting.


----------



## NewGuy (Nov 13, 2014)

I'd like to second the recommendation for Vultr. (http://vultr.com). As beatgammit said, their plans start at $5/month and the first month is free (they give a $5 credit on sign-up). They support most mainstream Linux distros and FreeBSD, plus they allow custom ISOs to be loaded. I've run FreeBSD and TrueOS on their VPSs and it's been smooth sailing. Their customer support has been quick and friendly too when I had questions. So far I'm a happy customer. Vultr has, in my pinion, one of the nicer control panels for managing VPS instances and attacked ISO images.

Like the poster above, I'm not affiliated with Vultr, just happy to find a VPS provider that offers FreeBSD support for a reasonable rate.


----------



## atmosx (Nov 13, 2014)

Hello,

Can any of you guys running FreeBSD on VPS run the following ruby script and report back here results, company the VPS runs on, FreeBSD and Ruby version?

I deployed a Sinatra (ruby-web-framework) on my TransIP hosted FreeBSD server which should fetch info from an API. I wasn't able to run it because calls were talking too long (1+ minutes). After doing some research I discovered that it was because of FreeBSD (generally slower than Linux when it comes to executing Ruby scripts) but (I think) it's also because of the way VPS is deployed on TransIP.

Here is the discussion on the Ruby mailing list for more info. I ended up rolling a 5 USD/month VPS at Digital Ocean running Debian in order to keep the application running. When contacted TransIP support, they told me they _solved_ the problem, but I've had the same kind of issues whatsoever and didn't contact them anymore.

Regards,


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Nov 13, 2014)

```
FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE-p9
Ruby version: 2.0.0

Using Net::HTTP library
user     system     total     real
0.015625     0.015625     0.031250     (5.093676)

Using OpenURI library
user     system     total     real
0.039062     0.007812     0.046875     (4.929824)
```


----------



## Crow (Nov 14, 2014)

VPS runs on hitme.pl.

```
FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE-p12
Ruby version: 2.0.0

Using Net::HTTP library
user system total real
0.015625 0.015625 0.031250 ( 9.434748)

Using OpenURI library
user system total real
0.023438 0.023438 0.046875 ( 9.081504)
```


----------



## max21 (Dec 15, 2014)

I like the idea of colocation because I may be doing some extensive travel and I need a place to serve-up web pages as well as house my entire home computing life that I can connect remotely to from anywhere.
I been searching colocation options and pricing.  The link below is just about the only data center I found willing to go into some details (services, instructions and prices) before providing a quote.  Although I appreciate this information I don’t understand why would pay an additional charge to connect to my own server.  And if I allow other to connect to my _own_ server I got to pay an addition charge for each person.  There’s a lot I don’t understand but this takes the cake.  Maybe they think this is going to be a Windows or Linux server that needs C-Panel or something.  Could someone please explain?  FreeBSD servers don’t need any of this right?


> Console Access Users: How Many?
> Servers Requiring Console Access: ?


I guest nothing makes sense any more.  Like why should I pay to be unlisted when the telephone company will be saving on ink and effort?

I forgot to post the link:
http://www.colocationspace.net/instantcolocationpricequote.cfm


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## ondra_knezour (Dec 15, 2014)

The console access probably means connecting providers' device to the ports on your server (video, keyboard...), which will enable you to interact with the given machine as you would be physically on site, for example to change BIOS settings etc. Many servers have something similar built-in, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-band_management for example.


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## J65nko (Dec 15, 2014)

I don't understand why would you need to use colocation for that? For your purpose getting a VPS or a physical server will do.

I am using https://www.transip.eu/vps/ . I haven't found another VPS provider that gives you so much RAM and disk space for 10 euro per month.
Last year, for a client, I got a dedicated root server from Hetzner's  https://robot.your-server.de/order/market and he is very happy with it. He used to pay over 200 USD monthly and now only 22 euro for a box with better specifications.


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## Terry_Kennedy (Dec 16, 2014)

max21 said:


> And if I allow other to connect to my _own_ server I got to pay an addition charge for each person.  There’s a lot I don’t understand but this takes the cake.  Maybe they think this is going to be a Windows or Linux server that needs C-Panel or something.  Could someone please explain?  FreeBSD servers don’t need any of this right?


This is probably for system console (VGA or serial). If you use a server with built-in remote management, this can happen over the same network connection as regular access, or on a second network connection. If you use a system that doesn't have that function, then the colo site needs to cable things up to their management system and create accounts for you. Using a server with built-in remote management also means you can reset / power cycle / etc. the box without needing to involve the colo support staff.

All of this is only relevant if you're providing your own server to install at the facility. Since the other questions ask about how big the system is, that's probably what is going on here. If you're looking for a shared server or a dedicated server provided by the colo facility, you're on the wrong form.


----------



## max21 (Dec 16, 2014)

> I don't understand why would you need to use colocation for that? For your purpose getting a VPS or a physical server will do.


Thanks J65nko@, but my _reason_ for colocation was to share the most basic usages so to not go into excessive details of why I have interest in colo.  Functionality and pricing of colocation can be fair provided future user do not to get caught up in the hype of GRID technology.  This is what big-data is boosting about.  It’s the new 5 blocks per gallon gasoline for your data activity, off the power box.  Bandwidth will become cheap to free, but provider rather keep this secrete because it would leads to the coming of some future super Metropolitan(s) WiFi Towers that will run faster than any fiber-optics connection from coast-to-coast, where dark fiber can get piggy-backed in some areas…or something like that.  I only read the highlights from many sites a few months ago. Anyway, I plan to use Vultr to learn how to avoid mistakes so to gain better mileage when it’s time to go solo on colo.  It’s not about what would do for me; it’s more about the pricing of these technologies itself when going the Kelly way.



> The console access probably means connecting providers' device to the ports …


You could be right, but since colo providers needs a way to generate more cash than just rental space, power and bandwidth usage, the only thing left is c-panel license per user.  But this is not a Windows server, or their own hardware, so my guest is; for a UNIX server we would select *No user*.  Since this is only something to be use after learning with VPS, and we don’t just files fault service quotes simply to obtain answers, I see that some data-centers do use chat.  I’ll go check things out there and I’ll be back soon.  Thanks ondra_knezour@



> If you're looking for a shared server or a dedicated server provided by the colo facility, you're on the wrong form.


Good point Terry_Kennedy@, but it’s all about pure colocation and delivering your own FreeBSD server with full root access and a few jails with plenty of separated storages space . . . no desktop, KVM or virtualbox; so I sure I'm on the right form.

Your post is very clear and now I see that ondra_knezour@ did hit the nail on the head.  I’m going to read about all of this today, including checking out chats.


> This is probably for system console (VGA or serial). If you use a server with built-in remote management, this can happen over the same network connection as regular access, or on a second network connection. If you use a system that doesn't have that function, then the colo site needs to cable things up to their management system and create accounts for you. Using a server with built-in remote management also means you can reset / power cycle / etc. the box without needing to involve the colo support staff.


Not saying I would go colocation today but if I did, how lost would I be right now 

Thanks nocentis@ for starting this thread


----------



## cbrace (Jan 14, 2015)

DigitalOcean has just announced FreeBSD support: Presenting FreeBSD! How We Made It Happen.


----------



## RayB (May 4, 2015)

nocentis said:


> *What is good and cheap VPS - FreeBSD?*
> 
> Looking for servers FreeBSD vps with the price to $ 15 per month, what do you recommend?



We've been using Digital Ocean https://www.digitalocean.com for $10 a month with FreeBSD.
$ 10 / mo, 1GB Memory, 1 Core Processor, 30GBS SD Disk, 2TB Transfer
They also offer $5, $20, $40 & $80 plans.


----------



## shepherdAZ (Sep 3, 2015)

Can anyone here provide any recommendations for FreeBSD virtual hosting from first-hand experience? I know there are lots of providers listed in the Commercial Vendors list, but what I am after is actual hands-on usage from people here.

My needs are quite simple - there will be an application across three jails (one nginx, one uwsgi/Flask, one Redis) serving up 4-5 small data files (<5MBytes each) to 50 users per day.

Many thanks.


----------



## Cthulhux (Sep 3, 2015)

I have a cheap(ish) FreeBSD vServer from the German provider netcup (netcup.de).


----------



## Beastie7 (Sep 4, 2015)

Digital Ocean. Crazy simple.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Sep 4, 2015)

Last I heard, Digital Ocean didn't quite have their act together with FreeBSD but that may have been fixed.

I have used Ramnode for a couple of years and really like their personal, direct  service and easy to contact tech support. 

I'm interested in Vultr.com but haven't pulled the trigger yet until I finish a web site I'm working on. I looked into them because 1) they're in Chicago where a lot of my clients are and 2) they're a bigger company than Ramnode so I like having a backup should they go out of business.

Actually, I forgot that I did turn on one web site I was developing for a company on Vultr. Things were going smoothly but that was only for a couple of weeks so I can't say anything other than it was easy to set up.


----------



## SirDice (Sep 4, 2015)

Thread merged with an existing thread about hosting, VPS etc.


----------



## bufo333 (Sep 5, 2015)

I have my server hosted on AWS. The FreeBSD devs have done a great job with native Xen drivers. It works fine out of the box and you get all the AWS ecosystem benefits. As always Colin Percival is the man, and you can thank him for maintaining the AMI images listed below.
Check out the following link:
http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-on-ec2/


----------



## abishai (Sep 6, 2015)

VDS hosting of these guys http://ua-hosting.company/vps support FreeBSD. Minimal price is 3.99/mo. The most interesting thing the servers are located in Netherlands (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_Netherlands) They provide preconfigured 10.1-RELEASE-p0 system with bash and curl for some reason (I dropped all packages just for sure, maybe that was a merely mild trolling from Penguins). Also I found /etc/defaults/rc.conf was altered (nothing criminal) and reverted it back. Upgrade to 10.2-RELEASE-p2 was lightning fast and I can tell, server compiles kernel and ports pretty fast. Filesystem is UFS, which is disadvantage, of cause (I almost forgot how to backup without zfs send/zfs recv). Access to dead system without support tickets is not possible either - control panel is very spartan - with reboot and cancel server buttons. 
Paypal is supported with some russian specific payment systems.

