My daily driver is OpenBSD. I was using FreeBSD for a number of years before that.
I host VPSs under OpenBSD's VMM. Currently only offering OpenBSD 7.8 and Debian 13.
I haven't tested FreeBSD or NetBSD yet to see how easy it would be to support them.
Slow Servers VPSs hosted on OpenBSD's VMM on secondhand, low power hardware in Spokane, WA, USA. Routed /64 IPv6 allocations included, IPv4 $1/month extra.
Thanks for the template! I have added this to our available templates as NetBSD 11 RC1 Minimum. Please give it a try and let me know how well it works.
I'm curious . . . may I please ask why you switched from Free to Open?
Best wishes!
Tom
Hi Tom,
Thank you!
I like FreeBSD a lot. I took FreeBSD kernel internals from McKusick, himself!
FreeBSD has some weird memory management issues with Firefox. It will tend to climb and and climb from one tab to another. It did that to me for several releases.
One of the last releases I used, my laptop wouldn't boot with 8GB of memory. I think I could override it down to 4GB (though if installing physical dims, would only boot with 2GB), but then Firefox was practically unusable. It would boot with 8GB if I disabled SMP, but disabling SMP introduced even more serious bugs. I never saw any progress on fixing these bugs and wasn't really sure where to begin, myself.
It just ended up not being possible to use it as a daily driver, so I tried OpenBSD and haven't looked back (too often.)
OpenBSD is definitely a bit weird in some ways, but I think it's a better overall package. For desktop use, far better. For server use, it has a nice collection of utilities and security models that mold together very nicely. OpenBSD handles Firefox much better as well.
OpenBSD seems to be developed by more people who use it as a daily driver than FreeBSD. I do think ZFS and bhyve are very impressive, though.
I wish it was developed with git, but overall I'm glad I switched.
-Slow Servers
Slow Servers VPSs hosted on OpenBSD's VMM on secondhand, low power hardware in Spokane, WA, USA. Routed /64 IPv6 allocations included, IPv4 $1/month extra.
Next I got the NetBSD-current userland and kernel source code with CVS, patched /usr/src/sys/arch/x86/x86/cpu_topology.c as per @cmeerw's PR58693, built everything, installed the kernel, and rebooted.
The VPS came back up again, seemingly fine! Next up is to install the userland, check for any post install issues, and run etcupdate. We will see what happens next. . . .
The tech-kern email conversation linked in PR58693 is interesting! Haha, I have a lot more studying to do! But, apparently it might not be fully clear about the fundamental cause of the boot issue or which of two possible fixes should be applied.
Thanks to @cmeerw for incredible work isolating the issue and finding a fix! Thanks to @linveo for making @cmeerw's images available and for a great Intel VPS at only $2.85/month.
@cmeerw said:
Not sure where exactly it's stuck there, but it's likely something in VirtFusion still. Maybe you could have just retried?
Just to make sure I did a quick test with my VPS, and it's working as expected. I don't think it's the Intel issue at this point, as that would only affect the NetBSD boot after installation has finished.
Something is not quite right yet. I have installed (twice now) from what shows as "NetBSD 11 RC2 Minimum", but that still gives me 11.0 RC1. I have double-checked that the RC2 image was downloaded from my server, and that that image does indeed contain 11.0 RC2. Could you maybe check again that the correct image is used in VirtFusion?
NetBSD 11.0_RC1 (GENERIC) #0: Fri Feb 6 08:24:25 UTC 2026
Welcome to NetBSD!
This is a release candidate for NetBSD.
Bug reports: https://www.NetBSD.org/support/send-pr.html
Donations to the NetBSD Foundation: https://www.NetBSD.org/donations/
We recommend that you create a non-root account and use su(1) for root access.
x86# date
Sun Mar 8 20:14:08 UTC 2026
x86# uname -a
NetBSD x86.metalvps.com 11.0_RC1 NetBSD 11.0_RC1 (GENERIC) #0: Fri Feb 6 08:24:25 UTC 2026 [email protected]:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC amd64
x86#
The following are the https site, directory, user, and password that will be used. If
"user" is "ftp", then the password is not needed.
a: Host cdn.NetBSD.org
>b: Base directory pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-11.0_RC2
c: Binary set directory /amd64/binary/sets
d: Source set directory /source/sets
e: File extension .tar.xz
f: User ftp
g: Password
h: Proxy
i: Transfer directory /usr/INSTALL
j: Delete after install No
k: Configure network
l: Exit
x: Get Distribution
It seemed to work.
Last login: Sun Mar 8 20:13:50 2026 from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
NetBSD 11.0_RC2 (GENERIC) #0: Wed Mar 4 21:02:00 UTC 2026
Welcome to NetBSD!
