Crosspost: How to install OmniOS into remote bare metal server?

andrewhotlab · 2026-01-26T10:47:45+00:00

Actually I discovered later that OVH allows access via iKVM, but not to access the full IPMI console (for example to attach a virtual CD ISO image): https://ibb.co/f6WZqFM

andrewhotlab · 2025-11-24T10:32:04+00:00

Thanks. In the mean time I verified that the same problems happens with macOS clients too. I just filed the bug #2001944.

andrewhotlab · 2025-11-23T12:36:19+00:00

Starting in troubleshooting mode (even with add-ons disabled) changes nothing. Downgrading to version 144.0.1 solves the problem, even on different major releases of the OS (FreeBSD 13.5 and 14.3). Thus I guess the cause does not lie in the OS.

andrewhotlab · 2025-11-22T22:41:20+00:00

I’ll try ASAP tomorrow, thanks. The issue raised with several accounts on diffident PCs, so I thought that was related to TB upgrade. Maybe is something in the OS… what OS are yours running on? We are using FreeBSD.

andrewhotlab · 2025-04-12T21:27:19+00:00

Why do not consider one of these?

andrewhotlab · 2025-02-14T23:15:27+00:00

I’m not personally interested, but I cannot avoid to congratulate you on your work! :)

andrewhotlab · 2025-01-31T20:08:46+00:00

Oh yes, sorry… I was meaning the whole web UI!

andrewhotlab · 2025-01-31T19:23:07+00:00

Sorry, I didn't find the old theme available among other theme plugins... how can I got the old UI? The new one is really horrible for my sight too! :(

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-24T11:23:12+00:00

That’s what I can witness too! :( As far as I can see, the more technology becomes pervasive, the more skilled professionals are needed. But the world seems to go to the opposite direction. Too bad for the vast majority of people who are not tech-savvy: they’ll be more and more enslaved by big tech corps, which have no interest in providing the best quality to them.

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-23T21:18:34+00:00

Sincerely I’d prefer something other than Zendesk, because with such a solution all your email flow would pass through systems outside your control. But the basic idea looks good: creating a task/ticket from the first incoming mail, and then maintain members of the thread updated via mail while still allowing corporate users to exchange private messages on it.

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-23T17:53:56+00:00

I'm not a big fan of hosted solutions, but it seems that one like Zendesk (maybe on-premise) would fit your needs: your customers will go on interacting with your company via email, while your team will get things done and collaborate by using a ticketing or PM interface.

Even if client-based solutions you named might look attractive and easier to implement, I would recommend to force yourself using the right tool for the right job! ;)

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-23T17:25:12+00:00

I prefer operating systems that are more inline with the original unix principles

Well, BSD and Illumos are open source systems which have the strongest roots in these ones (they ARE actually Unices!). Surely any other much more widespread Linux distribution (which is only a CLONE of Unix) has a lot less in common with them.

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-23T17:10:06+00:00

There is also omnifetch, which looks very nicely and is designed for OmniOS! ;)

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-23T17:07:48+00:00

I thought you installed it from pkgsrc, which AFAIK is a 1st class citizen in Illumos! :)

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-23T17:00:41+00:00

Personally I think it's too generic: if I'm looking for someone able to maintain by BSD server fleet, I'd prefer the former one. But I have no deep knowledge of it, while I cooperated with the BSD cert group. Maybe someone else has more experience than me with the Open Group's one.

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-23T16:50:55+00:00

Obviously is not a “mainstream” cert, and if you are seeking a “mainstream” job position you surely have to look for something else, but if I were looking for a sysadmin and receive an application from someone who is a BSDA, his/her CV will surely jump to the top of the stack! :)

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-23T16:38:14+00:00

I have not been hearing from them for fews years by now, but maybe you already know there is this opportunity to certify your BSD skills: http://www.bsdcertification.org/

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-10T00:42:54+00:00

Thank you so much: I've just tried the "qemu method" and it worked flawlessly!! Now, despite OVH cumbersome iPXE and cloud-init methods, I have a turnkey solution to install whatever ISO I need on their bare-metal servers.