Not sure about ESXi they declared. Looks very qemu-kvm for me.


----------



## boris_net (Sep 28, 2015)

Hi all,

I have been in a position of owning servers for many years now and I have never really looked at cloud based offerings. 
Given the large amount of options available on the market, I would value feedback from this forum against the following requirements:

- based in North America (East Coast ideally, Canada preferred but US is perfectly fine) and Europe (not a deal breaker if one offer on each continent)
- targeted for enthusiast in other words affordable (which is highly subjective I know but I need to get an idea of the budget required without breaking the bank) 
- planning on hosting owncloud with HA across the two continents and a few standard services, so storage > 500GB and unmetered traffic if that still exists without costing an arm
- ideally involved and supporting the FreeBSD community
- options for baremetal vs VM
- reliable
- monitoring (including alarms if something goes wrong)
- easy payment 

I would be curious to see what people are using nowadays for cloud based solutions for FreeBSD  so if you have any story than could give me a better idea of what is hot/new/trendy vs old school, that would be nice to read.

Thanks in advance.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Sep 28, 2015)

This is probably the third time the same question was asked over the last couple of months. You should search for that. 

I find myself confused when people ask for "cloud hosting". I thought that was a term for end users, not technical people, and I only use it when I describe things to every day, non-tech people. 

If you mean a host, RootBSD will come highly recommended. I use Ramnode but it's just on top of CentOS through KVM. I also use Vultr but it's built the same as Ramnode, however Vultr is a bigger company than Ramnode while Ramnode is easy to get in touch with that small operation.


----------



## protocelt (Sep 28, 2015)

boris_net said:


> My apologies if already asked.
> Please disregard my original post. I don't think I can close and remove this post myself.
> If somebody can do it - just remove it - maybe I will just report myself.


I merged your thread here, but do search the forums for similar recent threads that may pertain to or cover your question before posting in the future. No need to report yourself.


----------



## d3crypt (Oct 12, 2015)

I personally use Digital Ocean's $10 a month VPS with FreeBSD 10.2 at their San Francisco data center.
It comes with 1GB of RAM, 30 GB of SSD Storage, and 2 TB of transfer every month.  I have had no problems at all.  The only concern I have with them is a lack of phone support, as I like to actually talk to someone when stuff goes wrong, but that Is a small cost for the value.


----------



## ftml (Nov 1, 2015)

I have been using Vultr.com VPS for FreeBSD 10.2 for a few weeks now. They had a great promo that gives $30 in credit for 30 days. Soon after I signed up it changed to $100 for 60 days. The servers are fast and responsive and I'm thinking about going with them. I see that the post above says you get 30GB for $10/mo, with Vultr you only get 20GB for the same price.  The support system is dead simple and I get responses in less than 10 minutes. My server did hang once and would not restart and they had that fixed in a few minutes also. They don't have as many tutorials as Digital Ocean but there's nothing stopping you from using the DO tutorials while using Vultr. 

If you are running a mail server they do block port 25 by default. You just have to send a support ticket and they'll open the port for your account though. 

http://www.vultr.com (non referral link)
http://www.vultr.com/?ref=6855378 (referral link)


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Nov 1, 2015)

So Vultr and Digital Ocean have both been mentioned six times in this thread.  I think we can stop now.


----------



## jaxsin (Feb 15, 2016)

I use ramnode for KVM with FreeBSD 10. Been running it for 3 years now with no problem. I got the 2gb Ram package with 35% off recurring. Ramnode at one time has some of the best deals and you could find codes online to get discounts. Not sure if they still are that way or not. Would easily recommend ramnode.


----------



## cfw (Sep 26, 2016)

FreeBSD has been running great on Leaseweb for me. Their SSD backed VPS start at ~$5.50. Performance is significantly better than DigitalOcean and they've got lots of locations around the globe and a first class network.

https://www.leaseweb.com/cloud/public/virtual-server


----------



## gkontos (Sep 26, 2016)

cfw said:


> FreeBSD has been running great on Leaseweb for me.



Leaseweb has retarded support and very bad network. I know that for a fact after having to move a $2500 colo to another provider.


----------



## cbrace (Jan 27, 2017)

I would like to report positive experiences with Dutch-based Liteserver, which offers KVM VPSs.

I set up a FreeBSD VPS with which at the beginning I encountered some bizarre failures. Callum kindly offered to set up another VPS for me on a different node where he said he knew for sure several FreeBSD installations were running fine. Since migrating, my VPS (FreeBSD v11.0) has been running flawlessly.

The company offers lots of interesting KVM options depending on whether you need more storage or more traffic:

*Traffic VPS Series
Storage VPS Series*
*SSD VPS Series*


----------



## abishai (Jan 28, 2017)

Are there any cheap FreeBSD hostings that exposes aesni for VPN needs? I tried different KVM-based 1-5 bucks hostings, but no hardware aes support


----------



## cbrace (Jan 30, 2017)

abishai said:


> Are there any cheap FreeBSD hostings that exposes aesni for VPN needs?


Callum  Venmans at LiteServer tells me that they can activate *AES-NI* for their SSD-based KVM offerings on request. These start at €7.50/quarter. See: *SSD VPS Series

*


----------



## abishai (Jan 30, 2017)

cbrace said:


> Callum  Venmans at LiteServer tells me that they can activate *AES-NI* for their SSD-based KVM offerings on request. These start at €7.50/quarter. See: *SSD VPS Series*


Nice. And they have 25% lifetime discount at the moment. So, after the order I should open request to enable aes for me?


----------



## cbrace (Jan 30, 2017)

Yep, that's the idea!


----------



## bcomputerguy (Feb 19, 2017)

Howdy

In the past I ran a vps that I found on lowendbox that I used to host my personal website and a few other things. It ran Debian, Nginx and a hugo static site.

Since I migrated to FreeBSD and use it full time now, I'd like to migrate my webserver to FreeBSD as well, it would be a lot lighter on the resources plus FreeBSD is a lot nicer from the shell.

Does anyone on here have any recommendations for a VPS that I can run FreeBSD on?


----------



## Tabs (Feb 19, 2017)

I've been running mine on digital ocean for about 3 months now and they have been excellent. They seem to take FreeBSD support quite seriously as well, FreeBSD 11.0 was available on digital ocean the day it was released, with support for ZFS and UFS.

If you want to try it use the promo code 'freebsdnow' which gives you $10 free credit and supports the BSD Now podcast


----------



## masteroman (Feb 19, 2017)

DigitalOcean is great choice and offers FreeBSD while there is also Vultr (https://www.vultr.com/) which supports both FreeBSD and OpenBSD but you can also boot installation from your custom ISO giving you even more options.


----------



## Preetpal (Mar 10, 2017)

I have had some success with FreeBSD in production so far with Microsoft Azure (static sites only so far but I am planning on deploying some more complex websites written in Golang and Ruby soon). I have also been using FreeBSD in Hyper-V (the hypervisor used on Microsoft Azure) on my local computer for testing purposes and haven't encountered any issues so far. Microsoft itself releases the FreeBSD VM images on Azure, so you can use that to convince others that deploying on FreeBSD is not risky. On a side note, I have already had success with Ubuntu and CentOS with some Ruby on Rails and Golang deployments. I like Azure since you can create multiple VMs and set them up with your own network topology quite easily (like you can have to 2 load balanced web-facing machines in front of a database machine that is not directly exposed to the web).


----------



## scrappywan (Jul 5, 2017)

Started on DigitalOcean a few years ago, but switched to Linode last year and have been happy with their service ever since. They are also very competitive in pricing compared to DO.


----------



## trev (Jul 13, 2017)

Started on Digital Ocean before FreeBSD was available, then switched to FreeBSD as soon as it was available. I've recently moved to Vultr because they had a local country data centre, provide twice the RAM, provide 25% more SSD and to top it off, disk i/o is 2x faster than DO. Same price $US 5/month.

The only reason I had investigated DO alternatives was that while DO provide IPv6, they non-negotiably block outgoing port 25 (for IPv6 only). Also DO only assign 16 IPv6 addresses per droplet; Vultr assign a full /64.


----------



## FBSD (Jul 22, 2017)

nekoexmachina said:


> **BSD hosting service*
> 
> Hello, forum!
> Im looking now for maximum-stable and high-availability hosting, based preferably on OpenBSD.
> ...


bsdvm.com is shutting down its hosting operations: "BSDvm is shutting down its VPS and cloud hosting and will transform into BSD and Linux hosting review service" (22/07/2017)


----------



## arneboeses (Sep 20, 2017)

https://www.netcup.eu/ - there you can get a root Vserver where you can install every OS you like to with the help of uploaded iso files.


----------



## nbari (Dec 8, 2017)

I have been testing successfully FreeBSD + ZFS on root with fabrik.red on GCE, AWS, vultr.com, lunanode.com, and netcup.eu, with netcup had some issues described here.

One that I have been testing and so far very good and cheap is  arubacloud.com for 1 € you can get FreeBSD 10 + ZFS, you can also upload your snapshots but not in the 1 € plan.


----------



## SirDice (Dec 8, 2017)

What the... One euro a month? How are they making money?


----------



## nbari (Dec 8, 2017)

SirDice said:


> What the... One euro a month? How are they making money?


