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Gentoo on entry-level VPS?
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kukibl
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Joined: 10 Jun 2008
Posts: 230

PostPosted: Thu May 27, 2021 10:00 am    Post subject: Gentoo on entry-level VPS? Reply with quote

Hi guys.

For quite some time I am considering purchase of an entry-level VPS, which would be primarily used for Nextcloud (file sharing and notes sync using Joplin) + fun and learning experience. The data I plan to host there are not sensitive, so I do not have privacy and security concerns if something goes wrong. I saw that Vultr and CloudCone have pretty cheap entry level VPS packages (5,00 USD/month) with 1 core CPU and 1GB RAM.

Considering quite limited hardware resources, is there any point in putting effort into Gentoo installation or I should just go with binary distro? In case it is viable, what would the best method: clean install directly on VPS or local/VM install with deployment to VPS?

I apologize if you find my question ridiculous, but this is the first time I should manage something that is actually online and I would like to use something that I'm most comfortable with. Other option is Debian, but systemd... and it was long time.

Thank you.
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NeddySeagoon
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Joined: 05 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Thu May 27, 2021 4:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

kukibl,

Installing Gentoo and running Gentoo are two separate questions.
Gentoo will run quite happily in 1G RAM but building things there will be a challenge.

Its perfectly possible to build binary packages for the VPS on another system and install the prebuilt binaries there.
You probably don't have much HDD space on the VPS, so use the ::gentoo repo in squashfs too.

Building on one system and installing on another is quite popular with low end hardware, so its a well trodden path.
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NeddySeagoon

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kukibl
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PostPosted: Fri May 28, 2021 12:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you very much, Neddy! More or less that was my idea, but wanted to have feedback from the experienced. :)
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szatox
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Joined: 27 Aug 2013
Posts: 3103

PostPosted: Fri May 28, 2021 9:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Installing Gentoo and running Gentoo are two separate questions.
Gentoo will run quite happily in 1G RAM but building things there will be a challenge.
I'm doing just that, on the cheapest (and smallest) VPS I could find.
There is no GUI, and other things do well enough.
"Other things" includes nginx, mysql, postfix, dovecot, blah, blah, blah...

And yes, portage tree sits in a squashfs with overlayfs. Good stuff. The squashfs is also rebuilt on the same machine after every sync, which temporarily occupies additional ~70MB of disk space (this is how big the final xz-compressed sqfs image is).

Updating everything takes a long time on a single CPU, but being a "point of presence" type machine it doesn't really have a lot of "useful" work to do, so I don't mind wasting some of those otherwise unused cycles for maintenance.
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araxon
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Joined: 25 May 2011
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PostPosted: Mon May 31, 2021 5:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The biggest struggle with running Gentoo on cheap VPS is RAM in my opinion. While it is possible to run on 1GB of RAM, the swapping kills all the joy when you try to keep the system up to date in the long term. Anything less than 4GB of RAM is a constant annoyance with Gentoo and I would not recommend it for beginners.
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kukibl
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PostPosted: Mon May 31, 2021 6:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you all for the feedback and advises.

I have decided to go with Debian, in order to check if the whole VPS idea is good and sustainable for me. I have never run online server (except fiddling with VMs on my local network), so this is learning experience on multiple levels.

Later, if end result is good, I would consider as weekend project migration to Gentoo. My basic idea is to roll-up Gentoo VM and keep it in perfect sync with VPS installation, while using it for building binary packages (that would be installed directly to VPS). This way I would completely skip compilation on the VPS.
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