GoKawiilMy homepage now runs on OpenBSD with httpd(8) and Let's Encrypt via acme-client(1). I previously hosted it on GitHub Pages and then eventually moved to Cloudflare Pages because both options were free and easy. Free and easy is cool, and I understand that writing software full-time leaves us wanting absolutely nothing to do with computers after we punch out, but lately I have been missing the do-it-yourself web that I grew up with. Some of my favorite times growing up included installing and configuring UNIX-based operating systems and spending hours trying to understand how computers worked. I even met one of my closest friends online through a FreeBSD UNIX shell account forum more than 20 years ago.
So, in that vein, I wanted to write something on how you can get up and running on OpenBSD with DigitalOcean for $4 a month. Well, really, it's $4.24 after tax but that's still pretty good!
Download OpenBSD
There are a few different options when it comes to downloading OpenBSD, but the quickest method is to grab the miniroot image.
curl -O -O https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/7.9/arm64/{miniroot79.img,SHA256}
Confirm that the checksum of the image is correct.
sha256sum -c --ignore-missing SHA256 miniroot79.img miniroot79.img: OK
Sign Up for DigitalOcean and Upload miniroot79.img
Once you are signed up and logged in to DigitalOcean, go to Backups & Snapshots under the STORAGE section in the left-hand navigation. Click Upload an Image. Select the miniroot79.img file we downloaded earlier. Select a datacenter that makes sense for you. Select Other for the distribution (Hey, DigitalOcean, why no BSD distribution?). Give the custom image a name, something clever like "OpenBSD miniroot79". Finally, click the Add Custom Image button.
Note on Custom Images
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