No idea but besides that you get an ipv4  plus and ipv6 segment, really good for an ssh jump host, OpenVPN,  irc,  I have been testing them and speed I would say is ok, here is the output of cli speedtest:


```
> speedtest
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Aruba S.p.A. (80.211.148.10)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by AirWifi (Siena) [50.18 km]: 22.145 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 777.90 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed................................................................................................
Upload: 506.11 Mbit/s
```

ZFS:


```
> zpool list
NAME    SIZE  ALLOC   FREE  EXPANDSZ   FRAG    CAP  DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
zroot  17.9G  1.99G  15.9G         -    14%    11%  1.00x  ONLINE  -
```

The CPU and MEM:

```
Copyright (c) 1992-2016 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
        The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE #0 r297264: Fri Mar 25 02:10:02 UTC 2016
    root@releng1.nyi.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64
FreeBSD clang version 3.4.1 (tags/RELEASE_34/dot1-final 208032) 20140512
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2650L v4 @ 1.70GHz (1700.00-MHz K8-class CPU)
  Origin="GenuineIntel"  Id=0x206d2  Family=0x6  Model=0x2d  Stepping=2
  Features=0xf83fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS>
  Features2=0x9e982203<SSE3,PCLMULQDQ,SSSE3,CX16,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,POPCNT,AESNI,XSAVE,OSXSAVE,AVX,HV>
  AMD Features=0x28100800<SYSCALL,NX,RDTSCP,LM>
  AMD Features2=0x1<LAHF>
  TSC: P-state invariant
Hypervisor: Origin = "VMwareVMware"
real memory  = 1073741824 (1024 MB)
avail memory = 1006751744 (960 MB)
...
```


----------



## Mike-Mike-Mike (Dec 13, 2017)

nocentis said:


> *What is good and cheap VPS - FreeBSD?*
> 
> Looking for servers FreeBSD VPS with the price to $ 15 per month, what do you recommend?



Hello,

I use this one for FreeBSD VPS - 5.49 Euro/Month

I am very happy with this Hungarian hoster. Very stable and fast.

And this FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD, Debian/GNU/Linux, Linux ... hoster allows Tor Exit Relays/Nodes

https://serverastra.com/billing/kno...ed-and-obligatory-Tor-exit-node-policies.html

https://serverastra.com/

KVM Virtual Dedicated Servers
Kernel Virtual Machine Virtual Dedicated Servers
Intel E3 Xeon based VDS
30mbps/Unmetered Network
from €5.49/m


----------



## abishai (Jan 8, 2018)

cbrace said:


> Yep, that's the idea!


I have an issue with liteserver. I can't get speed above 1.5Mbts (download) with ipsec VPN. As upload speed is 50+ Mbts and I use the same setup with vds6 without any problems I suspect something wrong within their infrastructure


----------



## SirDice (Jan 8, 2018)

Does turning off TSO on the network interface help?


----------



## abishai (Jan 8, 2018)

SirDice said:


> Does turning off TSO on the network interface help?


Nope. TSO doesn't affect performance.
Here is the recent measurement - it looks very strange http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6946253190 I even asked support if my VPS is somehow limited - they assured me that it's not.

Looking for new VPS provider with 1Tb/mo minimum.  I accidently pulled entire limit of my vds6.net VPS with etherium wallet, knew nothing that it syncs entire blockchain


----------



## ronaldlees (Jan 8, 2018)

http://en.tsukaeru.net/smb/vps/option/

The only VPS company I ever trusted.  Back in the day - they'd do a FreeBSD VPS even though it's not listed on their site.  A few years ago, the problem for most people was that it really helped  to know Japanese to navigate their stuff.  It's been awhile, but now their web pages are more english-readable, so I'd bet the control panels, etc are also.

It may not the quickest net transit for US folks, but depending upon what the target area is, and the usage is, it may be.  Japan has lowest latency in Asia (and probably world).


----------



## SirDice (Jan 8, 2018)

abishai said:


> Looking for new VPS provider with 1Tb/mo minimum.


I'm personally quite fond of TransIP. Their basic model has 1 core, 1GB RAM, 50GB SSD storage and a 1TB/month datalimit for 10 euro/month. My VPS has 2 cores, 4GB, 150GB SSD and 5TB/month for 20,-.


----------



## abishai (Jan 8, 2018)

I'm testing https://www.arubacloud.com now. VPS is hosted on vmware, which is rather unusual. E5-2650L v4 core, 1Gb memory, 20Gb disk, 2Tb/mo, 1Eur/mo. DC location is Italy.
They provide rather outdated FreeBSD 10.3 ZFS installation with bunch of ports (140 or 240 - don't remember, I dropped them ASAP, with /usr/local). Some configs are modified and no src provided.
Installed src from official tars, updated to 11.1, resolved configs diff to default.
Hardware aes is exposed, which is good for VPN. I've got full speed download and upload (I'm limited to 100Mbt) with ipsec.

I think I'm missing something, they won't earn money with config provided for 1 euro. 

BTW, I believe, Italy is not net neutral country, right? I remember I read about anti-piracy initiative in 2011...


----------



## SirDice (Jan 8, 2018)

abishai said:


> BTW, I believe, Italy is not net neutral country, right?


They have to follow EU regulations, so they'll have the same protection (or lack thereof) as the rest of the EU.


----------



## geheimnisse (Jan 26, 2018)

I'm a big fan of Ramnode. Highly recommended, and not expensive.

They offer FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD images in addition to the standard array of Linux images you see at every VPS offering. Just make sure you're looking at their KVM plans.


----------



## Reaperzx (Mar 5, 2018)

SirDice said:


> Was looking for something myself and found http://www.tilaa.nl/
> 
> No idea how good they are but it looks quite cheap.



Ordered from tilaa, works so far. But only 2 months experience.

Has anyone tried their "BIG DISK" option yet?


----------



## SirDice (Mar 5, 2018)

It's been a while since I posted that, I have since had a VPS with them for quite a while and was really happy with them. I only switched to TransIP because I had other stuff running there to, it made more sense to consolidate everything to one provider. But for as long as I had the VPS with Tilaa I had very little issues and their support was quite good.


----------



## ShelLuser (Dec 10, 2018)

Does anyone have experience with Mythic Beasts? Currently looking around for a FreeBSD powered VPS and I like the idea of being able to upload your own ISO images which you can then use to install your VPS.


----------



## Morgan Wesström (Dec 30, 2018)

I need to host a mail server for my private domain. Does Vultr, Ramnode, TransIP and the others discussed above, allow both outgoing and incoming traffic on port 25? Do they all allow me to recompile and install a new kernel for example, so I can enable the pf firewall? Any input from users of these services would be highly appreciated.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Dec 31, 2018)

Morgan Wesström Ramnode does. I believe Vultr does, too, but I've only considered using them in the past but have not so I may be mis-remembering.


----------



## Morgan Wesström (Dec 31, 2018)

Thank you, drhowarddrfine. I was already leaning towards Ramnode and I have now ordered a KVM there and I can confirm that the things I asked about are indeed working.


----------



## trev (Feb 25, 2019)

Of interest to Australian FBSDers -- https://www.binarylane.com.au/ -- I moved one of my Vultr servers to them a few months ago and have been quite happy.

Starts at $A 4/month including GST for 768MB memory, 20GB SSD, 500G data transfer, IPv4 and IPv6

You do need to upload your FBSD ISO.

Hosted by NEXTDC B1, M1, and S1 facilities in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.


----------



## scotia (Apr 27, 2019)

I can recommend ARP networks.  $10/month IIRC for the low end VM.  Public IP both v4 and v6.  DCs in US and DE.

Link


----------



## Peter2121 (May 4, 2019)

I've got a KVM-based VM for my FreeBSD install from netcup.de. It is not expensive and for the moment I'm happy with.


----------



## scotia (May 4, 2019)

I'll second trev - I just fired up a Binary Lane (https://www.binarylane.com.au/) VM - FreeBSD 12 and am also happy with the service.  Web-based console, public IP, no filtering (for the first 72 hours your account's VMs can't talk to services on ports 22, 25 (and something else - 587?).  This is to deter spammers and bad actors).  And AUD4.00 has to be the cheapest around.


----------



## SirDice (May 7, 2019)

Morgan Wesström said:


> TransIP


TransIP doesn't filter anything.


Morgan Wesström said:


> Do they all allow me to recompile and install a new kernel for example


TransIP even allows you to do the entire install from scratch. You can boot from any of the provided ISO images (including FreeBSD) and do the entire install yourself. 



> , so I can enable the pf firewall?


You don't need to build a custom kernel for that, it's enabled by default on the GENERIC kernel.


----------



## olafz (May 8, 2019)

I am happy with Hosthatch, they run two of my FreeBSD KVMs. A plus is that you can upload your own ISO.


----------



## scotia (May 9, 2019)

olafz said:


> I am happy with Hosthatch, they run two of my FreeBSD KVMs. A plus is that you can upload your own ISO.



I just checked them out - their website isn't great.  olafz do you know if they provide a public IP per VM or HTTP/VNC console?  Also they mention that their HKK and SYD DCs filter port 25 outbound (I'm not sure if it's permanent or probation).  Which may affect some installations.


----------



## olafz (May 10, 2019)

Their client web site is nice and basic, I like working with it. My two hosts are sitting in Amsterdam and Stockholm. SMTP outgoing is not blocked for both. One of them is a "Storage 250" KVM server for $5 a month. A great Nextcloud server. The other one (NVMe 2 GB) works as a DNS server.
KVM access is done by web based VNC.


----------



## tommiie (May 10, 2019)

olafz said:


> I am happy with Hosthatch, they run two of my FreeBSD KVMs. A plus is that you can upload your own ISO.


I just signed up but can only select CentOS, Debian, Fedora, or Ubuntu. No option to select FreeBSD but I opened a support ticket just now.



scotia said:


> I just checked them out - their website isn't great.


That's a matter of opinion. I like the simplistic look. But to each their own.


----------



## scotia (May 11, 2019)

tommiie said:


> That's a matter of opinion. I like the simplistic look. But to each their own.



It certainly is minimalist .  It's a shame one needs to open a ticket to work out how to use a custom ISO, or find out about static IPs, or whether they provide a console.  I'm not bagging the service - perhaps it's great, it's just that the prospective user experience is low on detail.  If you find out the answers I need I'd appreciate it if you could post them here.  I'm always on the lookout for a good provider.


----------



## trev (May 11, 2019)

scotia said:


> or whether they provide a console.





olafz said:


> KVM access is done by web based VNC.


----------



## scotia (May 11, 2019)

trev.  Thanks, I missed that bit.  I guess it's not web-based VNC though.  It's likely web-based console.


