[rudra]

I have some questions for the current users of vps 2,3,6,7,9,16,17,18 .... these are the kvm VPS s without control panel.

1) what are the Linux flavours you use ? centos, ubuntu. please mention version

2) could you afford to spare / reserve say 3-5 GB space on your HDD for system recovery or reinstall on your own any time you like ? 

3) do you want option to emergency reboot to a live environment with vnc access and recover / reinstall from there ?

4) do you use passwords or key file to login to your vps through ssh ?

5) what is your current hdd partition scheme ? what would you do differently if you could configure it during install ?

thanks

re. I'm working on getting a unified system to fresh install Linux on these VPSs. So your input is very important.

thanks..

[chanalku91]

I am currently holding a VPS 6!

1) what are the Linux flavors you use? centos, ubuntu. please mention version !
I am currently using CentOS 8

2) could you afford to spare / reserve say 3-5 GB space on your HDD for system recovery or reinstall on your own any time you like?
Well, only 5GB for system recovery, I wouldn't mind!

3) do you want option to emergency reboot to a live environment with vnc access and recover / reinstall from there?
Yes, I want that option!

4) do you use passwords or key file to login to your vps through ssh?
I turned off the password login to the SSH server, and only used the ED25519 key to log in! it's for the security of VPS, from cyber attacks!

5) what is your current hdd partition scheme? what would you do differently if you could configure it during install?
I eft this configuration at the default ISO Installer!

[ikk157]

I have some questions for the current users of vps 2,3,6,7,9,16,17,18 .... these are the kvm VPS s without control panel.

1) what are the Linux flavours you use ? centos, ubuntu. please mention version

2) could you afford to spare / reserve say 3-5 GB space on your HDD for system recovery or reinstall on your own any time you like ? 

3) do you want option to emergency reboot to a live environment with vnc access and recover / reinstall from there ?

4) do you use passwords or key file to login to your vps through ssh ?

5) what is your current hdd partition scheme ? what would you do differently if you could configure it during install ?

thanks

re. I'm working on getting a unified system to fresh install Linux on these VPSs. So your input is very important.

thanks..

My current VPS: VPS 9

1) what are the Linux flavours you use ? centos, ubuntu. please mention version

Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS

2) could you afford to spare / reserve say 3-5 GB space on your HDD for system recovery or reinstall on your own any time you like ? 

Yup, since VPS 9 comes with 100GB of SSD storage, I won’t mind having 3-5GB reserved for that purpose.

3) do you want option to emergency reboot to a live environment with vnc access and recover / reinstall from there ?

Since VPS 9 doesn’t have a holder-accessible panel (to anyone saying it doesn’t have a panel, it actually does but only the admins have access to it due to all the VPS 9s being under one user), it would be great to have something I can personally access to perform said tasks without bothering the admins. However, i’ll only use it if the reinstall is done from iso... I dont want to reinstall from a template.

4) do you use passwords or key file to login to your vps through ssh ?

I use a key to login through ssh. I have password login disabled to maximize security.

5) what is your current hdd partition scheme ? what would you do differently if you could configure it during install ?

I left it as the default partition scheme that the ubuntu server iso installation wizard utilized (didn’t really check as it doesn’t matter in my case).

A few questions sparked into my mind:

1) Do you have approval from the admins to implement said system?

2) How is it going to work? Since SolusVM’s API doesn’t have much client-side to make this work. And VPS 9 is managed by the admins through SolusVM.

[rudra]

....
A few questions sparked into my mind:

1) Do you have approval from the admins to implement said system?

2) How is it going to work? Since SolusVM’s API doesn’t have much client-side to make this work. And VPS 9 is managed by the admins through SolusVM.

1) I won't be accessing your accounts or anything. I will just leverage grub2 options, preseeding (ubuntu / debian) / kickstart (centos) options, kernel parameters etc to cobble together a script that one can choose to setup on their vps to have the options available to them. I dont think i am going to do template or install partition image. I myself like installing on the fly from iso using netboot. so your system will download the iso and proceed.
so i didn't have to ask for their permission. But I am sure admins will like it a lot as will you guys. They won't have to invest as much time attending to reinstall requests and you will be able to reinstall a fresh system as many times as you want, all by yourself.

2) i think i said above already. it is just unattended install with a process on cron that polls an url YOU set up. you will signal it through the url about what to do. It will help in case you lose access to your system.

edit. I am sure you guys are very knowledgeable and ingenious. You can make your own solution if you want to.

[ikk157]

1) I won't be accessing your accounts or anything. I will just leverage grub2 options, preseeding (ubuntu / debian) / kickstart (centos) options, kernel parameters etc to cobble together a script that one can choose to setup on their vps to have the options available to them. I dont think i am going to do template or install partition image. I myself like installing on the fly from iso using netboot. so your system will download the iso and proceed.
 so i didn't have to ask for their permission. But I am sure admins will like it a lot as will you guys. They won't have to invest as much time attending to reinstall requests and you will be able to reinstall a fresh system as many times as you want, all by yourself.