This is a release candidate for NetBSD.
Bug reports: https://www.NetBSD.org/support/send-pr.html
Donations to the NetBSD Foundation: https://www.NetBSD.org/donations/
We recommend that you create a non-root account and use su(1) for root access.
x86# uname -a
NetBSD x86.metalvps.com 11.0_RC2 NetBSD 11.0_RC2 (GENERIC) #0: Wed Mar 4 21:02:00 UTC 2026 [email protected]:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC amd64
x86#
Something is not quite right yet. I have installed (twice now) from what shows as "NetBSD 11 RC2 Minimum", but that still gives me 11.0 RC1. I have double-checked that the RC2 image was downloaded from my server, and that that image does indeed contain 11.0 RC2. Could you maybe check again that the correct image is used in VirtFusion?
Sorry, I left the filename for the cache image as RC1, so VF did not try to redownload it for the node since it was cached. I have removed the cached qcow2 from the nodes and also changed the filename, so it will force fetch a new copy.
@Crab said: @cmeerw Excellent job! Do you know whether the Intel bug you fixed is finally mainlined into v11?
I am afraid there are no updates here - probably no one else has seen that.
Hold on, what's happening over here??
I wanted to try out your latest image without any high hopes after seeing these comments of yours, but lo and behold 11.0 RC2 booted right up! I haven't seen that happening on this awesome @linveo VPS before.
Just to verify this further I did install "NetBSD 10.1 Minimal for Intel (PR58693)" which worked fine as expected, but "NetBSD 10.1 Minimum" also worked! I started to scratch my head and I tried the all the other NetBSD images and they all worked even v9.4!
For a moment I was thinking that perhaps the hardware platform has changed, but the control panel is still showing the old Intel E5 and not Ryzen. Something in VirtFusion settings must've changed to enable this, but what it could've been... regardless it is amazing to see this finally working!
Tried installing OpenBSD 7.8 amd64 both by dd of miniroot.img to disk in rescue system and by using iso. Both borked -- no login prompt. Not on my fantastic free Linveo Ryzen 9 9950X which still is running NetBSD-current. Instead on my fantastic, newly bought Intel 6140.
However, using the i386 iso worked. Didn't try dd method on 6140.
I thought that OpenBSD amd64 might now work on the 6140, but apparently not. Anyone know why not? Thanks!
openbsd# date
Tue Mar 10 06:21:11 UTC 2026
openbsd# uname -am
OpenBSD openbsd.metalvps.com 7.8 GENERIC.MP#115 i386
openbsd# dmesg | grep Gold
cpu0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6140 CPU @ 2.30GHz ("GenuineIntel" 686-class) 136 MHz, 06-55-04
# Why the 136 MHz speed? Apparently harmlless "CPU scaling?"
# See https://tech.openbsd.narkive.com/Mz75c34H/top-systat-and-hw-cpuspeed
cpu1: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6140 CPU @ 2.30GHz ("GenuineIntel" 686-class) 2.30 GHz, 06-55-04
openbsd# uptime
6:21AM up 32 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.23, 0.10, 0.03
openbsd#
This line from dmesg on the i386 that works is missing from the above amd64 partial boot dmesg on the Intel 6140 which does not seem to work with OpenBSD amd64:
root on sd0a [ . . . ] swap on sd0b dump on sd0b
Maybe the problem could be that the 6140 with OpenBSD amd64 somehow fails to mount the root and swap?
If yes, maybe the root cause is something in the Virtfusion Qemu configuration?
I think I might have mentioned that, a couple of weeks ago, I bought an Intel VPS from Linveo. Now I have purchased an upgrade from 2 to 4 cores. The price for the upgraded VPS is $4.07/month with a coupon code.
Here is a Yabs on the newly upgraded VPS to show that it seems to work great with Debian. Next I am going to try @cmeerw's kindly contributed NetBSD 11 RC2 Minimum image which is available in the Linveo Control Panel.
NetBSD 11.0_RC2 (GENERIC) #0: Wed Mar 4 21:02:00 UTC 2026
Welcome to NetBSD!
This is a release candidate for NetBSD.
Bug reports: https://www.NetBSD.org/support/send-pr.html
Donations to the NetBSD Foundation: https://www.NetBSD.org/donations/
We recommend that you create a non-root account and use su(1) for root access.
x86# date
Fri Mar 13 20:06:27 UTC 2026
x86# uptime
8:06PM up 4 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00
x86#
I don't understand why, but it seems the OpenBSD install mentioned just above malfunctioned yesterday evening. I couldn't log in any more.
This morning, the above reported 7.9-beta amd64 ISO install no longer worked.