----------



## oz42 (May 12, 2019)

tommiie said:


> I just signed up but can only select CentOS, Debian, Fedora, or Ubuntu. No option to select FreeBSD but I opened a support ticket just now.


I remember that there was a "upload own ISO" thing somewhere. You just paste the download link in and that's it. That way I had installed FreeBSD i386.


----------



## balanga (Jul 16, 2019)

trev said:


> Of interest to Australian FBSDers -- https://www.binarylane.com.au/ -- I moved one of my Vultr servers to them a few months ago and have been quite happy.
> 
> Starts at $A 4/month including GST for 768MB memory, 20GB SSD, 500G data transfer, IPv4 and IPv6
> 
> ...



I had a look at this provider after hearing about this BYO Operating System but couldn't see any way to specify FreeBSD when signing up.  There was no FreeBSD option in the drop down menu under _BYO Operating System. _ I didn't see any contact details either, for asking about such an option.


----------



## scotia (Jul 17, 2019)

balanga said:


> I had a look at this provider after hearing about this BYO Operating System but couldn't see any way to specify FreeBSD when signing up.  There was no FreeBSD option in the drop down menu under _BYO Operating System. _ I didn't see any contact details either, for asking about such an option.



The process to install FreeBSD is to upload the ISO to BL then launch your VM.   IIRC I had an issue after uploading the image and raised a ticket and magically the it appeared. 

The way I’ve communicated with their team is through raising tickets.  They’re fairly quick at responding. 

My AUD0.02


----------



## balanga (Jul 17, 2019)

Presumably I nned to use a VM-IMAGE such as those available here:- https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/12.0-RELEASE/amd64/Latest/

but which one? Any instructions on what to do would be appreciated.


----------



## SirDice (Jul 17, 2019)

balanga said:


> Presumably I nned to use a VM-IMAGE


I'm not familiar with this particular provider, but as far as I understood it you need to use a "regular" install disk. Not a pre-made VM image. You basically upload the installer and boot the VM with it. Then you can follow the normal installation procedures to install FreeBSD, just as you would on "real" hardware.


----------



## scotia (Jul 17, 2019)

balanga said:


> Presumably I nned to use a VM-IMAGE such as those available here:- https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/12.0-RELEASE/amd64/Latest/
> 
> but which one? Any instructions on what to do would be appreciated.



No, you'll need an install ISO (such as FreeBSD-12.0-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso) and go through the install process.  I guess you could continually boot from the VM image but that would be odd.  Good way of getting free storage 

Anyway the control panel on BL can download the ISO directly from the URL so you don't need to download then upload it.  I can't recall which method I used.  In any case if you have issues raise a ticket and the BL people will/should help.

Scott


----------



## Sebastian (Oct 8, 2019)

Anyone know which provider allows to enable bhyve on the vm ( vmx support )? It seems google supports it , but it's a bit pricy ~36$ per month . Anything cheaper ?


----------



## tommiie (Oct 8, 2019)

balanga said:


> I had a look at this provider after hearing about this BYO Operating System but couldn't see any way to specify FreeBSD when signing up.  There was no FreeBSD option in the drop down menu under _BYO Operating System. _ I didn't see any contact details either, for asking about such an option.



I got a VM from them but am not at all happy with their support. It required a couple of tickets to get FreeBSD installed on their system, then some random reboots happened and suddenly I was back at a default Debian image!?


----------



## trev (Oct 8, 2019)

I needed no tickets to install FreeBSD, I just uploaded the relevant FreeBSD ISO using their upload facility, it booted and I installed from there. I've done this several times now with no issues. I've also recently added more disk space to one instance, taking advantage of the free backup first which is available for 7 days, and expanding the disk (ZFS makes doing this a doddle without needing to delete data at all). All good.

Your FreeBSD VM which rebooted and became a Debian VM suggests you did not actually manage to install FreeBSD in the first place.


----------



## tommiie (Dec 6, 2019)

trev said:


> Your FreeBSD VM which rebooted and became a Debian VM suggests you did not actually manage to install FreeBSD in the first place.


Or it suggests something on their side f*cked up and my VM got reset to a default state since I ordered a Debian VM then installed FreeBSD using the ISO. But whatever, I'm now happily running several FreeBSD virtual machines at other providers.


----------



## trev (Dec 7, 2019)

tommiie said:


> Or it suggests something on their side f*cked up and my VM got reset to a default state since I ordered a Debian VM then installed FreeBSD using the ISO. But whatever, I'm now happily running several FreeBSD virtual machines at other providers.



Alert: Operator error!

If you "ordered a Debian VM" you got a Debian VM. The option you needed to order was "BYO ISO".

Given how popular FreeBSD has become, Binary Lane also now have an option for FreeBSD 12.


----------



## neel (Dec 23, 2019)

Interesting that at the beginning of the 2010s, BSD VPSes were rare and only found on niche providers. Most "mainstream" VPS providers focused on Linux, mainly because of the fallacies of Xen paravirtualization and the lack of resource limiting on Jails at the time (pre-`rctl`).

Now, we have the Tier-1 clouds like Amazon and Microsoft allowing BSD on cloud instances, and even smaller companies like DigitalOcean and Linode doing the same. Heck, on any KVM or XenHVM VPS, you can install BSD if they allow an ISO mount.

However, when the clouds were built, they were MVPs (minimum viable products). They needed to get something that worked. In that case, you only supported Linux (or Windows in the case of Azure). And then you add other OSes if you succeed.

However, if you wanted an Illumos-based cloud, maybe there was Joyent, but not anymore. There are a few other Tier-2 and Tier 3 "clouds" using SmartOS, but I don't remember their names.


----------



## SirDice (Dec 24, 2019)

neel said:


> Now, we have the Tier-1 clouds like Amazon and Microsoft allowing BSD on cloud instances


There's a big incentive for these companies to support BSD (and FreeBSD in particular). Lots of commercial virtual appliances for NetScaler and NetApp for example are based on FreeBSD. So if you can make FreeBSD work it's very likely you can support those virtual appliances too.


----------



## ctaranotte (Dec 25, 2019)

I am using Contabo. 

For 4.99 Euro/month (plus a 4.99 Euro setup fee), you will get a KVM VPS with:

Four core CPU of a Intel Xeon E5-2620v3, E5-2630v4 or/and 4114 processor
8 GB RAM.
200 GB disk space (100% SSD)
200 Mbit/s Unlimited traffic.

They do have a FreeBSD 12.0 option. 

The downside is that they have only German IPs.


----------



## ctaranotte (Dec 26, 2019)

Kamatera is an other cheap one with Freebsd 9, 10, 11 and 12 images ( I am also using this one).


----------



## lernests (Jan 2, 2020)

I'm using SERVERIA for my freebsd projects. The guys have been around since 2009. Take a look here: https://serveria.com

They can install any version on request.


----------



## kjsweeney (Jan 27, 2020)

trev said:


> Of interest to Australian FBSDers -- https://www.binarylane.com.au/ -- I moved one of my Vultr servers to them a few months ago and have been quite happy.
> 
> Starts at $A 4/month including GST for 768MB memory, 20GB SSD, 500G data transfer, IPv4 and IPv6
> 
> ...



Is there a Australian domain registrar you can recommend?
I am looking to setting up a personal website on FreeBSD.

Cheers
Sweeney


----------



## trev (Jan 27, 2020)

The $A 4 Binary Lane VPS now boasts 1024MB Memory, 20GB SSD Storage and 1000GB Data Transfer.

As for an Australian domain registrar, nope. I've been using NameCheap.com since 2012 as they were considerably cheaper than any local registrars at the time. I haven't checked the locals lately.


----------



## jomonger (Jun 12, 2020)

Isn't it that if I can load .iso to vm then can I install most systems (including FreeBSD)?


----------



## neel (Jun 12, 2020)

Yes.


----------



## jmos (Jun 13, 2020)

jomonger said:


> Isn't it that if I can load .iso to vm then can I install most systems (including FreeBSD)?


If you can load a ISO image you'll also have to connect to a terminal while installing - and so far I haven't seen a remote login to a boot screen. But if you're able to upload and boot a ISO image the hosters I've seen provide a web frontend or VNC server for that case.


----------



## jomonger (Jun 13, 2020)

Yeah.
I can boot in vnc now in my provider and it has option to preinstall FreeBSD . But I need to change in future becouse these servers are only in eu (webh.pl). Thx for info.


----------



## dekloper (Jul 24, 2020)

Hello, guys!
And are there completely free hosting offers (even with the minimum possible resources of hardware\storage)?


----------



## olli@ (Jul 24, 2020)

dekloper said:


> Hello, guys!
> And are there completely free hosting offers (even with the minimum possible resources of hardware\storage)?


Nothing comes for free.

However, there are fairly cheap offers. For example, there is netcup.eu (targeted at European customers) where you can get a minimum virtual server for about 2.50 €/month. They offer FreeBSD preinstalled, but you can also install from your own ISO image.


----------



## dekloper (Jul 24, 2020)

Sad...


olli@ said:


> Nothing comes for free.



This is not.. quite true..
But there is a paid OS is free.. BSD...
I want anagogy with hosting )))


----------



## CyberCr33p (Jul 24, 2020)

To offer free hosting someone has at least to pay for the resources (hardware, bandwidth, power, rack space, licenses). Some companies give free shared hosting to advertise their paid plans or/and they put advertisements on the websites that use their free hosting plan.

FreeBSD is free for everyone but accepts donations ( https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/ ) from companies / individuals.


----------



## Mjölnir (Jul 24, 2020)

dekloper said:


> Hello, guys!
> And are there completely free hosting offers (even with the minimum possible resources of hardware\storage)?


Yes, cloud VM but not VPS.  IIRC, these offers are restricted in traffic volume, storage & CPU time.  But enough for a personal project.  Of course you can forget about privacy, because the hoster can easily do a _man-in-the-middle_ crack.  If you want privacy, have a look at _posteo.de_ (any top level domain ending available) & _mailbox.org_.


