Oracle Cloud Free Tier

bloodyprince

@wlambrechts said:
I'm lucky to have 2 instances in Germany.

Does anyone know how to reinstall an instance ? Or does one need to delete one and create a new one (with the risk of having another IP address or getting an "out of capacity" message) ?

Also: anyone tried to install Windows on such a machine ? Not sure it is supported in the "always free" tier though...

Reserve an IP address. That's how you don't have any worry to loosing IP.
Windows doesn't qualify as "always free".

TimboJones

Just getting "session expired" when trying to add credit card. Will try again later.

hzr

TimboJones said: Just getting "session expired" when trying to add credit card. Will try again later.

Are you running ad block or anything? They do a bunch of device fingerprinting that will result in rejection if you block it.

NanoG6

@hzr said:

TimboJones said: Just getting "session expired" when trying to add credit card. Will try again later.

Are you running ad block or anything? They do a bunch of device fingerprinting that will result in rejection if you block it.

Ah thanks! I even use all available cards and they denied all of it. And you're right it's because:
1. I'm using pi-hole adblock
2. My CITY address is different from the IP address location.
All good now 👌

creep

@NanoG6 said:

@hzr said:

TimboJones said: Just getting "session expired" when trying to add credit card. Will try again later.

Are you running ad block or anything? They do a bunch of device fingerprinting that will result in rejection if you block it.

Ah thanks! I even use all available cards and they denied all of it. And you're right it's because:
1. I'm using pi-hole adblock
2. My CITY address is different from the IP address location.
All good now 👌

lol number 2. if that is the case, I will 100% out of luck since I will always have different city address from my IP location.

NanoG6

@creep said:

@NanoG6 said:

@hzr said:

TimboJones said: Just getting "session expired" when trying to add credit card. Will try again later.

Are you running ad block or anything? They do a bunch of device fingerprinting that will result in rejection if you block it.

Ah thanks! I even use all available cards and they denied all of it. And you're right it's because:
1. I'm using pi-hole adblock
2. My CITY address is different from the IP address location.
All good now 👌

lol number 2. if that is the case, I will 100% out of luck since I will always have different city address from my IP location.

Oooh that's why I open ip2location and maxmind first before signing up 😂. Seems like you don't need to entry your actual address.

daman

bloodyprince said: Reserve an IP address. That's how you don't have any worry to loosing IP.

Is reserving IP address is part of "Always free" quota? Also, there doesn't seem to be any way one can reinstall the OS without terminating the instance. Did anyone try this?

farsighter

@dfroe said:
Anybody managed to (easily) install Debian?

There does not seem to be any support for custom ISO, virtual media, iPXE or even KVM console to manually install OS from scratch.

I guess dd'ing a raw disk image over the virtual hard disk won't work due to UEFI and some oracle cloud magic required to properly boot the VM.

Installing Debian via debootstrap from Ubuntu looks a bit reckless and might also brick the bootloader.

Building an image with bootstrap-vz only supports aged Debian jessie.
https://wiki.debian.org/Cloud/OracleComputeImage

Any other promising ideas howto get a Debian for free - or success stories?

You can easily create latest Debian LXC container inside your instance and forward any port you need to it.

sanvit

Can you guys select always free tier? It originally just showed up something like 'Host node out of capacity', but I don't even see the option for it anymore.

vimalware

Wait a few minutes.

The micro class VMs 'unlocked' itself after a few logout/logins.

rm_

sanvit said: Can you guys select always free tier? It originally just showed up something like 'Host node out of capacity', but I don't even see the option for it anymore.

Maybe you added and selected another DC? The free one is only available in the "Home Region" you chose on sign-up.

sanvit

@rm_ said:

sanvit said: Can you guys select always free tier? It originally just showed up something like 'Host node out of capacity', but I don't even see the option for it anymore.

Maybe you added and selected another DC? The free one is only available in the "Home Region" you chose on sign-up.

