Is it possible to start VPS instnaces with a vmdk image?
what
vmdk is for vmware
What are my options for automating installation of a VPS instance?
in what context
I would like to automate the installation of new VPS instances, so I don't have to manually work through bsdinstall of each
I could package a custom install image with a bsdinstall script if booting to custom images were supported
arp vm's come with existing base images for freebsd, openbsd, etc.
Yes I understand that.  However that's for a manual install
i don't get what you're asking
Do you not automate any deployment?
you mean using puppet?
etc
I should say provisioning
provisioning is mostly automated.
Basically, you can start up a VPS with a standard install image, and manually work through the bsdinstall dialogs, or you can automate the process so you come back and it's done for you
but if you just get a freebsd arp vm it'll have the base install already done.
Using a custom install image is a common way of accomplishing this
How then do you provide things such as a custom partition map?
yeah there are multiple ways to automate installs.
you can do dhcp, and not set a hostname
and then haev exactly the same image
but if you want static ip set normalyl and hostnames etc then you need to have slight variations.
but unless you have like 20+ vm's
you'll probably find it's faster just to isntall by hand and not worry about it :/
i mean the bulk work load of maintaining multiple vm's is specing, deciding what they run, architecture etc.
Ok
and the install just goes along on it's own mostly
I won't be relying on manual installs, but thanks
automation usually helps only if you're doing things a lot, or there are complications
Yea, sure does
well good luck :)
Thank you
Have you seen Jetpack?
nope
iocage?
Do you run FBSD?
a little
not much
Oh
I run FBSD on 6 servers right now
no wait.. 7
forgot about my DO box
my "buildbot" box
$5/mo for 20G of SSD running FBSD 10.1, spins up in 55 seconds.  No CDROM access, so I can't put down ZFS on root though. :(
"use promo code FLOSS in the billing section for a free $10 credit!" :)
probably not enough ram for zfs
i wonder what freebsd is like with low ram and zfs
linux is pretty bad for it
well, they have bigger ram boxes, but they don't offer root on /
err.. root on zfs
root is always on / :)
zfsonlinux is acquiring large block size finally
there's a lot of development on the open source zfs fork in general.
is it fairly useable?  can it boot from zfs?
oops... gotta relocate...
it can boot
but i don't boot off it
it's been usable for ages.
I do have several Linux systems that boot off ZFS, can confirm it works fine.
cool
maybe I can finally learn linux then :)
I've got FreeBSD instances virtualized on this development Mac using Parallels, and it's all working very well
What a boost to development
kellytk: I've done similar things, though I wound up using VirtualBox because it was easier to deal with headless/screenless VMs.
sjackso: That's an interesting thought.  How did Parallels come up short WRT headless VMs?
kellytk: it's been some months now, so I don't rightly remember.  It's possible that it works fine but I just didn't figure it out.
In general it seemed like VB had better tools for controlling things from the command line, so it was easier to write scripts to start and stop VMs, etc.
(looks like I would have been okay if I'd done a little googling and found http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17098927/how-do-i-run-ubuntu-server-headless-using-parallels-desktop )
Oh
sjackso: Was this on a Mac host?
kellytk: Yeah
I'm currently working out synchronizing a local folder to a remote (the FBSD instance) directory.  Fortunately my SFTP client of choice apparently supports this.  Did you tool anything for that?
kellytk: I haven't done anything fancier than scp and git remotes.
sjackso: how does one setup virtualbox headless? do you use vagrant?
Is 10 minutes too short to expire name resolution cache locally running unbound?  The services running on the box must adapt to name address changes in no more than 10 minutes
mnathani_: Let me introduce you to vboxmanage :P https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html
Though I suspect if he was anything like me before I discovered Proxmox, and even after for various reasons I still ran a VirtualBox host, he just creates the VM graphically
but it starts and runs headlessly
I would just connect to the host and open VirtualBox over X forwarding
(VirtualBox always handled USB passthrough much, much better than KVM or OpenVZ for that matter)
brycec: Have you worked with iocage or Jetpack?
Never even heard of Jetpack
@google Jetpack
1,230,000 total results returned for 'Jetpack', here's 3
3ofcoins/jetpack · GitHub (https://github.com/3ofcoins/jetpack) jetpack - **PROTOTYPE** FreeBSD Jail/ZFS based implementation of the  Application Container Specification.
Jet pack - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_pack) The most common use of the jetpack has been in extra-vehicular activities for  astronauts. Despite decades of advancement in the technology, the challenges of  ...
square/jetpack · GitHub (https://github.com/square/jetpack) Jun 3, 2015 ... jet.pack: package your JRuby rack app for Jetty. Contribute to jetpack  development by creating an account on GitHub.
I've toyed with replacing my usage of ezjail with iocage, but just not a lot of time right now.
(And neither of those applied to my usage of VirtualBox or KVM/qemu that I was talking about)
That's correct
brycec: thanks
I aliased vboxmanage to 'v' I used it so frequently :)
wow - you can run "standard" containers directly on freebsd?
it shouldn't be hard, since freebsd can be nudged to understand linux syscalls directly
Yea, neat stuff happening with virt and automation of FBSD
how much isolation is there?
hmm i never had any problems with passing usb controllers through with xen
other than knowing which ports i'd passed through
but you can determine that reasonably quickly.
as for usb devices, i didn't know qemu could pass specific usb devices through