Custom ISO (Arch Linux) on RackNerd VPS

ask_seek_knock

I've been using RackNerd's VPS for several months, which is satisfying enough
considering its attractive price and stable hardware. Nothing to complain about,
really.

It's hoped, however, that the VPS runs my preferred Linux flavour. The
default OSes (variants of RedHat or Debian) are certainly good enough for most
people in most scenarios, but there are 2 reasons which make Arch Linux my
preference:
1. Bleeding-edge softwares
We can't tell great differences between one software from the one months
before, especially for those with CLI only. Nevertheless, some softwares I need
to use are in highly improvement, and their version in Debian's repository is
more than one year behind, which I consider as too "stable".
2. Personal familiarity
I've used Arch Linux for several years, and what still impresses me are it's
minimalism and clear, detailed wiki. On the other hand, I always need to consult
the Pacman Rosetta to use apt or yum package manager.

Days ago, I came across a thread in this forum, that RackNerd's VPS supports
custom iso (Windows is of course excluded), so I tried to open a ticket,
asking a technician if it's possible, and luckily the reply is positive. Since
there are no options in the control panel, we need to provide the name and
download link of the iso, which the technician in RackNerd mounted manually.
And after changing the boot order to cdrom first, rebooting the original system,
we could happily start the installation.

Something to notice:
1. RackNerd doesn't support VM image.
Although Arch Linux offers VM image, which
frees us from the tiresome installation, RackNerd seems only support ISO format,
instead of qcow2. Digital Ocean, Hetzner Cloud, Linode, etc support qcow2.
Maybe RN should consider offering Arch Linux in the template, or at least
advertising its support of custom iso. This is a great selling feature.
2. The latest (2020.10.01) Arch Linux iso won't boot in VM. for an unknown reason
At first, I was dismayed at the failure of boot on VPS, and was about to give up,
because there is nothing I can do about it. But after downloading the iso and
trying booting on my VirtualBox locally, I realised that the culprit might be the iso
itself. So I made another attempt with (2020.08.01) iso, which booted as expected.
To avoid wasting time, you may want to follow this.

I'd like to give thanks and respect to the technician in RackNerd, for his/her
timely and accurate support.

There were several rounds of our conversation, and
the replies are within 10 minutes, plus their understanding of my question.
(In 2015, my experience with a VPS provider, whose name is forgotten, is no pleasant.
The support staff had no idea what I had asked for (is it hard to understand
what "enable TUN/TAP" mean?) and directly refused by saying "Oh sorry, we don't
support this, you may add more money to ....". (TUN/TAP support is included,
or why I bought the OpenVZ?))

Any reasonable comments are welcome.

Shados

1. RackNerd doesn't support VM image.

It kinda does, by virtue of being a standard KVM VPS booted via BIOS: you can prepare a disk image, boot from their rescue system, and unpack the image directly onto /dev/vda. I did something similar to install NixOS on mine.

cybertech

thats good. i asked Pacificrack for custom ISO mount , and their reply was "please add $3000 for managed vps service"

dom1024

@cybertech said:
thats good. i asked Pacificrack for custom ISO mount , and their reply was "please add $3000 for managed vps service"

jmgcaguicla

@Shados said:

1. RackNerd doesn't support VM image.

It kinda does, by virtue of being a standard KVM VPS booted via BIOS: you can prepare a disk image, boot from their rescue system, and unpack the image directly onto /dev/vda. I did something similar to install NixOS on mine.

I did it that way when I used to run Arch on my servers, I have a scriptable local VM that spits out LUKS encrypted disk images which I then just dd into the disks.

Back then I had to maintain a bunch of Ansible playbooks to manage them, now I run NixOS and deployment could not be easier. nixops deploy -d my-network.

rattlecattle

You can use netboot.xyz with iPXE. Among other distros netboot supports Arch.

This wont require to ask the provider to mount the iso for you.

https://netboot.xyz/docs/

dahartigan

@cybertech said:
thats good. i asked Pacificrack for custom ISO mount , and their reply was "please add $3000 for managed vps service"

That's an expensive ISO lol

ask_seek_knock

@Shados Installing customized system from rescue mode?
Amazing, I didn't know this before, and I thought only when the system breaks shall we use the rescue mode. I will give it a try someday.

@rattlecattle netboot is great too.

dustinc

Hi @ask_seek_knock — thank you for taking the time to share your experience! We’re happy to hear that you’re satisfied with the level of service we’re delivering here at RackNerd.