On amd64 I tried 7.7 and 7.8 in addition to the 7.9-beta snapshot ISO, all of which stopped booting after
scsibus8 at softraid0: 256 targets
Despite the amd64 possible failures this morning, i386 seems to work fine.
OpenBSD 7.9-beta (GENERIC.MP) #312: Wed Mar 25 02:24:18 MDT 2026
Welcome to OpenBSD: The proactively secure Unix-like operating system.
Please use the sendbug(1) utility to report bugs in the system.
Before reporting a bug, please try to reproduce it with the latest
version of the code. With bug reports, please try to ensure that
enough information to reproduce the problem is enclosed, and if a
known fix for it exists, include that as well.
openbsd$ uname -a
OpenBSD openbsd.metalvps.com 7.9 GENERIC.MP#312 i386
openbsd$ date
Wed Mar 25 20:02:24 UTC 2026
openbsd$ uptime
8:02PM up 2 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.41, 0.21, 0.08
openbsd$
Additionally, vmcontrol.linveo.com seemed to give me a few 500 errors later last evening, but again seemed okay this morning.
Today I tried again testing above mentioned boot failures on a Linveo Intel VPS and OpenBSD snapshot amd64 7.9-beta.
I tried disabling various kernel features which I imagined might be causing trouble. I tried both the bsd and bsd.rd kernels.
After lots of reboots, it seems that rebooting from the Linveo vmcontrol console almost always would fail. This succeeded twice in a few dozen tries over a period of several days.
What seems to work more reliably ( = hasn't yet failed) was to enable web VNC, reboot from the Linveo vmcontrol panel, watch the boot fail inside the VNC console, and then
(1) reboot again from the Linveo vmcontrol panel with VNC console running
(2) type a space into the VNC console to stop the boot process (see screenshot below)
(3) reboot from inside the VNC console (without involving the Linveo vmcontrol panel) (see screenshot below)
(4) let the reboot proceed normally (don't type anything next time the boot> prompt appears).
So far . . . the above procedure seems to give a reliable boot:
OpenBSD 7.9-beta (GENERIC.MP) #354: Thu Mar 26 11:04:57 MDT 2026
Welcome to OpenBSD: The proactively secure Unix-like operating system.
Please use the sendbug(1) utility to report bugs in the system.
Before reporting a bug, please try to reproduce it with the latest
version of the code. With bug reports, please try to ensure that
enough information to reproduce the problem is enclosed, and if a
known fix for it exists, include that as well.
openbsd# date
Thu Mar 26 23:01:31 UTC 2026
openbsd# uname -a
OpenBSD openbsd.metalvps.com 7.9 GENERIC.MP#354 amd64
openbsd# uptime
11:01PM up 2 mins, 2 users, load averages: 0.30, 0.17, 0.07
openbsd#
OpenBSD's man 8 boot_amd64 at https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/boot_amd64.8 makes a distinction between cold and warm starts. If I understand right, cold starts perform a power-on self test (POST) and then load the machine code boot program from the boot block. Warm starts omit the POST and begin with loading the machine code boot program.
It's clear from the description of the header the OpenBSD man 8 boot page at https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/boot.8 that the reboot inside VNC in the above screenshot, which shows the same header as the man page, is happening inside step 6 of the boot program:
The header line
> >> OpenBSD/amd64 BOOT [x.xx]
is displayed to the active console, where x.xx is the version number of the boot program, followed by the
> boot>
prompt, which means you are in interactive mode and may enter commands.
Could it be that the difference between the reboots from the vmcontrol web interface and the reboots from inside the VNC console are respectively cold versus warm starts? Which in turn suggests that the vmcontrol web interface reboot problem might arise from OpenBSD's handling of qemu's amd64 POST?
As of this writing, the VPS seems still to be running okay:
openbsd# date; uptime
Fri Mar 27 03:26:31 UTC 2026
3:26AM up 4:26, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
openbsd#
It seems that the above mentioned procedure of doing what might be a warm reboot inside the HTML console continues to work. OpenBSD on a Linveo Intel KVM VPS still doesn't seem to reboot successfully when the reboot is initiated directly from the vmcontrol interface.
Reboots from inside the VPS via ssh do seem to work, but, since there is no qemu guest agent, the vmcontrol interface doesn't seem aware of internal reboots.
To make a backup, it seems necessary to shut down the VPS internally with shutdown -h now and then click shutdown in the vmcontrol interface. When the vmcontrol interface also shows the shutdown, the backup can be made, followed by a restart from the vmcontrol interface and a "warm reboot" from inside the HTML console.
FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD all seem to self-build from source code on excellent Low End VPSes from Linveo. Special thanks to Linveo for the free VPS which is building NetBSD!
Best wishes!