----------



## dekloper (Jul 24, 2020)

CyberCr33p said:


> FreeBSD is free for everyone but accepts donations ( https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/ ) from companies / individuals.


I fully agree with this statement of the question...

But if we proceed from Your logic, the developer's intelligence also requires "power".. at least delicious and healthy food...


CyberCr33p said:


> To offer free hosting someone has at least to pay for the resources (hardware, bandwidth, power, rack space, licenses).


To the best of my financial ability, I am ready to do this..


----------



## CyberCr33p (Jul 24, 2020)

If I am not wrong FreeBSD has only one or two paid developers from the FreeBSD foundation. All other developers work for free because it's a hobby for them, or get paid from their employers to do some FreeBSD work.


----------



## Mjölnir (Jul 24, 2020)

CyberCr33p said:


> If I am not wrong FreeBSD has only one or two paid developers from the FreeBSD foundation. All other developers work for free because it's a hobby for them, or get paid from their employers to do some FreeBSD work.


At least they (FBSD Foundation) managed to be able to do that.  E.g. the KDE foundation or _The Document Foundation TDF_ (under german law) can not do that... :/


----------



## olli@ (Jul 24, 2020)

mjollnir said:


> If you want privacy, have a look at _posteo.de_ (any top level domain ending available) & _mailbox.org_.


They're not really anonymous, though, because you can only pay by credit card, SEPA transfer or similar. It would be a different story if they accepted anonymous payment, for example PaySafeCard (you can get these anonymously at Aldi or Saturn, for example).


----------



## Mjölnir (Jul 24, 2020)

olli@ said:


> They're not really anonymous, though, because you can only pay by credit card, SEPA transfer or similar. It would be a different story if they accepted anonymous payment, for example PaySafeCard (you can get these anonymously at Aldi or Saturn, for example).


No, that's not true.  They do _more_ than accepting anonymous payment.  In fact, you can pay cash (or sent a courier) & they do not have any connection in their papers & system's setup between your account and your payment.  Or you can give s/o else the money in cash and s/he can pay by bank transfer, credit card etc.pp.
EDIT They (at least Posteo) do not store personal data (name & adress) of their customers.  For electronic payments, obviously they have to store the metadata to comply to tax laws, but there is no link to my mail account.  The only reasons why I'm not anonymous is that I changed my e-mail stored at various sites (e.g. this forum) instead of creating a new account, and use the same laptop (host uuid).  So the admins & for shure _Ggl_ , telcos & secret services can 1+1=2.  If you switch to an anonymous e-mail provider like the above, change your machine & online habits including cuting all connections to your past, you're anonymous IMHO.  If you then use tor(1), you're invisible, if you select the tor routers carefully.


----------



## olli@ (Jul 24, 2020)

mjollnir said:


> No, that's not true.  They do _more_ than accepting anonymous payment.  In fact, you can pay cash (or sent a courier) & they do not have any connection in their papers & system's setup between your account and your payment.  Or you can give s/o else the money in cash and s/he can pay by bank transfer, credit card etc.pp.


Well, it probably depends on what level of anonymity you need. For higher requirements, anonymous digital payment like paysafecard is the way to go. Tracking it down is very difficult, close to impossible. It can only be used for paying small amounts, of course, but that shouldn’t be a problem for a mail provider who charges just a few €.

I didn’t see that the two sites you mentioned accept cash (it wasn’t listed, I think), but cash isn’t as anonymous as one might think anyway. Every form of physical payment leaves traces. Of course, it also depends on _who_ you think is after you. Or who you _think_ is after you (note the different emphasis).

And of course you should also take other precautions beside the method of payment. For example, you shouldn’t access the service from your internet uplink at home. You can also use tor, but that comes with certain other pitfalls that you need to be aware of.

This is becoming off-topic here, though … sorry for that.


----------



## Mjölnir (Jul 24, 2020)

olli@ said:


> [...] cash isn’t as anonymous as one might think anyway. Every form of physical payment leaves traces. Of course, it also depends on _who_ you think is after you. Or who you _think_ is after you (note the different emphasis).


Fingerprints? I take the cab driver to a shop, I buy s/th, let him take the odd money & send him to pay for me in cash.  On the 2nd topic: unfortunately, _they_ are after _us all_... Why is Edward Snowden in Russia?  There are numerous other news (or so-called _fake news_, depends on your mindset) about topics like this.  Plus it's commonly known what the business model of so-called _social media_ companies & _Giggle_ is.


> And of course you should also take other precautions beside the method of payment. For example, you shouldn’t access the service from your internet uplink at home.


I'm dialing in via WWAN, all I had to do is change the modem module & get another prepaid SIM card, e.g. from s/o who gives it to me and when he's asked says it's lost.  In case of a military _coup d'état_ I would steal one.


> This is becoming off-topic here, though … sorry for that.


No.  I'd say it's closely related to the topic of this thread.  Why do some people want a VPS?  They want privacy and/or anonymity, therefore they set up services like tor(1) on these VMs.


----------



## SirDice (Jul 24, 2020)

mjollnir said:


> 'm dialing in via WWAN, all I had to do is change the modem module & get another prepaid SIM card


You're forgetting the IMEI number of the phone.



mjollnir said:


> Why do some people want a VPS?


To run my services on the internet with a provider that can give me 99.999% uptime guarantees. And I don't have to spend an arm and a leg buying and maintaining the required hardware.



mjollnir said:


> They want privacy and/or anonymity


Not sure about German laws but in the Netherlands you're registered and your IP plus identity is sent to a government agency (CIOT; sorry Dutch only). No provider will openly admit this but they're bound by law to do this (I've worked for a couple of hosting providers).


----------



## dekloper (Jul 24, 2020)

mjollnir said:


> No.  I'd say it's closely related to the topic of this thread.  Why do some people want a VPS?  They want privacy and/or anonymity, therefore they set up services like tor(1) on these VMs.


I absolutely agree with you. people (literate and able to reason logically) do not want to be manipulated (with the help of "social networks", aka facebook, etc) and be at the mercy of massons-Satanists.


----------



## Mjölnir (Jul 24, 2020)

SirDice said:


> You're forgetting the IMEI number of the phone.


That identifies the modem module inside my laptop.  Thus I wrote: change the modem module.  And of course the laptop, due to the uuid.  Besides that -- the hardest part would be to change one's habits...  We can be identified by our online activities.


> Not sure about German laws but in the Netherlands you're registered and your IP plus identity is sent to a government agency (CIOT; sorry Dutch only). No provider will openly admit this but they're bound by law to do this (I've worked for a couple of hosting providers).


Our laws should be very much the same because they have to comply to EU laws.  You set up a tor(1) proxy, I do so, our friend X does, he uses yours, you use mine & I use X's.  And we select the final proxy in the chain carefully.  Voilà.  The whole tor(1)-proxy & VPN thing is a matter of trust.  And we have Freifunk


----------



## alfikmik (Dec 11, 2020)

maybe this one will be fine: https://oneprovider.com/dedicated-servers/paris-france


----------



## neel (Dec 11, 2020)

The reality is that unlike the 2000s and early 2010s, finding a FreeBSD VPS isn't too hard anymore. Not as easy as Linux, but still.

Now, even megaclouds like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have FreeBSD Images, and many Tier-2 providers like DigitalOcean, OVH, Vultr, etc. do as well. There are still many providers who don't, such as Scaleway, or make it hard, like Linode.

In the past, it was niche providers who offered FreeBSD VPSes. In the 2000s, it was mostly small Jail hosts like JohnCompanies. By the early 2010s it was from providers like BuyVM when full hardware hypervisors came, but at a premium when compared to the then-common OpenVZ and Xen. Then, bigger providers didn't even touch FreeBSD in any form, and FreeBSD on AWS then was literally a fantasy.

It's much easier now since megaclouds have FreeBSD options, unless you hate yourself and go with Oracle. And smaller providers have gone all-KVM, making it easier to run FreeBSD or any BSD.

Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but not on Azure or Hyper-V.


----------



## PMc (Dec 11, 2020)

alfikmik said:


> maybe this one will be fine: https://oneprovider.com/dedicated-servers/paris-france



Alright, I did now throw some money into that one-armed-bandit. 
And I am very curious what will happen next (never had anything to do with hosting before).


----------



## Jose (Dec 11, 2020)

alfikmik said:


> maybe this one will be fine: https://oneprovider.com/dedicated-servers/paris-france


A dedicated server in San Francisco for $40/month? That's crazy cheap!





						Dedicated servers in San Francisco, United States | OneProvider
					

Browse all dedicated server configurations in San Francisco, United States




					oneprovider.com


----------



## alfikmik (Dec 11, 2020)

PMc said:


> Alright, I did now throw some money into that one-armed-bandit.
> And I am very curious what will happen next (never had anything to do with hosting before).


I've got some servers from them, mostly xeon 4c/8t   RAM >= 16GB from sth about 2 years and they're works fine. They have some FreeBSD iso for install but latest one i have to install via ISO mounted via net (some of panels let do this) or I install that what they have and after fresh installation do immediately upgrade to version that i need.


----------



## PMc (Dec 13, 2020)

First impressions:
------------------

After the piece is delivered, there is an option "reinstall", where various OS are offered, among them FreeBSD. There one has to fill in a username and a password.

Soon it answers to ping, and also to ssh, as something called "poneybsd" - but no login appears to be possible.
Then choosing "Boot mode" -> "boot in normal mode" -> "Boot" seems to reboot, and now it appears with the configured hostname and one can login (new ssh host key). One can also su to root.

FreeBSD 11.3-RELEASE-p13 #0: Tue Sep  1 06:56:51 UTC 2020 root@amd64-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64
Slightly late, but properly patched. Not too bad as a starting.

There is no firewall active, and lots and lots of hackers appear in auth.log. (My home IP is actually located at Hetzner - and it's not as bad there.)

I didn't find a console - maybe there is none provided?

The disk is partitioned as
  2G -root-
  3G swap
227G /usr
227G /var
472G -empty-
using MBR, 1 partition and a disklabel.