Ohhhh adding a DC makes me disqualified..? I though as long as I created the VM on my home regiom, I'm good. Welp...

rm_

sanvit said: Ohhhh adding a DC makes me disqualified..? I though as long as I created the VM on my home regiom, I'm good.

No it only means there will be no free VMs in the added DC. You can use the 300 EUR of the trial credit to try some paid VMs there for a month until the credit expires.

When you switch back to the home region DC, you can still create up to 2 free ones there.

muneebrocks

did anyone manage to make the compute instant run a vpn?
I ran this
https://github.com/hwdsl2/setup-ipsec-vpn

however I cant connect to it
windows say remote server isnt responding
cant connect to it via android either

sanvit

@rm_ said:

sanvit said: Ohhhh adding a DC makes me disqualified..? I though as long as I created the VM on my home regiom, I'm good.

No it only means there will be no free VMs in the added DC. You can use the 300 EUR of the trial credit to try some paid VMs there for a month until the credit expires.

When you switch back to the home region DC, you can still create up to 2 free ones there.

Hmmm that's weird then. It doesn't show up on my home region either.

BTW, for those who are interested, the 10TB free outbound traffic also seems like it counts towards paid VMs and object storage (and you get 20GB of it as long as you don't upgrade - you get 10GB object storage and 10GB archive storage if you do), which seems to make the VMs pretty cheap even for the paid tier (8GB RAM with 100GB block storage and 10TB outbound @700Mbps costs $0.03/hr (~$23/mo) and free while it's turned off).

However, network was a complete shit, even for the higher tier that claims to have 2Gbps connectivity (at least on South Korea). And if you're using ubuntu, I highly recommend using ubuntu's repo instead of the default one (change the long url to http://{CountryCode}.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu). The default repo is super slow...

dragon1993

@muneebrocks said:
did anyone manage to make the compute instant run a vpn?
I ran this
https://github.com/hwdsl2/setup-ipsec-vpn

however I cant connect to it
windows say remote server isnt responding
cant connect to it via android either

Open port on cloud panel + iptable

muneebrocks

@dragon1993 said:

@muneebrocks said:
did anyone manage to make the compute instant run a vpn?
I ran this
https://github.com/hwdsl2/setup-ipsec-vpn

however I cant connect to it
windows say remote server isnt responding
cant connect to it via android either

Open port on cloud panel + iptable

hey so I opened all ports on the cloud panel

and isnt iptables covered by the script?

looking at the script's source code
I think these iptables have been added

# Add IPTables rules for VPN if [ "$ipt_flag" = "1" ]; then service fail2ban stop >/dev/null 2>&1 iptables-save > "$IPT_FILE.old-$SYS_DT" iptables -I INPUT 1 -p udp --dport 1701 -m policy --dir in --pol none -j DROP iptables -I INPUT 2 -m conntrack --ctstate INVALID -j DROP iptables -I INPUT 3 -m conntrack --ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT iptables -I INPUT 4 -p udp -m multiport --dports 500,4500 -j ACCEPT iptables -I INPUT 5 -p udp --dport 1701 -m policy --dir in --pol ipsec -j ACCEPT iptables -I INPUT 6 -p udp --dport 1701 -j DROP iptables -I FORWARD 1 -m conntrack --ctstate INVALID -j DROP iptables -I FORWARD 2 -i "$NET_IFACE" -o ppp+ -m conntrack --ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT iptables -I FORWARD 3 -i ppp+ -o "$NET_IFACE" -j ACCEPT iptables -I FORWARD 4 -i ppp+ -o ppp+ -s "$L2TP_NET" -d "$L2TP_NET" -j ACCEPT iptables -I FORWARD 5 -i "$NET_IFACE" -d "$XAUTH_NET" -m conntrack --ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT iptables -I FORWARD 6 -s "$XAUTH_NET" -o "$NET_IFACE" -j ACCEPT # Uncomment if you wish to disallow traffic between VPN clients themselves # iptables -I FORWARD 2 -i ppp+ -o ppp+ -s "$L2TP_NET" -d "$L2TP_NET" -j DROP # iptables -I FORWARD 3 -s "$XAUTH_NET" -d "$XAUTH_NET" -j DROP iptables -A FORWARD -j DROP iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -s "$XAUTH_NET" -o "$NET_IFACE" -m policy --dir out --pol none -j MASQUERADE iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -s "$L2TP_NET" -o "$NET_IFACE" -j MASQUERADE echo "# Modified by hwdsl2 VPN script" > "$IPT_FILE" iptables-save >> "$IPT_FILE"