As you’ve pointed out, if you’re wanting a different OS that we do not already have available as an OS template, we can always mount custom ISO’s upon request 24x7 It's refreshing to hear that our support team has been responsive, and helpful (this is what we aim for) as a team. In regards to Arch Linux, we'll look at introducing Arch Linux as an OS template in the future as well.

We sincerely appreciate your business.

dev_vps

@dustinc said:
Hi @ask_seek_knock — thank you for taking the time to share your experience! We’re happy to hear that you’re satisfied with the level of service we’re delivering here at RackNerd.

As you’ve pointed out, if you’re wanting a different OS that we do not already have available as an OS template, we can always mount custom ISO’s upon request 24x7 It's refreshing to hear that our support team has been responsive, and helpful (this is what we aim for) as a team. In regards to Arch Linux, we'll look at introducing Arch Linux as an OS template in the future as well.

We sincerely appreciate your business.

I have requested Custom ISO upload numerous times from RackNerd customer service, and most of the time it was done in 10-20 minutes

Amazing customer service
@dustinc 👏🏼👏🏼

dev_vps

And VPS is super stable for streaming trading chart. The average cpu utilization stays below 20%.

https://i.ibb.co/M2BCjcq/Rack-Nerd-VPS.jpg

ask_seek_knock

@dustinc Well, I'm looking forward to IPv6 support outside Los Angeles data centres.
Dual stack networking really boosts your competitiveness.

fadedmaple

@Shados said:

1. RackNerd doesn't support VM image.

It kinda does, by virtue of being a standard KVM VPS booted via BIOS: you can prepare a disk image, boot from their rescue system, and unpack the image directly onto /dev/vda. I did something similar to install NixOS on mine.

Can you elaborate please

SP

TimboJones

@fadedmaple said:

@Shados said:

1. RackNerd doesn't support VM image.

It kinda does, by virtue of being a standard KVM VPS booted via BIOS: you can prepare a disk image, boot from their rescue system, and unpack the image directly onto /dev/vda. I did something similar to install NixOS on mine.

Can you elaborate please

Flagged to be banned.

Also, can bots implement question marks for questions? Jesus Christ.

dahartigan

@TimboJones said: Jesus Christ

or skip to 1:14

zhi

apt-get install ca-certificates wget
wget http://tinyurl.com/vps2arch
chmod +x vps2arch
./vps2arch

ask_seek_knock

@zhi said:
apt-get install ca-certificates wget
wget http://tinyurl.com/vps2arch
chmod +x vps2arch
./vps2arch

The script has limited scopes, which unfortunately doesn't include RN. Otherwise I wouldn't need to do all the staff.
Posting something unverified, especially unattended scripts, is almost always a piece of cake.

dahartigan

Many moons ago I was experimenting with Windows and thought it would be interesting to sideload Windows onto a RN box that I had. I was successful, until I made public the method I used (yeah yeah) and it no longer works.

You used to be able to use rescue to download a disk img directly to your drive using any combination of tools alongside dd, but that was killed in action and I found another way to do it and posted it (yeah yeah) and then THAT got burned too.

Moral of the story here, I strongly believe that RN don't want people installing Windows on their Linux servers and I actually really 100000% agree with that stance, if it's true. Why? Windows is a resource hog and requires way more than Linux to function. At scale, many people doing that would result in the nodes turning to mush (like other providers who straight up allow Windows)

RN might have another business reason for not allowing one to sideload Windows (like licensing - I have to admit, my "test" I did was with an unlicensed Windows 10 installation and we all know how much of a no-no that is)

If anyone is trying to install Windows on their RN and they are failing, it's not you. If you are successful in installing Windows on a RN server then for christ's sake, don't do what I did and blab to the world about it lol.

403_Forbidden

You can install ArchLinux via rescue mode .

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_from_existing_Linux#Using_pacman_from_the_host_system

fadedmaple

@TimboJones said:

@fadedmaple said:

@Shados said:

1. RackNerd doesn't support VM image.

It kinda does, by virtue of being a standard KVM VPS booted via BIOS: you can prepare a disk image, boot from their rescue system, and unpack the image directly onto /dev/vda. I did something similar to install NixOS on mine.

Can you elaborate please

Flagged to be banned.

Also, can bots implement question marks for questions? Jesus Christ.

WebProject

@dahartigan said:

@cybertech said:
thats good. i asked Pacificrack for custom ISO mount , and their reply was "please add $3000 for managed vps service"

That's an expensive ISO lol

Or can be very incompetent support as custom ISO is supported by majority providers.