Without console that will be difficult to change. (The linux images have a partition dialogue in the web interface.)

There is an option "request ipmi session", but that does just create a ticket.

Power off with "halt -p" works.

"Boot in rescue mode" results in a helptext: one gets told a username and password to connect with ssh. New host key. It's poneybsd again. The password does not work (booted FBSD-11.0). Now booting FBSD-10.1 - here the password works.
Helptext says "use sudo command for root privs", but there is no sudo installed:

>Feb  1 01:10:19 poneybsd pkg: indexinfo-0.3.1 installed
>Feb  1 01:10:19 poneybsd pkg: readline-7.0.3_1 installed
>Feb  1 01:10:19 poneybsd pkg: libffi-3.2.1_2 installed
>Feb  1 01:10:19 poneybsd pkg: gettext-runtime-0.19.8.1_1 installed
>Feb  1 01:10:24 poneybsd pkg: python27-2.7.15 installed
>Feb  1 01:10:24 poneybsd pkg: py27-setuptools-40.4.3 installed
>Feb  1 01:10:25 poneybsd pkg: py27-pip-9.0.3 installed

Hmm, that doesn't help me much.

System looks like this now:

```
Filesystem 1K-blocks   Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/md0       61319  52481    3933    93%    /
devfs              1      1       0   100%    /dev
tmpfs        3439404     24 3439380     0%    /tmp
tmpfs        3667768 228388 3439380     6%    /usr
tmpfs        3502216  62836 3439380     2%    /var/db/pkg
tmpfs        3457124  17744 3439380     1%    /var/cache/pkg
```

Not sure how that tmpfs trick is done, but the system's disk stays closed and one could now work it over - if one had rights to do so.

>Aide et documentation : http://documentation.dedibox.fr
>Console de gestion    : http://console.dedibox.fr

I don't speak french. 

One can also boot a Linux as the rescue mode - and then, wow, that has a sudo!
Alright, giving it a second try - the 11.0 rescue image now allows login, and voila, there is a sudo! 

So lets explore the production installation:
The initial root password that one has provided for installation is now placed into a file in /tmp. World readable.

The sshd_config allows root login.

> ifconfig_igb0="DHCP"

Oh well, if they insist...

resolv.conf:
> nameserver 127.0.0.1
> local_unbound_enable="YES"

In a compute center??

Lets look at the disk:

```
9 Power_On_Hours          -O--C-   038   038   000    -    27520
12 Power_Cycle_Count       -O--CK   100   100   000    -    62
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count -O--CK   100   100   000    -    24
193 Load_Cycle_Count        -O--C-   085   085   000    -    153703
194 Temperature_Celsius     -O----   125   125   000    -    48 (Min/Max 21/61)
240 Head_Flying_Hours       -O--CK   040   040   000    -    26557
241 Total_LBAs_Written      -O--CK   100   100   000    -    51734732237
242 Total_LBAs_Read         -O--CK   098   098   000    -    171273057725

Current Temperature:                    48 Celsius
Power Cycle Min/Max Temperature:     44/48 Celsius
Lifetime    Min/Max Temperature:     21/61 Celsius
Specified Max Operating Temperature:    42 Celsius
Under/Over Temperature Limit Count:   0/0
```

And I thought only I had an overtemp problem here at my location (now no longer, I built a sufficient fan array controlled by the smart data).

Next point: where are we actually located?
This would equate to the (in)famous AS12876, better known as poneytelecom.eu...

Next item: The CMOS-wallclock. It's just broken, empty, out-of-order. (See the thread about unbound.)

So far, so good. I mean, what do we expect as dedicated server hosting for 5.50€ a month? It seems they are sold out now, and I'm really happy I got one, and I hope it will not break during the next, say, five years or so.


----------



## alfikmik (Dec 13, 2020)

PMc said:


> I didn't find a console - maybe there is none provided?


You should request for IPMI session (in manage section of panel) first one is as ticket request, but later You can access IPMI on demand.


----------



## alfikmik (Dec 13, 2020)

PMc said:


> I don't speak french.


They are from canada and there is support, english language support, but they have servers locations in many countries. In other hand is sth like google translator ;-)


----------



## alfikmik (Dec 13, 2020)

PMc said:


> FreeBSD 11.3-RELEASE-p13 #0: Tue Sep 1 06:56:51 UTC 2020 root@amd64-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64
> Slightly late, but properly patched. Not too bad as a starting.


Yes, as i mention before, they have FreeBSD but I prefer to install it myself via network mounted ISO.


----------



## alfikmik (Dec 13, 2020)

PMc said:


> It seems they are sold out now, and I'm really happy I got one,


You should look for time to time, new serwers appears periodically


----------



## olli@ (Dec 14, 2020)

alfikmik said:


> In other hand is sth like google translator ;-)



There’s also the DeepL translator that often produces better results than Google. It doesn’t support translating whole web pages, though (AFAIK), so you have to use copy&paste.


----------



## amilis (Jan 7, 2022)

There is *Inleed* (in Sweden) https://inleed.com/server-hosting/vps/. You chose which ISO you want and you get it (just give them the link to the .iso). You install everything from scratch (if you want).  

You can encrypt the disk in ZFS yourself, change (host-root) pass so only you can access it (normally you can’t do this in many hosting) etc. etc. You have really good control over your VPS. 

Not the cheapest one, but stable. From €25 for 2 Xeon CPUs, 8GB ram and 100 GB SSD, 1gbps link and 1 IPv4. Fast and good support. You can specify what you want, and you get it. 

And *No*, i don’t work there!   I had a FreeBSD VPS there as a remote test server for a year.


----------



## FlorinMarian (May 16, 2022)

https://www.hazi.ro - VPS KVM & VDS (Dedicated physical threads) available in 3 countries:
- France
- Germany
- Romania


----------



## untitled (May 21, 2022)

amilis said:


> There is *Inleed* (in Sweden) https://inleed.com/server-hosting/vps/. You chose which ISO you want and you get it (just give them the link to the .iso). You install everything from scratch (if you want).


They require your personal id? Really?


----------



## Reaperzx (Jun 8, 2022)

I have used *Tilaa* for 4 years now. Was happy so far, but for the last 2 months *routing* between Amsterdam and Estonia goes via *USA*. Ping is up from 40ms to 100+ ms and I also get lag and packetloss of up to 20%.

So I no longer recommend *Tilaa* and want to switch provider.

Requirements: Be inside EU, support FreeBSD, good connection to Estonia. And sensible price too.

*EDIT*: Finally got honest answer from *Tilaa* support:
"Unfortunately, our upstream-provider has informed us that they cannot solve this issue. We're looking into other options to resolve this issue; however, these will probably not be very short term."

So I will probably move.


----------



## SirDice (Jun 8, 2022)

Don't know about their connection to Estonia but I moved from Tilaa to TransIP a couple of years ago. I had other reasons to switch (not related to anything Tilaa did or didn't do).


----------



## jbo (Jun 8, 2022)

SirDice said:


> I had other reasons to switch (not related to anything Tilaa did or didn't do).


Aaaah, it was for a woman, wasn't it?


----------



## CyberCr33p (Jun 21, 2022)

Hetzner just removed FreeBSD rescue system:



			https://forum.hetzner.com/index.php?thread/29380-hetzner-silently-discontinues-freebsd-rescue-system


----------



## jbo (Jun 21, 2022)

CyberCr33p said:


> Hetzner just removed FreeBSD rescue system:
> 
> 
> 
> https://forum.hetzner.com/index.php?thread/29380-hetzner-silently-discontinues-freebsd-rescue-system


Can't access that without an account / being logged in.


----------



## CyberCr33p (Jun 21, 2022)

jbodenmann said:


> Can't access that without an account / being logged in.


In their rescue system they were supporting both Linux and FreeBSD. Yesterday I notice that they remove FreeBSD support. Here is their reply:



> the FreeBSD Rescue has been running as a permanent beta version for quite some time and has caused continuous problems with several server models.
> 
> We were not able to fix these issues, even with support from FreeBSD maintainers.
> 
> ...


----------



## jbo (Jun 21, 2022)

What do we learn here? Never trust Germans. 

Jokes aside, what does this mean exactly? They still support FreeBSD (where "support" means: "Yeah, you can run that here") but they only provide a hands-free rescue system for Linux? Or did they drop FreeBSD support entirely (at least, officially for new customers)?

I would be really interested to know what kind of "continuous problems with several servers models" they were experiencing which they weren't able to fix "even with support from FreeBSD maintainers"? Would they be willing to elaborate on that?


----------



## CyberCr33p (Jun 21, 2022)

jbodenmann said:


> What do we learn here? Never trust Germans.
> 
> Jokes aside, what does this mean exactly? They still support FreeBSD (where "support" means: "Yeah, you can run that here") but they only provide a hands-free rescue system for Linux? Or did they drop FreeBSD support entirely (at least, officially for new customers)?
> 
> I would be really interested to know what kind of "continuous problems with several servers models" they were experiencing which they weren't able to fix "even with support from FreeBSD maintainers"? Would they be willing to elaborate on that?


In their control panel there was an option to load FreeBSD from RAM (mfsBSD). With this you could start a FreeBSD installation or do a `fsck`.
Now they remove FreeBSD rescue system and only Linux left there as an option. So to do a FreeBSD installation I build a mfsBSD with DHCP enabled and now I have to boot in Linux rescue mode, then I have to run `dd if=/root/mfsbsd.img of=/dev/nvme0n1 bs=1024`, then reboot and it boots in my mfsBSD. Then I can complete the FreeBSD installation. Also now to do a `fsck` I have to request them to connect KVM and run the `fsck` in single boot mode which is a waste of time for both them and for me.

For me their FreeBSD rescue system was very reliable and I don't believe they had issues with it either. I guess they remove it just to avoid the small extra effort to keep it. It's something that was low maintenance, they had to upgrade it once per year when a new FreeBSD version was released.


----------



## Ole (Jun 21, 2022)

I was also unpleasantly surprised by this. Moreover, some lines of dedicated servers in Hetzner were incompatible with FreeBSD before, and the rescue mode was initially disabled there. But now Hetzner preferred to turn off FreeBSD (rescue) globally, even where it worked well.