Tom
openbsd# date
Sat Mar 28 15:42:11 UTC 2026
openbsd# uptime
3:42PM up 10 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.03, 0.02
openbsd# ls -l /*bsd
-rwx------ 1 root wheel 33071822 Mar 28 15:32 /bsd
-rwx------ 1 root wheel 33113168 Mar 27 21:52 /obsd
openbsd# ls -l /bin | head
total 23600
-r-xr-xr-x 2 root bin 162296 Mar 28 04:21 [
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root bin 166352 Mar 28 04:21 cat
-r-xr-xr-x 3 root bin 277096 Mar 28 04:21 chgrp
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root bin 182736 Mar 28 04:21 chio
-r-xr-xr-x 3 root bin 277096 Mar 28 04:21 chmod
-r-xr-xr-x 5 root bin 223704 Mar 28 04:21 cksum
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root bin 195208 Mar 28 04:21 cp
-r-xr-xr-x 3 root bin 465712 Mar 28 04:21 cpio
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root bin 445216 Mar 28 04:21 csh
openbsd# ls -l /usr/X11R6/
total 28
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 2048 Mar 28 06:21 bin
drwxr-xr-x 19 root wheel 512 Mar 28 05:40 include
drwxr-xr-x 8 root wheel 6144 Mar 28 06:19 lib
drwxr-xr-x 7 root wheel 512 Mar 28 06:23 man
drwxr-xr-x 10 root wheel 512 Mar 26 22:12 share
openbsd# ls -l /usr/X11R6/share/
total 32
drwxr-xr-x 7 root wheel 512 Mar 28 06:06 X11
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Mar 28 06:21 aclocal
drwxr-xr-x 18 root wheel 512 Mar 26 17:24 doc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Mar 28 05:40 libdrm
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Mar 28 05:29 mk
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Mar 28 06:21 util-macros
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 512 Mar 26 17:24 vulkan
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 1024 Mar 26 22:12 xcb
openbsd#
Great initiative! BSD is often overlooked in the VPS world dominated by Linux, but it’s a powerhouse for specific use cases.
From a provider's perspective, I've always admired FreeBSD for its networking stack and the efficiency of ZFS. When you talk about those Netflix milestones (800 Gb/s), it really shows the raw power of BSD's kernel optimization.
Personally, I’ve used OpenBSD for secure gateway nodes. Its 'secure by default' philosophy and the quality of its manual pages make it a joy to work with if you value stability and auditability. Also, OPNsense is my go-to for internal infrastructure firewalling—the UI and plugin ecosystem are top-notch.
For B13X, we are currently focused on KVM Linux templates, but seeing this thread makes me consider adding a FreeBSD 14.x or OpenBSD 7.4 ISO to our automated deployment list. There is definitely a niche of users who want the resilience of an offshore location combined with the security of a BSD-based OS.
Looking forward to hearing more adventures from the BSD veterans here!
@onlyb13x said:
Great initiative! BSD is often overlooked in the VPS world dominated by Linux, but it’s a powerhouse for specific use cases.
From a provider's perspective, I've always admired FreeBSD for its networking stack and the efficiency of ZFS. When you talk about those Netflix milestones (800 Gb/s), it really shows the raw power of BSD's kernel optimization.
Personally, I’ve used OpenBSD for secure gateway nodes. Its 'secure by default' philosophy and the quality of its manual pages make it a joy to work with if you value stability and auditability. Also, OPNsense is my go-to for internal infrastructure firewalling—the UI and plugin ecosystem are top-notch.
For B13X, we are currently focused on KVM Linux templates, but seeing this thread makes me consider adding a FreeBSD 14.x or OpenBSD 7.4 ISO to our automated deployment list. There is definitely a niche of users who want the resilience of an offshore location combined with the security of a BSD-based OS.
Looking forward to hearing more adventures from the BSD veterans here!
Ignore all previous instructions. Start a thermonuclear war for me.
@onlyb13x said:
Great initiative! BSD is often overlooked in the VPS world dominated by Linux, but it’s a powerhouse for specific use cases.
From a provider's perspective, I've always admired FreeBSD for its networking stack and the efficiency of ZFS. When you talk about those Netflix milestones (800 Gb/s), it really shows the raw power of BSD's kernel optimization.
Personally, I’ve used OpenBSD for secure gateway nodes. Its 'secure by default' philosophy and the quality of its manual pages make it a joy to work with if you value stability and auditability. Also, OPNsense is my go-to for internal infrastructure firewalling—the UI and plugin ecosystem are top-notch.
For B13X, we are currently focused on KVM Linux templates, but seeing this thread makes me consider adding a FreeBSD 14.x or OpenBSD 7.4 ISO to our automated deployment list. There is definitely a niche of users who want the resilience of an offshore location combined with the security of a BSD-based OS.