muneebrocks

this my cloud control panel rules

https://imgur.com/a/bO7SBqC

farsighter

Once you're done with opening all ports in account panel (Security Lists) you can delete all iptables rules using the following terminal command:

iptables -F && iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT && iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT && iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT && iptables -t nat -F && iptables -t mangle -F && iptables -X

Then you just set your own rules from scratch as needed.

To make iptables rules permanent (so it survives reboot) :

iptables-save > /etc/iptables/rules.v4

muneebrocks

@farsighter said:
Once you're done with opening all ports in account panel (Security Lists) you can delete all iptables rules using the following terminal command:

iptables -F && iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT && iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT && iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT && iptables -t nat -F && iptables -t mangle -F && iptables -X

Then you just set your own rules from scratch as needed.

To make iptables rules permanent (so it survives reboot) :

iptables-save > /etc/iptables/rules.v4

I tried that

these are my iptable rules

still nothing
![](https://i.paste.pics/748b9ca58cbd529af6b608886290e659.png
https://paste.pics/748b9ca58cbd529af6b608886290e659)

dragon1993

@muneebrocks said:
this my cloud control panel rules

https://imgur.com/a/bO7SBqC

apt install iptables-persistent
iptables -F
iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT
netfilter-persistent save 

Ingress Rules

banxix

Host node capacity error is a good sign, they will then set limit on free tier.

muneebrocks

@dragon1993 said:

@muneebrocks said:
this my cloud control panel rules

https://imgur.com/a/bO7SBqC

> apt install iptables-persistent
> iptables -F
> iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT
> netfilter-persistent save 
> 

Ingress Rules

hey I followed these steps

still cant connect.

if you dont mind me asking did you manage to get it working in your system?

dragon1993

muneebrocks said: hey I followed these steps

still cant connect.

if you dont mind me asking did you manage to get it working in your system?

I opened all port, with this method, and work fine.
I not installed ipsec vpn, but shadowsock work fine from docker image.

muneebrocks

hey so proxy works. I am using squid3 personally and it works

for some reason I cant get the ipsec vpn to work

rm_

muneebrocks said: cant get the ipsec vpn to work

Maybe because of their NAT, where you don't get a public IP on the VPS, but only a 10.0.0.x IP. Try WireGuard or OpenVPN instead. WireGuard works, I use it just fine.

muneebrocks

i dont think its nat they have given me 1 ip that I can use to connect to ssh and use as a web server

reason I wanted ipsec is native windows and android support

dragon1993

@muneebrocks said:
i dont think its nat they have given me 1 ip that I can use to connect to ssh and use as a web server

reason I wanted ipsec is native windows and android support

I try this ipsec docker image and work fine.
https://github.com/hwdsl2/docker-ipsec-vpn-server

daxterfellowes

So I haven't been able to create any instances in AD-2 in the US West (Phoenix) region. I can create them in AD-1/3 but not 2. Finally decided to call Oracle support up and generate a sev 2 ticket for it (they'll only respond during business hours for it anyways). Was an interesting experience but I want to get down to the root cause...

TimboJones

@hzr said:

TimboJones said: Just getting "session expired" when trying to add credit card. Will try again later.

Are you running ad block or anything? They do a bunch of device fingerprinting that will result in rejection if you block it.

Yes, I am. As I run into problems, I then disable them, but I'll try from somewhere else.

Thanks