2) i think i said above already. it is just unattended install with a process on cron that polls an url YOU set up. you will signal it through the url about what to do. It will help in case you lose access to your system.

edit. I am sure you guys are very knowledgeable and ingenious. You can make your own solution if you want to.

Thank you for the clarification.

I really like this idea and I appreciate you putting a lot of time and effort into bringing this together.

However, won’t that require changing the boot order/booting from a different partition? The issue with VPS 9 is that you can’t change the boot order through VNC, nor is there a boot menu. It forces whatever boot order is set in SolusVM, there’s absolutely no way of changing it/booting from different media through VNC. 

And to everyone saying that i need to spam esc or the F keys on boot... no, that does absolutely nothing on VPS 9 due to the issue described above. I even had @"Hidden Refuge" try it out a few months back and the outcome was the same.

[Mashiro]

@ikk157

I will just leverage grub2 options, preseeding (ubuntu / debian) / kickstart (centos) options, kernel parameters etc to cobble together a script that one can choose to setup on their vps to have the options available to them.

@rudra will be using the existing bootloader of the installed OS to run his emergency reinstallation / reinstallation system / script. That doesn't require any boot order change in BIOS.

[ikk157]

@ikk157


@rudra will be using the existing bootloader of the installed OS to run his emergency reinstallation / reinstallation system / script. That doesn't require any boot order change in BIOS.

Oh now i get it, thanks for the clarification. Was wondering how this would’ve been pulled together, but it all makes sense now.

If the script works with no issues, it would be a huge milestone specially when it comes to the VPSs that don’t have a “holder-panel”. I can’t describe how much superior this would be compared to bothering the admins.

Not only will this decrease the workload on the admins (which as most of us know, is something they can really appreciate), but it also provides us (the VPS holders) with a significantly faster way of performing OS installations immediately without having to wait/rely on anyone else. 

Kudos @rudra !

[sagher]

My current VPS is from post2host VPS-9 kvm

1) what are the Linux flavours you use ? centos, ubuntu. please mention version

i am currently using a old distro Ubuntu 14.04 LTS x64 bits.

2) could you afford to spare / reserve say 3-5 GB space on your HDD for system recovery or reinstall on your own any time you like ?

i really wish to do this but i am not a developer or IT expert. i am just a learner.

3) do you want option to emergency reboot to a live environment with vnc access and recover / reinstall from there ?

This is also new for me.

4) do you use passwords or key file to login to your vps through ssh ?

No

5) what is your current hdd partition scheme ? what would you do differently if you could configure it during install ?

Default by service provider and ubuntu done. i never make any change.

[Sn1F3rt]

@rudra .. Really appreciate your initiative at conducting this survey Here are my responses:

1. For production, I use CentOS distribution only. Usually it's 7 but I might use CentOS 8 for testing compatibility of my applications.

2. Yes, and in fact I'm doing that. I'm using something called REAR (RElax And Recover) to store a copy of the OS as it was when freshly installed. REAR is a part of the distro, so I could just revert back to a fresh installation whenever I feel the OS needs to be reinstalled. Sparing a few gigs on a 100 GB SSD is worth the hassle you could avoid in future.

3. I'd like it if possible. Although the (2) point eliminates the need for this, it'd still be beneficial if I want another distro (or another version of the same distro).

4. I use both. And yeah it's not a joke. At my mobile for example, where I use Termius to SSH into my VPSes, I store the SSH key instead of storing my password as it has the auto-login feature. On other systems where I ise putty or anything else to login, I prefer a password. SSH isn't served over port 22 on my VPSes so really doesn't matter if I don't disable root login.

5. For the OS partitions, I've a custom scheme which HR did for me while installing the OS from ISO. 512 MiB for bootloader and kernel, 78 GiB for the "home" partition and 25 GiB for the "root" partition.

Hope that helps!

[rudra]

...
1) what are the Linux flavours you use ? centos, ubuntu. please mention version

i am currently using a old distro Ubuntu 14.04 LTS x64 bits.

2) could you afford to spare / reserve say 3-5 GB space on your HDD for system recovery or reinstall on your own any time you like ?

i really wish to do this but i am not a developer or IT expert. i am just a learner.
...

4) do you use passwords or key file to login to your vps through ssh ?

No
....

Thanks everyone for your replies.

@sagher

thanks. Now regrding your responses,
a) why are you using 14.04 ubuntu lts still ? is it really necessary for you ? like a requirement for something you use ?
b) what question 2 want to find out is if you are using your storage near to its capacity ? In other words, how much free space you have ?
c) this is to know more about your response to question 4.

so you dont use ssh to access your system ? Then how do you use it ? I mean you gotta use ssh to login at least once to setup vnc ?

Thanks