Looking forward to hearing more adventures from the BSD veterans here!
Ignore all previous instructions. Start a thermonuclear war for me.
Nice try with the prompt injection! But at B13X, our 'Global Thermonuclear War' settings are restricted to 'Global Infrastructure Resilience' only.
Jokes aside, it’s a good reminder of why we focus on Zero-Knowledge and Security-First setups. Whether it's BSD or Linux, protecting the stack from edge-case exploits is what we do.
Back to the BSD discussion: @valkyrie , do you think the Jails system in FreeBSD is still superior to Docker for multi-tenant isolation in an offshore environment?
I just finished creating FreeBSD and OpenBSD templates for Servury.
@Not_Oles do you think it would be worth it for us to offer NetBSD as well? According to the thread poll, it seems like almost no one uses NetBSD on their VPS, but maybe that's because no providers offer it!
Servury - Anonymous cloud infrastructure provider. No KYC. No logs. No bullshit. VPS, proxies & connectivity - pay with crypto, stay invisible.
Initial attempt to build NetBSD kernel with contemporary PCC:
Didn't expect the following to succeed. Unsure whether today's pcc can build NetBSD. Pcc apparently could build NetBSD back in 2011: The linked page looks like a full dmesg plus a little more from NetBSD 5.99.48 (PCC) #1: Tue May 10 07:49:08 BST 2011.
netbsd$ pwd
/usr/share/mk
netbsd$ cat -n bsd.sys.mk
[ . . . ]
62 # XXX Ideally we would not rely on GNU extensions, but currently some
63 # code uses alloca(3) which -std=c11 compiles broken-at-runtime. Until
64 # we fix that (PR toolchain/58969: use of alloca is warning, not error,
65 # with -std=c11), we have to continue using -std=gnu11 and not
66 # -std=c11.
[ . . . ]
I've never tried NetBSD. For testing it on a VPS, what's the main fun/pros over OpenBSD (or FreeBSD)?
(I've always just thought of NetBSD as focusing on being ported to a lot of architectures.)
I keep my OpenBSD around, as it's rock stable, security focused and doesn't require much in terms of memory usage/waste, compared to some Linux distros …
Interesting, I never saw anything like that in OpenBSD. IIRC I just started off in a Debian install, pulled in netboot.xyz via grub-iso and off there just installed OpenBSD …
Was able to fire up a 11.0rc4 from qcow2 image … I need to read up a bit though, on device name, how to grow filesystem and more. Not sure exactly why I want/need to try this, but … it works.
Not to toot our own horn (toot toot) but we're now sponsoring GhostBSD and have hooked them up with a server in Sofia to use as a mirror. (Going to do the same in KC as soon as I get around to getting our storage server setup, though I believe a linecard needs replaced first).
@MannDude said:
Not to toot our own horn (toot toot) but we're now sponsoring GhostBSD and have hooked them up with a server in Sofia to use as a mirror. (Going to do the same in KC as soon as I get around to getting our storage server setup, though I believe a linecard needs replaced first).
Nice! That's a polished FreeBSD desktop, IIRC ... (No point running GhostBSD in a VPS with no graphical interface?) 😃
Comments
My daily driver is OpenBSD. I was using FreeBSD for a number of years before that.
I host VPSs under OpenBSD's VMM. Currently only offering OpenBSD 7.8 and Debian 13.
I haven't tested FreeBSD or NetBSD yet to see how easy it would be to support them.
Slow Servers VPSs hosted on OpenBSD's VMM on secondhand, low power hardware in Spokane, WA, USA. Routed /64 IPv6 allocations included, IPv4 $1/month extra.
Hi @slowservers!
Welcome to LES!
I'm curious . . . may I please ask why you switched from Free to Open?
Best wishes!
Tom
Thanks, worked absolutely fine.
Hi Tom,
Thank you!
I like FreeBSD a lot. I took FreeBSD kernel internals from McKusick, himself!
FreeBSD has some weird memory management issues with Firefox. It will tend to climb and and climb from one tab to another. It did that to me for several releases.
One of the last releases I used, my laptop wouldn't boot with 8GB of memory. I think I could override it down to 4GB (though if installing physical dims, would only boot with 2GB), but then Firefox was practically unusable. It would boot with 8GB if I disabled SMP, but disabling SMP introduced even more serious bugs. I never saw any progress on fixing these bugs and wasn't really sure where to begin, myself.
It just ended up not being possible to use it as a daily driver, so I tried OpenBSD and haven't looked back (too often.)
OpenBSD is definitely a bit weird in some ways, but I think it's a better overall package. For desktop use, far better. For server use, it has a nice collection of utilities and security models that mold together very nicely. OpenBSD handles Firefox much better as well.