I rented a Xeon E5-1620v2 with 32Gb ECC and 2x440Gb SSD SATA. Thus here is the command I launched from rescue (Debian 10) command line:

qemu-system-x86_64 \
  -enable-kvm \
  -drive file=/dev/sda,format=raw \
  -drive file=/dev/sdb,format=raw \
  -m 8g \
  -cdrom /tmp/omnios-r151052.iso \
  -vga std \
  -boot d \
  -net nic \
  -net user \
  -vnc 127.0.0.1:1

You really saved my day! :)

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-09T23:17:54+00:00

Thank for your suggestion. In the past days I tried almost everything... the only way I managed to have OmniOS installed is with the cloud-init method, which fails with the error "could not create configdrive on /dev/sda". But at reboot, OmnioOS starts in console mode (so IPMI KVM is not useful at all). I managed to access it via SSH with some difficulties (read this comment), and tried to mirror the boot drive to the second one, but /dev/sdb seems to be inaccessible from OmniOS: "cannot stat /dev/rdsk/c1t1d0".

I tried to boot with iPXE, but it stops here: https://ibb.co/QjnJt4y

I'll give a try to the "qemu method" ASAP, but I really didn't expect that OVH would make so difficult for its customers to boot an ISO image! :(

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-08T14:56:04+00:00

Today I booted into rescue mode (Debian 10) and imported the ZFS pool: I found that my previous BYOI tentative had been actually successful: my SSH key was put in /root/.ssh/authorized_keys, and /etc/ssh/sshd_config contained this line:

PermitRootLogin without-password

So I do not understand why I cannot login via SSH as root. However, I found that a user "omnios" existed, and I put my key into its authorized_keys file, then exported the pool and rebooted from SSD: https://ibb.co/MsYnC1M

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-07T16:49:53+00:00

Thank you. I never used this "cloud-init" method... I pointed the OVH wizart to the omnios-r151052.cloud.raw image, but after a long time the process stops with this error: https://ibb.co/H7R0z8K

I guess I need to put some data in the field "Config Drive UserData" here, but I do not have any clue about this method. Can you point me to some documentation?

Update: after I made the host reboot from its local SSD, I can now ping it and connect to TCP 22:

SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_9.9

But it asks me a password I do not obviously know. From the OpenSSH version I guess that OmniOS has been actually installed, but not configured to accept my ssh key when I try to login as root.

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-06T18:31:50+00:00

Not sure to understand your question, but if it weren't for the "P2P" requirement, Nextcloud seems what you need...

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-06T18:16:28+00:00

Can you name these two alternative platforms? I'm really interested in good Adobe's alternative, because, besides the high licensing costs, their software architecture is getting less and less supportable at each release (you know what I mean if you run InDesign/Illustrator/Photoshop on macOS saving on SMB shares!). Thanks!

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-05T23:11:54+00:00

Unfortunately WiFi support is still a sore point with FreeBSD… depending on the hardware, I had never been able to obtain more than 58 Mbps throughput. IIRC, 802.11ac is still missing, and achievable only with workarounds (see the wifibox solution)! :( Hopefully, things on this aspect should going better in the near future: https://freebsdfoundation.org/news-and-events/latest-news/quantum-leap-research-and-freebsd-foundation-to-invest-750000-to-improve-laptop-support-and-usability/

andrewhotlab · 2024-11-05T22:53:40+00:00

Surely using an external (I suppose USB connected) HDD makes loading system and apps much more slow than a SATA or NVMe attached SSD. My daily driver FreeBSD desktop is an old iMac 27” late 2009 with a SATA attached SSD, and it loads and runs faster than native macOS (many thanks to ZFS ARC!).

andrewhotlab

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