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Install Slackware on a CloudVPS by ArubaCloud
ArubaCloud offers excellent low-cost VPS services, starting at 1 € / month (at least when this article was created, feb. 2018, see ArubaCloud limitations).
This article refers to installing Slackware on CloudVPS hosting service, which is based on VMware virtualization hypervisor and uses several OS templates, Slackware not being among them. As a low-cost service, custom OS installation, management with VMware Client are not available.
You can request a free trial here.
This guide does not cover Cloud Pro or other services by ArubaCloud.
Prerequisites
Assuming you want a Slackware server hosted at ArubaCloud, here is what you need:
- ArubaCloud account
- enough credit to creat the CloudVPS you want.
- a FTP hosting space with several GB of available space and reasonable speed.
- VMware Player on your computer and at least as much free space as the CloudVPS virtual HDD
Initialization
Once you get your free trial voucher or you purchased credit, you can follow ArubaCloud's web interface to create the CloudVPS of your choice. Using the free trial voucher you can get 2 months free trial for CloudVPS Small (1xCPU, 1GB RAM, 1xETH, 20GB HDD, 2TB traffic/month).
- load credit into your account (free trial voucher or purchase credit)
- create VPS based on predefined OS template
This guide has been written using an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS template.
Information gathering
Having the VPS up and running, and after receiving your access credentials, first write down some key information:
- HDD size and layout
- Public IP (of the VPS), including netmask, gateway
Preparations
Log in to the CloudVPS using SSH.
Show IP and netmask (write it down):
ip addr list
Show default gateway (write it down):
ip route list
Show nameservers (write it down):
cat /etc/resolv.conf
Show disk layout (write down the total disk size in blocks):
fdisk -l /dev/sda
Install ncftp package:
apt-get install ncftp
Optimize disk by overwriting all free space with zeros (helps with compression):
dd if=/dev/zero of=/ZERO bs=1M; rm /ZERO
Export an image of the Aruba created server
Make sure you have enough free space in your FTP account. This will take up several GB of data.
cat /dev/sda | bzip2 | ncftpput -u USERNAME -p PASSWORD -c FTP_SERVER_ADDRESS /path/to/aruba_image_file.bz2
It is a rather dirty trick, but it works. The template contains only a bare-bones installation with minimal services running. You may check and see if there is any background daemon that might write much to the disk and stop it, but other then a few log entries, there isn't anything worth mentioning.
You can use this image to make tests on your local VMware Player, and also as a test for the FTP transfer.
Slackware virtual machine
Create your own, local, virtual machine with VMware Player.
- Start Vmware Player
- Create new virtual machine
- “I will install the operating system later”
- Choose “Linux” and “Other Linux 3/4.x 64bit”
- Name it (ie. aruba_slack)
- Maximum disk size: same as VPS HDD size (in GB); store as single file
- proceed to finish.
Modify the virtual machine you just created as follows:
- Memory = 1GB
- Processors = 1 core
- CD/DVD = use ISO image (select slackware64-14.2-install-dvd.iso locally), connected at power-on
- Network adapter = NAT, connected at power-on
- Sound card = REMOVE
- Printer = REMOVE
Start the virtual machine.
- Enter the console (click in the VM display area)
- Proceed to install Slackware as you would on a physical server with the same characteristics of your cloud server. There are no exotic hardware or settings.
During the configuration phase, assign the proper hostname, but set it to obtain IP address via DHCP.
After the first start of your fresh Slackware installation, you should set up slackpkg and perform an update.
Exporting Slackware VM image
References
* ArubaCloud by Aruba S.p.A. (IT) - cloud services provider.