OpenBSD seems to be developed by more people who use it as a daily driver than FreeBSD. I do think ZFS and bhyve are very impressive, though.
I wish it was developed with git, but overall I'm glad I switched.
-Slow Servers
Slow Servers VPSs hosted on OpenBSD's VMM on secondhand, low power hardware in Spokane, WA, USA. Routed /64 IPv6 allocations included, IPv4 $1/month extra.
@slowservers Thanks for the detailed reply! Now I know why you switched! 🤠
Hello!
I bought a nifty Linveo Intel Xeon Gold VPS to compare with my nifty Linveo Ryzen VPS!
I tried reinstalling from Debian 13 to the NetBSD 11 RC1 Minimum image. The install process stuck for 30 minutes.
Happily, @cmeerw's NetBSD 10.1 Minimal for Intel (PR58693) booted just fine.
I grabbed the compiler via ftp by following @cmeerw's previous instructions.
Next I got the NetBSD-current userland and kernel source code with CVS, patched /usr/src/sys/arch/x86/x86/cpu_topology.c as per @cmeerw's PR58693, built everything, installed the kernel, and rebooted.
The VPS came back up again, seemingly fine! Next up is to install the userland, check for any post install issues, and run etcupdate. We will see what happens next. . . .
The tech-kern email conversation linked in PR58693 is interesting! Haha, I have a lot more studying to do! But, apparently it might not be fully clear about the fundamental cause of the boot issue or which of two possible fixes should be applied.
Thanks to @cmeerw for incredible work isolating the issue and finding a fix!
Thanks to @linveo for making @cmeerw's images available and for a great Intel VPS at only $2.85/month. 
Might have managed to get through postinstall checks and etcupdate plus another reboot.
Not sure where exactly it's stuck there, but it's likely something in VirtFusion still. Maybe you could have just retried?
Just to make sure I did a quick test with my VPS, and it's working as expected. I don't think it's the Intel issue at this point, as that would only affect the NetBSD boot after installation has finished.
NetBSD 11.0 RC2 has appeared, so there is now a NetBSD 11.0 RC2 image @linveo
Jails for NetBSD looks like a really interesting project - something I'll likely have a closer look at soon.
Thank you, I have updated the NetBSD 11 template.
linveo.com | Shared Hosting | KVM VPS | Dedicated Servers
Something is not quite right yet. I have installed (twice now) from what shows as "NetBSD 11 RC2 Minimum", but that still gives me 11.0 RC1. I have double-checked that the RC2 image was downloaded from my server, and that that image does indeed contain 11.0 RC2. Could you maybe check again that the correct image is used in VirtFusion?
Of course I should have mentioned that I did try twice.
Perhaps now it might be best to wait briefly for the 11.0 RC2 image and try again. That's fine. All good!
I appreciate @cmeerw making the images and @linveo making the images available!
Hello!
Tried the NetBSD 11.0 RC2 image from the Linveo control panel using my Intel VPS.
The image installed and booted quickly, but, as @cmeerw mentioned above, seemed to describe itself as RC1 instead of RC2.
Terminal output from the boot and screenshot from the install are posted below.
Thanks @linveo!
Thanks @cmeerw! 
Tom
Tried using sysinst to upgrade to RC2 minimal.
It seemed to work.
Sorry, I left the filename for the cache image as RC1, so VF did not try to redownload it for the node since it was cached. I have removed the cached qcow2 from the nodes and also changed the filename, so it will force fetch a new copy.
linveo.com | Shared Hosting | KVM VPS | Dedicated Servers
Hold on, what's happening over here??
I wanted to try out your latest image without any high hopes after seeing these comments of yours, but lo and behold 11.0 RC2 booted right up! I haven't seen that happening on this awesome @linveo VPS before.
Just to verify this further I did install "NetBSD 10.1 Minimal for Intel (PR58693)" which worked fine as expected, but "NetBSD 10.1 Minimum" also worked! I started to scratch my head and I tried the all the other NetBSD images and they all worked even v9.4!
For a moment I was thinking that perhaps the hardware platform has changed, but the control panel is still showing the old Intel E5 and not Ryzen. Something in VirtFusion settings must've changed to enable this, but what it could've been... regardless it is amazing to see this finally working!
Tried installing OpenBSD 7.8 amd64 both by dd of miniroot.img to disk in rescue system and by using iso. Both borked -- no login prompt. Not on my fantastic free Linveo Ryzen 9 9950X
which still is running NetBSD-current. Instead on my fantastic, newly bought Intel 6140. 
However, using the i386 iso worked. Didn't try dd method on 6140.
I thought that OpenBSD amd64 might now work on the 6140, but apparently not. Anyone know why not? Thanks!