It looks like a worldwide conspiracy against FreeBSD hosting. Perhaps the *FreeBSD Foundation* should consider setting up their own independent hosting ;-) 

*2022-07-14 upd*: This HOWTO may be helpful for installation of FreeBSD via Linux Rescue in Hetzner/OVH.


----------



## jbo (Jun 21, 2022)

Ole said:


> It looks like a worldwide conspiracy against FreeBSD hosting. Perhaps the *FreeBSD Foundation* should consider setting up their own independent hosting ;-)


Powered by sysutils/cbsd!
Then hire Ole full time!


----------



## Scanline (Jul 18, 2022)

Hi guys,

I must say that it's getting harder and harder to run *FreeBSD* on a *VPS* by the day.

Digital Ocean dropped the support of FreeBSD a few days ago.
Linode support FreeBSD but still no version 13.1 ...
Vultr do not provide FreeBSD anymore. It still seems to be possible to setup FreeBSD using a custom image with an extra cost.
Scaleway do not support FreeBSD anymore.
OVH do not support FreeBSD anymore.

And if you take the page https://www.freebsd.org/commercial/isp/ most of them do not support FreeBSD anymore ....

Any thoughts ? Are we getting forced to use Google/AWS or Azure to use FreeBSD? (I am being provocative here).


----------



## jbo (Jul 18, 2022)

Scanline said:


> Any thoughts ?


I still have a FreeBSD VPS at Tilaa.

A quick look at their page also shows that FreeBSD is still supported for new instances. No problems at all. Great service, great people. Based in the Netherlands.

And the last time I talked to their support team they certainly knew their way around FreeBSD and could provide detailed FreeBSD specific help/information.


----------



## Jose (Jul 19, 2022)

Scanline said:


> (I am being provocative here).


And wrong








						Deploy FreeBSD Servers in Seconds Worldwide
					

As soon as you deploy  FreeBSD, the Vultr cloud orchestration takes over and spins up your instance in your desired data center. Powerful, flexible and secure cloud servers available in 25 worldwide locations.




					www.vultr.com
				




What I plan to do is drop any medium-to-small providers that stop supporting Freebsd like a hot rock. If that means I'll wind up on AWS, so be it. AWS won't notice us one way or the other, and it seems the community support there is pretty good.


----------



## Scanline (Jul 19, 2022)

Jose said:


> And wrong
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That is true but FreeBSD is no longer available in the installable OS despite the advertising ...

It is still a concerned to see less and less provider ...


----------



## CyberCr33p (Jul 19, 2022)

If commercial control panels such as Cpanel or Plesk support FreeBSD then I am sure that more system admins would use it.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jul 19, 2022)

Scanline said:


> That is true but FreeBSD is no longer available in the installable OS despite the advertising ...


Pretty hard to believe since that linked page blares it out loudly.

EDIT: If you have an account, log in and go here: https://my.vultr.com/deploy/


----------



## PMc (Jul 20, 2022)

Hm... is this about support? What kind of support? Usually I create an image, and then I bulk that image onto the available disk, and hope that it boots. (Usually it does.)

Now concerning support: I have machines at Scaleway. Not KVM, real metal. Once I had a machine that was advertised to run FreeBSD, but there was no FreeBSD install available. So I complained to the support - not because I need the FreeBSD install, but because a man must stand to his word, and if FreeBSD install is advertised, then I expect FreeBSD install to be available. Guess what the support told me: build yourself an image and bulk it up.

No, I don't think it is a good situation. And I don't know the reason - maybe the reason is that it is generally known that FreeBSD people are skillfull and can help themselves? Or maybe FreeBSD should have better advertising?

And then there are situations where I would need support - I mean real support. For instance, since Rel. 13 my KVMs tend to occasionally just hang somewhere after the "Timecounter" line, and I don't know why. Or, at one certain provider the KVM freezes in the very moment when one closes the vncviewer. One can open and close the vncviewer to access the machine at runtime without problem, but when booting with vncviewer open, one cannot close it later. So the trick for bringing it up to productuon is: boot into singleuser, fix up everything, then enter "reboot" and immediately close the vncviewer before the boot menu is reached. Things like this should be fixed, but trying to explain that to support is beyond my acceptable frustration level...


----------



## Jose (Jul 20, 2022)

I guess I must be dreaming


----------



## BjarneB (Jul 20, 2022)

I have been using https://www.arpnetworks.com/ for quite some years now - very satisfied.
Also I am very happy with https://contabo.com/. 
For the latter FreeBSD 13.1 image is found under standard images.


----------



## bgrant (Jul 23, 2022)

When Digital Ocean stopped supporting FreeBSD I went looking for alternatives.  So far I've tried Amazon EC2, Arpnetworks, Linode, Vultr all of which seem to do a great job of supporting FreeBSD.  I need IPV6 and there was a glitch or two along the way but in the end all four supported my FreeBSD and IPV6 needs fine. 

In another thread I listed some pros and cons of the four services.









						VPS friends of FreeBSD?
					

[posted his response from DigitalOcean -- I received a similar one]]          [...] If you wish to continue creating FreeBSD-based Droplets after July 1, we recommend downloading a cloud-ready image from the below URL and uploading it to your account as a Custom Image: [...]  Please note that...




					forums.FreeBSD.org


----------



## PMc (Jul 23, 2022)

PMc said:


> And then there are situations where I would need support - I mean real support. For instance, since Rel. 13 my KVMs tend to occasionally just hang somewhere after the "Timecounter" line, and I don't know why.


Ahh - that was a late arrival, after RC6: 9470a2f7da488f3c14051e39691fbfddcf2aa0fe


----------



## Toadstools (Aug 23, 2022)

Hola a todos!
Check Berliserv.net at https://fb.me/berliserv.net
They obey FreeBSD VPS $3 a month, FreeBSD/Arm support, and Custom FreeBSD packages for free!


----------



## SWIFTYLIFT (Aug 29, 2022)

bgrant said:


> When Digital Ocean stopped supporting FreeBSD I went looking for alternatives.  So far I've tried Amazon EC2, Arpnetworks, Linode, Vultr all of which seem to do a great job of supporting FreeBSD.  I need IPV6 and there was a glitch or two along the way but in the end all four supported my FreeBSD and IPV6 needs fine.
> 
> In another thread I listed some pros and cons of the four services.
> 
> ...


I prefer bare metal but when digital ocean made their announcement I deployed a bunch of em.  I created backups and have had good luck converting them into new FreeBSD systems.  Not really sure why they did what they did..


----------



## Cromulent (Nov 18, 2022)

bgrant said:


> When Digital Ocean stopped supporting FreeBSD I went looking for alternatives.  So far I've tried Amazon EC2, Arpnetworks, Linode, Vultr all of which seem to do a great job of supporting FreeBSD.


This is a stupid question, but how did you get Linode to work with FreeBSD? Did you upload an ISO and install it from that?


----------



## covacat (Nov 18, 2022)

there is an mfbsd image you can dd to your bootdrive from linux and boot freebsd


----------



## bgrant (Nov 18, 2022)

Cromulent said:


> This is a stupid question, but how did you get Linode to work with FreeBSD? Did you upload an ISO and install it from that?


For my early installs I used this set of instructions.  Basically you create two disks one of which is big enough for the USB installer image and dd it to that disk which you boot to do the installation.









						Install FreeBSD on Linode
					

This guide will show you how to install FreeBSD, the free and open source operating system based on the Berkeley Software Software Distribution from the late 1970s.




					www.linode.com
				




Later I used the FreeBSD raw images (you have to make sure you have a gzip image) and uploaded via the images dashboard menu.  I actually mounted the image on another system and customized it with my ssh keys and some other stuff but you don’t have to do that.  The neat thing about this is you are not installing but just creating a virtual machine using a ‘pre-installed’ generic image that is built by FreeBSD’s new version build process.  So it is a quicker way to deploy VMs.  And in the case of a customized ‘golden image’ you upload it is a couple of clicks to a fully running instance so VMs on demand.

Here is where I got the image.  Decompress the .raw.xz and rename and compress to .img.gz.  Then upload and use.



			Index of /ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/13.1-RELEASE/amd64/Latest/
		


I hope this helps.


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## Cromulent (Nov 18, 2022)

bgrant said:


> For my early installs I used this set of instructions.  Basically you create two disks one of which is big enough for the USB installer image and dd it to that disk which you boot to do the installation.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Awesome. Thank you very much. I'll try it out tomorrow.


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## nobrowser (Dec 30, 2022)

bgrant said:


> For my early installs I used this set of instructions.  Basically you create two disks one of which is big enough for the USB installer image and dd it to that disk which you boot to do the installation.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Ok, but how do you boot a non-Linux image?

I have a normal (Linux) Linode, there are 2 ways to set up boot:

1. directly with a Linode provided monolithic kernel

2. with my distribution (Debian) modular kernel in the image, via the GRUB bootloader

Over time, and especially lately, I have found [2] increasingly flakey (I try to reboot and it doesn't, it's stuck somewhere in the initramfs). So now I only do [1]. But with a FreeBSD image, I guess I'd _have_ to do [2] ? Or is there some special support for the FreeBSD bootloader? I can't find _anything_ FreeBSD related on the Linode webpages.

-- 
Ian


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## bgrant (Dec 31, 2022)

Ian, I don’t have anything to suggest for you for Debian as I didn’t try it.  My notes above worked for me two ways to get FreeBSD running.

To your flakey reboot question, I have seen issues with a number of VM providers where a reboot from the OS doesn’t always reboot and you have to go to the VM control panel and stop and restart. I don’t know why that is.  Some interaction with the OS reboot and the VM system support.

I’ve also seen a shutdown poweroff command from FreeBSD send the VM into 100% cpu usage even though FreeBSD was shutdown — perhaps some sort of CPU spin waiting for a reboot request.

Best of luck.


