It is true that the Google Compute Engine support for Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL, SUSE, and FreeBSD Unix. However, create an instance page only display handful of operating systems as follows:
You can easily create FreeBSD based VM using the following procedure.
Install gcloud SDK on Linux
First, make sure that Python 2.7 is installed on your Linux based desktop system:
$ wget https://dl.google.com/dl/cloudsdk/channels/rapid/downloads/google-cloud-sdk-168.0.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
$ tar zxvf google-cloud-sdk-168.0.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
$./google-cloud-sdk/install.sh
Initialize the gcloud SDK:
$ gcloud init
In your browser, log in to your Google user account when prompted and click Allow to grant permission to access Google Cloud Platform resources. Verify that it is working:
$ gcloud auth list
Install gcloud SDK on Mac OS X
Type the following commands:
$ wget https://dl.google.com/dl/cloudsdk/channels/rapid/downloads/google-cloud-sdk-168.0.0-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz
$ tar -zxvf google-cloud-sdk-168.0.0-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz
$ ./google-cloud-sdk/install.sh
$ gcloud init
$ gcloud auth list
Get list of gcloud compute images
Type the following command:
$ gcloud compute images list --project freebsd-org-cloud-dev --no-standard-images
OR
$ gcloud compute images list \
--project freebsd-org-cloud-dev \
--no-standard-images | grep -i freebsd-11
Sample outputs:
freebsd-11-0-beta4-amd64 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-0-current-amd64-2015-07-23 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-0-current-amd64-2015-08-04 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-0-current-amd64-2015-08-19 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-0-current-amd64-2015-08-27 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-0-current-amd64-2015-09-04 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-0-current-amd64-2015-09-18 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-0-current-amd64-2015-10-02 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY .... ... freebsd-11-1-beta2-amd64 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-1-beta3-amd64 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-1-prerelease-amd64-2017-05-19 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-1-prerelease-amd64-2017-05-26 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-1-prerelease-amd64-2017-06-02 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-1-rc1-amd64 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-1-rc2-amd64 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-1-rc3-amd64 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-1-release-amd64 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-1-stable-amd64-2017-07-28 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-1-stable-amd64-2017-08-08 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-1-stable-amd64-2017-08-15 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-1-stable-amd64-2017-08-23 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY freebsd-11-1-stable-amd64-2017-08-29 freebsd-org-cloud-dev READY |
How to deploying FreeBSD 11 on Google cloud
The syntax is:
$ gcloud compute instances create {INSTANCE} --image freebsd-11-1-release-amd64 \
--image-project=freebsd-org-cloud-dev
You need minimum 22GB disk space. So here is my command to create a VM in us-central1-c zone, n1-standard-1 machine type, and boot disk set to 60GB SSD storage:
$ gcloud compute instances create "nixcraft-freebsd11" \
--zone "us-central1-c" \
--machine-type "n1-standard-1" \
--network "default" --maintenance-policy "MIGRATE" \
--image "freebsd-11-1-release-amd64" --image-project=freebsd-org-cloud-dev \
--boot-disk-size "60" \
--boot-disk-type "pd-ssd"
Sample outputs:
How to ssh into FreeBSD 11 Google cloud compute server?
Simply type the following command:
$ gcloud compute ssh {INSTANCE}
$ gcloud compute ssh {INSTANCE} --zone "us-central1-c"
$ gcloud compute ssh nixcraft-freebsd11 \
--zone "us-central1-c" \
--project "mybsdvms-nixcraft-156800"
$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/my-gcs [email protected]
Sample session:
How do I list my Google compute VMs?
Type the following command from your Unix/Linux desktop:
$ gcloud compute instances list
How do I login as root user?
Simply type the command:
$ sudo -s
#
How do I install a bash shell?
Simply type the following pkg command to install a bash shell on FreeBSD 11, run:
# pkg install bash
Sample outputs:
How do I upgrade my FreeBSD 11.x hosted on Google compute?
Run the following command to update base system:
# freebsd-update fetch
# freebsd-update install
## [optional but needed for the FreeBSD kernel and other stuff] ##
# reboot
Run the following command to update installed packages to the latest version:
# pkg update
# pkg upgrade
Sample outputs:
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue... FreeBSD repository is up to date. All repositories are up to date. Checking for upgrades (5 candidates): 100% Processing candidates (5 candidates): 100% The following 4 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked): Installed packages to be UPGRADED: sudo: 1.8.20p2_2 -> 1.8.20p2_3 python27: 2.7.13_6 -> 2.7.13_7 curl: 7.54.1 -> 7.55.1 ca_root_nss: 3.31 -> 3.32 Number of packages to be upgraded: 4 13 MiB to be downloaded. Proceed with this action? [y/N]: y [1/4] Fetching sudo-1.8.20p2_3.txz: 100% 891 KiB 912.5kB/s 00:01 [2/4] Fetching python27-2.7.13_7.txz: 100% 10 MiB 10.9MB/s 00:01
2 comment
Cool article.
Great tutorial!
I’ve been running FreeBSD instances on Green for the better part of a year, (10-RELEASE, 11-CURRENT 11-STABLE lately) and the only reference I could find to get FreeBSD images was buried deep in an obscure thread on the FreeBSD forums. This writeup should be somewhere on the handbook. Perhaps a mini-chapter on deploying instances on different public clouds would be greatly beneficial. I’ve also got a couple of 9.x instances on Rackspace. AWS I haven’t tried yet. Or azure.