NetBSD Arm on Oracle Cloud

Support for running NetBSD on Oracle Cloud Arm-Based Compute Instances has been added to NetBSD -current.

A build of NetBSD/evbarm64 after 2022-10-15 will generate a bootable image (arm64.img.gz) that can be converted to a Custom Image that can run on Oracle Cloud.

To get started, the image needs to be converted to QCOW2 format:

   $ gunzip arm64.img.gz
   $ qemu-img convert -f raw -O qcow2 arm64.img netbsd.qcow2

Next, upload the image to an Oracle Cloud storage bucket.

Once the QCOW2 file has been uploaded, switch to Compute / Custom Images and click Import image. Set an image name, make sure the Operating system field is set to Linux, and select the bucket and object name for your uploaded image. Make sure to select QCOW2 as the Image type. Set the mode to Paravirtualized mode.

After the image is imported, click Edit details and clear all checkboxes except for VM.Standard.A1.Flex. You could also try BM.Standard.A1.160 (bare metal instance) but this is untested. Once the compatible shapes have been updated, click Save changes.

Now click Edit image capabilities, and under the Firmware heading, uncheck BIOS and click Save changes.

Finally, to create an instance, click the Create instance button. Make sure to either provide SSH keys, or download the generated private key in the Add SSH keys section. Click the Create button to start the instance.

The Instance details page will assign you a public IP address. Once the instance has started, you can ssh to it with the SSH key used during image creation as user opc.

   $ ssh -i ssh-key-2022-10-15.key opc@x.x.x.x
   Last login: Sat Oct 15 18:50:51 2022 from y.y.y.y
   NetBSD 9.99.101 (GENERIC64) #9: Sat Oct 15 15:35:49 ADT 2022

   Welcome to NetBSD!

   This is a development snapshot of NetBSD for testing -- user beware!

   Bug reports: https://www.NetBSD.org/support/send-pr.html
   Donations to the NetBSD Foundation: https://www.NetBSD.org/donations/
   -- UNSAFE KEYS WARNING:

           The ssh host keys on this machine have been generated with
           not enough entropy configured, so may be predictable.

           To fix, follow the "Adding entropy" section in the entropy(7)
           man page and after this machine has enough entropy, re-generate
           the ssh host keys by running:

                   sh /etc/rc.d/sshd keyregen
   instance-20221015-1520$ sysctl machdep.dmi
   machdep.dmi.system-vendor = QEMU
   machdep.dmi.system-product = KVM Virtual Machine
   machdep.dmi.system-version = virt-4.2
   machdep.dmi.chassis-vendor = QEMU
   machdep.dmi.chassis-type = QEMU
   machdep.dmi.chassis-version = virt-4.2
   machdep.dmi.chassis-asset-tag = OracleCloud.com
   machdep.dmi.processor-vendor = QEMU
   machdep.dmi.processor-version = virt-4.2
   machdep.dmi.processor-frequency = 2000 MHz