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## nobrowser (Jan 2, 2023)

bgrant said:


> Ian, I don’t have anything to suggest for you for Debian as I didn’t try it.  My notes above worked for me two ways to get FreeBSD running.
> 
> To your flakey reboot question, I have seen issues with a number of VM providers where a reboot from the OS doesn’t always reboot and you have to go to the VM control panel and stop and restart. I don’t know why that is.  Some interaction with the OS reboot and the VM system support.
> 
> ...


Oh, the bit about debian boot wasn't a question - just background for why I was wondering how to boot bsd.

I have now followed the separate installer image way, and it seems I'm almost there. I don't think I'll reboot this system much anyway, so maybe I can ignore that angle for now. The one thing that's _not_ working is IPv6. On the Linux system, Linode gives me an IPv6 address via SLAAC, and I can route traffic through it just fine:


```
7+0 ~$ traceroute -6 -s 2600:3c01::f03c:91ff:fe93:204b google.com
traceroute to google.com (2607:f8b0:4005:810::200e), 30 hops max, 80 byte packets
 1  2600:3c01::8678:acff:fe0d:a641 (2600:3c01::8678:acff:fe0d:a641)  4.436 ms 2600:3c01::8678:acff:fe0d:79c1 (2600:3c01::8678:acff:fe0d:79c1)  0.992 ms 2600:3c01::8678:acff:fe0d:a641 (2600:3c01::8678:acff:fe0d:a641)  4.590 ms
 2  2600:3c01:3333:3::1 (2600:3c01:3333:3::1)  1.156 ms 2600:3c01:3333:4::1 (2600:3c01:3333:4::1)  1.683 ms  1.663 ms
 3  2001:418:16::100 (2001:418:16::100)  2.254 ms  2.295 ms ix-ae-67-0.tcore1.sqn-sanjose.ipv6.as6453.net (2001:5a0:1000:500::a1)  1.419 ms
 4  ae-11.r24.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (2001:418:0:2000::8d)  10.271 ms  10.242 ms  23.940 ms
 5  ae-45.r01.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (2001:418:0:2000::ce)  2.294 ms  11.148 ms  11.155 ms
 6  eqixsjc-v6.google.com (2001:504:0:1:0:1:5169:1)  2.039 ms 2001:4860:0:1::5cc4 (2001:4860:0:1::5cc4)  2.297 ms 2001:4860:0:1::1d74 (2001:4860:0:1::1d74)  1.438 ms
 7  2001:4860:0:1::60b1 (2001:4860:0:1::60b1)  2.355 ms 2001:4860:0:1007::f (2001:4860:0:1007::f)  3.054 ms 2001:4860::12:0:aaa6 (2001:4860::12:0:aaa6)  3.156 ms
 8  2001:4860:0:1::60b3 (2001:4860:0:1::60b3)  2.030 ms 2001:4860:0:1::60b1 (2001:4860:0:1::60b1)  2.597 ms nuq04s43-in-x0e.1e100.net (2607:f8b0:4005:810::200e)  2.148 ms
```

But the equivalent on FreeBSD:


```
root@beesty:~ # traceroute6 -s 2600:3c01::f03c:93ff:fea6:826c google.com
traceroute6 to google.com (2607:f8b0:4005:80c::200e) from 2600:3c01::f03c:93ff:fea6:826c, 64 hops max, 28 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  * * *
 3  * * *
 4  * * *
 5  * * *
 6  * * *
 7  * * *
 8  * * *
 9  * * *
10  * * *
11  * * *
12  * * *
13  * * *
14  *^C
```

One difference in the configuration that I noticed may perhaps be the cause of this:

- Linux:


```
9+0 ~$ /sbin/route -n -6 | awk ' $3 ~ /^UG/ {print $0;}'
::/0    fe80::1     UGDAe 1024 2     0 eth0
```

IOW, fe80::1 is the default gateway for IPv6 routing. But

- FreeBSD:


```
root@beesty:~ # ifconfig lo0 | grep '::1'
        inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
        inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2
```

So on FreeBSD fe80::1 is one of the addresses of my loopback interface! How can I prevent that? rc.conf is mostly unmodified and reads:


```
root@beesty:~ # cat /etc/rc.conf
clear_tmp_enable="YES"
sendmail_enable="NONE"
hostname="beesty.loosely.org"
ifconfig_vtnet0="DHCP"
ifconfig_vtnet0_ipv6="inet6 accept_rtadv"
sshd_enable="YES"
# Set dumpdev to "AUTO" to enable crash dumps, "NO" to disable
dumpdev="NO"
```

Update: I see that Handbook recommends enabling / starting rtsold. I have done that now, but still I have the same behavior.


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## patmaddox (Jan 3, 2023)

Vultr still supports FreeBSD.

So do GCP and AWS. The company I work for has production FreeBSD cloud instances on GCP and AWS.


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## bgrant (Jan 4, 2023)

nobrowser said:


> The one thing that's _not_ working is IPv6. On the Linux system, Linode gives me an IPv6 address via SLAAC, and I can route traffic through it just fine:


I contacted support at linode with this exact issue and they recommended setting the following in sysctl.conf:

`net.inet6.icmp6.nd6_onlink_ns_rfc4861=1`

When using the above I was able to use the std rtadv rc.conf invocation:

`ifconfig_em0_ipv6="inet6 accept_rtadv"`


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## nobrowser (Thursday at 10:29 AM)

bgrant said:


> I contacted support at linode with this exact issue and they recommended setting the following in sysctl.conf:
> 
> `net.inet6.icmp6.nd6_onlink_ns_rfc4861=1`
> 
> ...



 You win! This seems to have been the problem. Some questions come to mind:

1. When was it you solved this? When I talked to Linode support now, they were friendly and all but totally unwilling to say anything about FreeBSD other than "we don't support it".

2. How come Linux has no problem here? As far as I understand the situation, the default behavior of FreeBSD is because accepting the off-link router advertisements Linode sends is a security risk. Does Linux ignore the risk, or maybe it has a knob too but the default is unsafe?

3. Where can I find documentation for the FreeBSD sysctl flags? The obvious manpages only have generalities, not the purpose of specific flags.

-- 
Ian


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## hpc (Friday at 2:05 PM)

Scanline said:


> OVH do not support FreeBSD anymore.
> 
> And if you take the page https://www.freebsd.org/commercial/isp/ most of them do not support FreeBSD anymore ....
> 
> Any thoughts ? Are we getting forced to use Google/AWS or Azure to use FreeBSD? (I am being provocative here).


Hello, I just subscribe for a KS-5 offer from OVH. 

FreeBSD is no more proposed as a direct OS installation as it was in the past, nevertheless they have a BYOI (Bring Your Own Image) option allowing to install our preferred system. However, I did not find a tutorial to prepare an OS image.

I did a small tutorial on own to prepare an image : https://hpcharles.wordpress.com/202...n-on-an-ovh-ks-5-using-freebsd-13-1-via-byoi/

Just curious, has somebody a better option ?
Best


----------



## puppyboy (Friday at 2:46 PM)

I run FreeBSD on a number of Hetzner VPSes and they work just fine, at least for everything I've ever needed to do.


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## karolyi (Friday at 10:00 PM)

Came from the forum newsletter, just wanted to say that Hetzner is a good choice, my server is at them, installed by me. They will give you a KVM console with which you can mount a FreeBSD image, and then take it from there.

My server is not a VPS, but a bare metal rented PC:



			https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax51-nvme


----------



## bgrant (Friday at 10:52 PM)

nobrowser said:


> You win! This seems to have been the problem. Some questions come to mind:
> 
> 1. When was it you solved this? When I talked to Linode support now, they were friendly and all but totally unwilling to say anything about FreeBSD other than "we don't support it".


Shortly after I setup my first FreeBSD VM I contacted support (5/14/22) because no matter what I did I could not get routing done for IPV6.  (Actually I may have found a static setting that worked but I wanted to try and get RTADV to work so it would be automatic).

The first level of support didn't have any useful suggestions so they bumped it to L2.  After a little back and forth they came back (5/20/22) with a few suggestions that I had already tried like making sure ICMP V6 was not blocked on my firewall and further said that their technical team suggested the sysctl setting "net.inet6.icmp6.nd6_onlink_ns_rfc4861=1" which finally fixed the issue.

Incidentally, I believe I have had to use that setting on another VPS provider but I can't recall at the moment which one.  I was on a mission to try 5 or 6 providers' support for FreeBSD at the time.


nobrowser said:


> 2. How come Linux has no problem here? As far as I understand the situation, the default behavior of FreeBSD is because accepting the off-link router advertisements Linode sends is a security risk. Does Linux ignore the risk, or maybe it has a knob too but the default is unsafe?


Don't know but suspect your guess is the likely answer.


nobrowser said:


> 3. Where can I find documentation for the FreeBSD sysctl flags? The obvious manpages only have generalities, not the purpose of specific flags.


Maybe others have a better explanation but my belief is that the Sysctl flags are buried in individual manual pages like: sysctl(3) and security(7).

Additionally from my google searching I believe that many sysctl's are buried in the source code for obscure tweaking of behavior.  If someone has found a handbook item or other source for all the switches I too would love to hear of it.


----------



## smithi (Saturday at 5:38 AM)

nobrowser said:


> 3. Where can I find documentation for the FreeBSD sysctl flags? The obvious manpages only have generalities, not the purpose of specific flags.





bgrant said:


> technical team suggested the sysctl setting "net.inet6.icmp6.nd6_onlink_ns_rfc4861=1" which finally fixed the issue.
> [...]
> Maybe others have a better explanation but my belief is that the Sysctl flags are buried in individual manual pages like: sysctl(3) and security(7).
> 
> Additionally from my google searching I believe that many sysctl's are buried in the source code for obscure tweaking of behavior.  If someone has found a handbook item or other source for all the switches I too would love to hear of it.



Only the (perhaps?) obvious sysctl -d switch, for one-line descriptions.  I know next to zero about ipv6, but just ran
`sysctl -ad | grep inet6.icmp6`
for clues, and for at least hints for manpages
`apropos 'inet6|icmp6'`


----------

