// HACKER NEWS — CYBERSECURITY
Run OpenBSD on DigitalOcean for $4/month
My homepage now runs on OpenBSD with
httpd(8) and Let's
Encrypt via
acme-client(1). I previously
hosted it on GitHub
Pages and then
eventually moved to Cloudflare
Pages because both
options were free and easy. Free and easy is cool, and I understand
that writing software full-time leaves us wanting absolutely nothing
to do with computers after we punch out, but lately I have been
missing the do-it-yourself web that I grew up with. Some of my
favorite times growing up included installing and configuring
UNIX-based operating systems and spending hours trying to understand
how computers worked. I even met one of my closest friends online
through a FreeBSD UNIX shell
account forum more than
20 years ago.
So, in that vein, I wanted to write something on how you can get up
and running on OpenBSD with DigitalOcean for $4 a month. Well, really,
it's $4.24 after tax but that's still pretty good!
There are a few different options when it comes to downloading
OpenBSD, but the
quickest method is to grab the miniroot image.
Once you are signed up and logged in to DigitalOcean, go to Backups &
Snapshots under the STORAGE section in the left-hand navigation. Click
Upload an Image. Select the miniroot79.img file we downloaded
earlier. Select a datacenter that makes sense for you. Select Other
for the distribution (Hey, DigitalOcean, why no BSD distribution?).
Give the custom image a name, something clever like "OpenBSD
miniroot79". Finally, click the Add Custom Image button.
DigitalOcean will charge you for hosting custom images. Make sure you come back
to this page to delete the image after your server is up and running.
Click Droplets under the COMPUTE section in the left-hand nav. We are going to
create the basic droplet that
includes 512MB memory, 1vCPU, 500GB transfer, and 10GB of disk space.
Select a datacenter region that makes sense for you.
Choose the miniroot79.img file we uploaded earlier under the Custom Images tab.
Under the Authentication section add an SSH Key. DigitalOcean does
not actually add this key but it is required to create the
droplet. Follow the instructions on how to create and add an SSH key.
The rest of the options are up to you. Just a heads up, though, I have
noticed that it won't let you create the droplet with IPv6 enabled.
Finally, give your droplet a name and click Create Droplet.