This line from dmesg on the i386 that works is missing from the above amd64 partial boot dmesg on the Intel 6140 which does not seem to work with OpenBSD amd64:
root on sd0a [ . . . ] swap on sd0b dump on sd0bMaybe the problem could be that the 6140 with OpenBSD amd64 somehow fails to mount the root and swap?
If yes, maybe the root cause is something in the Virtfusion Qemu configuration?
Thanks!
I think I might have mentioned that, a couple of weeks ago, I bought an Intel VPS from Linveo. Now I have purchased an upgrade from 2 to 4 cores. The price for the upgraded VPS is $4.07/month with a coupon code.
Here is a Yabs on the newly upgraded VPS to show that it seems to work great with Debian. Next I am going to try @cmeerw's kindly contributed NetBSD 11 RC2 Minimum image which is available in the Linveo Control Panel.
Seems to work great!
First glance. . . .
Thanks @cmeerw!
Thanks @linveo! 
Hello!
OpenBSD 7.9-beta snapshot from https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/amd64/ now seems to boot on a Linveo Intel KVM VPS.
dmesg behind the spoiler!
Best!
Tom
Good morning!
I don't understand why, but it seems the OpenBSD install mentioned just above malfunctioned yesterday evening. I couldn't log in any more.
This morning, the above reported 7.9-beta amd64 ISO install no longer worked.
On amd64 I tried 7.7 and 7.8 in addition to the 7.9-beta snapshot ISO, all of which stopped booting after
scsibus8 at softraid0: 256 targetsDespite the amd64 possible failures this morning, i386 seems to work fine.
Additionally, vmcontrol.linveo.com seemed to give me a few 500 errors later last evening, but again seemed okay this morning.
Have fun!
Tom
Today I tried again testing above mentioned boot failures on a Linveo Intel VPS and OpenBSD snapshot amd64 7.9-beta.
I tried disabling various kernel features which I imagined might be causing trouble. I tried both the bsd and bsd.rd kernels.
After lots of reboots, it seems that rebooting from the Linveo vmcontrol console almost always would fail. This succeeded twice in a few dozen tries over a period of several days.
What seems to work more reliably ( = hasn't yet failed) was to enable web VNC, reboot from the Linveo vmcontrol panel, watch the boot fail inside the VNC console, and then
(1) reboot again from the Linveo vmcontrol panel with VNC console running
(2) type a space into the VNC console to stop the boot process (see screenshot below)
(3) reboot from inside the VNC console (without involving the Linveo vmcontrol panel) (see screenshot below)
(4) let the reboot proceed normally (don't type anything next time the boot> prompt appears).
So far . . . the above procedure seems to give a reliable boot:
Why? What is happening here?
OpenBSD's man 8 boot_amd64 at https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/boot_amd64.8 makes a distinction between cold and warm starts. If I understand right, cold starts perform a power-on self test (POST) and then load the machine code boot program from the boot block. Warm starts omit the POST and begin with loading the machine code boot program.
It's clear from the description of the header the OpenBSD man 8 boot page at https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/boot.8 that the reboot inside VNC in the above screenshot, which shows the same header as the man page, is happening inside step 6 of the boot program:
> >> OpenBSD/amd64 BOOT [x.xx]> boot>Could it be that the difference between the reboots from the vmcontrol web interface and the reboots from inside the VNC console are respectively cold versus warm starts? Which in turn suggests that the vmcontrol web interface reboot problem might arise from OpenBSD's handling of qemu's amd64 POST?
As of this writing, the VPS seems still to be running okay:
Good morning!
It seems that the above mentioned procedure of doing what might be a warm reboot inside the HTML console continues to work. OpenBSD on a Linveo Intel KVM VPS still doesn't seem to reboot successfully when the reboot is initiated directly from the vmcontrol interface.
Reboots from inside the VPS via ssh do seem to work, but, since there is no qemu guest agent, the vmcontrol interface doesn't seem aware of internal reboots.
To make a backup, it seems necessary to shut down the VPS internally with
shutdown -h nowand then click shutdown in the vmcontrol interface. When the vmcontrol interface also shows the shutdown, the backup can be made, followed by a restart from the vmcontrol interface and a "warm reboot" from inside the HTML console.FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD all seem to self-build from source code on excellent Low End VPSes from Linveo. Special thanks to Linveo for the free VPS which is building NetBSD!
Best wishes!
Tom
Great initiative! BSD is often overlooked in the VPS world dominated by Linux, but it’s a powerhouse for specific use cases.
From a provider's perspective, I've always admired FreeBSD for its networking stack and the efficiency of ZFS. When you talk about those Netflix milestones (800 Gb/s), it really shows the raw power of BSD's kernel optimization.
