All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
HowTo: Self install Ubuntu on HostSolutions provided VPS
Hi all,
I like to run my VPS with my own self installed OS, in most cases this is done from booting from ISO but some providers only provide a template like HostSolutions. I do this mostly so I can run with LUKS and LVM on the VPS but others might have other use cases. With permissions from @cociu I'm posting this guide.
Here are the instructions I use, some steps might be duplicated or even not needed so YMMV but I've followed this a few times over now and had good outcomes. I've only ever done this on a fresh install so not needed a backup and I don't worry about keeping data. The instructions are not tested on a machine with data!
At a high level we need to shrink the current root drive as it's taking up the whole disk, create a new partition ready for the install and then install to it and shuffle the partitions around. There are a handful of reboots in the process so make sure you have a console open but you'll also want SSH to make copy and paste ease.
I've had to put the instructions off the LET site becuase Cloudflare kept blocking me putting them in so here they are:
Steps for reinstalling Ubuntu on a HostSolutions VPS
Comments
You know you can just raise a ticket to have them mount an ISO right?
@cociu has stated in a ticket to me "we cannot make this change sorry" when I asked for an Ubuntu 20.10 ISO. Maybe he'll comment further if an ISO is now possible.
This guide is... overly complex. Just either:
apt install grub-imageboot, throw the netboot.xyz ISO into/boot/images, runupdate-grub2, reboot, and pick netboot.xyz at the GRUB menu (via VNC). The entire installer will be in RAM so it's OK to delete the partition you booted from as part of the installation.Either one will let you run the regular installer for a bunch of Linux distros.
I got the same problem. I want to install Ubuntu 20.04 but they has only 18.04 template.
I created the ticket then they answer to me they will try to add it in the next week. BUt now past 2 months they still not add its.
By the way I try to search how to do it by myself. But I must give up because HostSolutions without their own knowledgebase. So I have to install ver. 18.04 then upgrade to 20.04.
At least the provider should have the updated common OS template not only the old 3 years OS ago.
Ah that's really good if it works - I'll give it a try next time.
Last time I tried, netboot.xyz wants to download the entire Ubuntu ISO into memory.
If the KVM has less than 1GB RAM, it would fail with out of memory error.
However, netboot.xyz works well with Debian installer.
I have noticed that majority customers prefer to have OS templates instead of ISO, as previously we had the ISOs only so customers had option to install the OS as they want, some of customers were scared (as they never had experience) of ISO installations and this is a reason why majority of providers do use templates. Just check if the HostSolutions allow to upload custom ISO vis their control panel so you will be able to load OS from it.
It should be network booting the installer using the PXE image (eg https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UEFI/PXE-netboot-install) but I'm not sure if that still works in the most recent Ubuntu releases so they have have just fallen back to using the ISO. I think Ubuntu were going to deprecate debian-installer in favour of their own custom thing.
I'd usually recommend Debian over Ubuntu... It's a lot lighter.
Guys, feel free to open a ticket in hostsolutions, include the direct url for the iso and I'll download it for you so you can install it from the ISO.
I'll also add the netboot.xyz iso soon to all nodes.
I too use it every day.
When I got my Hostsolutions VPS, I wanted to replace Debian with Alpine. Okay, rebooted into iPXE but I noticed something later on. DHCP wasn't enabled. Welp ended up sticking with Debian anyway.
I opened a ticket in hostsolutions for 12 days ago, include the direct url for the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS ISO.
But until now without any responed form hostsolutions.
It's too late for 12 days fot your customer to wait.