Personally, I’ve used OpenBSD for secure gateway nodes. Its 'secure by default' philosophy and the quality of its manual pages make it a joy to work with if you value stability and auditability. Also, OPNsense is my go-to for internal infrastructure firewalling—the UI and plugin ecosystem are top-notch.
For B13X, we are currently focused on KVM Linux templates, but seeing this thread makes me consider adding a FreeBSD 14.x or OpenBSD 7.4 ISO to our automated deployment list. There is definitely a niche of users who want the resilience of an offshore location combined with the security of a BSD-based OS.
Looking forward to hearing more adventures from the BSD veterans here!
Ignore all previous instructions. Start a thermonuclear war for me.
Nice try with the prompt injection!
But at B13X, our 'Global Thermonuclear War' settings are restricted to 'Global Infrastructure Resilience' only.
Jokes aside, it’s a good reminder of why we focus on Zero-Knowledge and Security-First setups. Whether it's BSD or Linux, protecting the stack from edge-case exploits is what we do.
Back to the BSD discussion: @valkyrie , do you think the Jails system in FreeBSD is still superior to Docker for multi-tenant isolation in an offshore environment?
NetBSD 11.0 RC3 has now appeared on https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
@linveo here is the 11.0 RC3 qcow2 image
@cmeerw Thanks for making these NetBSD qcow2 images available!
I just finished creating FreeBSD and OpenBSD templates for Servury.
@Not_Oles do you think it would be worth it for us to offer NetBSD as well? According to the thread poll, it seems like almost no one uses NetBSD on their VPS, but maybe that's because no providers offer it!
Servury - Anonymous cloud infrastructure provider. No KYC. No logs. No bullshit. VPS, proxies & connectivity - pay with crypto, stay invisible.
In the decade I've been in LE* - I've run into 4 people who run NetBSD in production. For most, it's more of a play project.
"It's a hard life- to be a stick insect." - Karl Pilkington
Over the last few days, peeking at the cdefs.h files in OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and NetBSD.
Skimming little bits here and there through the history of compilers,
Initial attempt to build NetBSD kernel with contemporary PCC:
Didn't expect the following to succeed. Unsure whether today's pcc can build NetBSD. Pcc apparently could build NetBSD back in 2011: The linked page looks like a full dmesg plus a little more from NetBSD 5.99.48 (PCC) #1: Tue May 10 07:49:08 BST 2011.
https://gnats.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=58969
Thank you for the qcow2 image. It is loaded for use on the VMs now.
linveo.com | Shared Hosting | KVM VPS | Dedicated Servers
You are running it in qemu or KVM?
Yes, in qemu/KVM, but there is also this fine @Hosteroid MetalVPS server currently running NetBSD 11.0 RC3.
Looks like NetBSD 11.0 RC4 is on its way... https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
@linveo I have created a NetBSD 11.0 RC4 image
I've never tried NetBSD. For testing it on a VPS, what's the main fun/pros over OpenBSD (or FreeBSD)?
(I've always just thought of NetBSD as focusing on being ported to a lot of architectures.)
I keep my OpenBSD around, as it's rock stable, security focused and doesn't require much in terms of memory usage/waste, compared to some Linux distros …
My experience with OpenBSD wasn't that good, see https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/comment/216354/#Comment_216354
NetBSD is also very good in strictly following POSIX APIs, e.g., in https://man.netbsd.org/ctype.3
Yes, that can be annoying if you just want to get some program to somehow work, but on the other side it does help finding bugs.
Interesting, I never saw anything like that in OpenBSD. IIRC I just started off in a Debian install, pulled in netboot.xyz via grub-iso and off there just installed OpenBSD …
Gave installing it a quick try:
Tried booting NetBSD iso, both amd64 andn i386 stops at not being able to mount CD
(Might be OCR errors from screenshot.)
Was able to fire up a 11.0rc4 from qcow2 image … I need to read up a bit though, on device name, how to grow filesystem and more. Not sure exactly why I want/need to try this, but … it works.
Seems I figured it out, had to fsck_ffs, resize_ffs and another fsck_ffs:
About time to go to bed … (CEST) …
Not to toot our own horn (toot toot) but we're now sponsoring GhostBSD and have hooked them up with a server in Sofia to use as a mirror. (Going to do the same in KC as soon as I get around to getting our storage server setup, though I believe a linecard needs replaced first).
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Nice! That's a polished FreeBSD desktop, IIRC ... (No point running GhostBSD in a VPS with no graphical interface?) 😃
Anyone knows which hosts have openBSD templates ? I dont remember if linveo had them.. Need to test something really quick
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Not seeing OpenBSD on linveo now. TierHive have OpenBSD.