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{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{TitleIcon|arch=true}} OVH Dedicated/VPS Custom Installation}}<metadesc>How to do a custom install of Arch Linux on an OVH Dedicated Server or VPS.</metadesc>
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= {{Icon24|sitemap}} Introduction =
I have personally been using OVH for my hosting for some time now. While they are not necessarily known for their stellar support, if you know what you are doing you can accomplish a lot with OVH. One of the cheaper options at OVH, if you cannot afford or do not need an entire dedicated server all to yourself, is the OVH VPS SSD. With the lowest tier offering starting at around $4USD a month, they are very affordable to grab one to play around with for a bit. So for the sake of science, I purchased one of the first tier (VPS SSD 1) and gave it a go. This is what followed, a complete re-installation of the OS.
{{Note|You can find a detailed comparison of a few VPS providers including OVH [//github.com/joedicastro/vps-comparison here]}}
== {{Icon|notebook}} OVH VPS Terms & Conditions ==
After looking through their terms and conditions for the VPS only two things jump out at me in particular.

''"OVH reserves the right to limit, filter, suspend or restrict features and protocols (such as IRC or peer to peer file sharing) of the Virtual Private Server to ensure the security of their infrastructure."''

This doesn't seem too bad. From the sound of it, if you cripple their network running IRC or p2p based things they reserve the right to firewall you. I can understand that, not like you want to attract script kiddies and DDoS.

''"OVH will guarantee a bandwidth of up to 100 Mbps (one hundred megabits per second) as long as the traffic of the bandwidth does not exceed the pre-defined set monthly volume of 10TB (ten terabytes). This monthly volume includes both internal OVH traffic and traffic outside of the OVH network. When the monthly traffic volume exceeds the set monthly volume, the bandwidth of the Virtual Private Server will be limited to 1 Mbps until the next monthly renewal date."''

If the monthly transfer limit was not so high I would say this would be a serious deal-breaker. However, given most months I have a hard time hitting even 1TB on my dedicated server I have from them, I do not think this is as serious as it looks unless your planning to run some seriously bandwidth intense tasks.

== {{Icon|notebook}} Setup Time ==
Setup time for the VPS was not bad but not amazing either. I would say about average for OVH (don't let their 120s activate images on the website fool you).
* '''Ordered''': Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 5:37 PM
* '''Received''': Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 5:48 PM

== {{Icon|notebook}} VPS Information ==
Before I scrapped their installation of Arch Linux I took a look around at the VPS installation a bit.
{{Console|1=dmidecode -s system-product-name && dmidecode -s chassis-manufacturer}}<br/>
{{Console|1=OpenStack Nova|2=QEMU|prompt=false}}
This was a nice surprise, good on them for using OpenStack.
{{Console|1=uname -a}}<br/>
{{Console|1=Linux XXX.vps.ovh.ca 4.11.9-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Jul 5 18:23:08 CEST 2017 x86_64 GNU/Linux|prompt=false}}
Doesn't get any more current than that for an Arch install as that is the current kernel as of writing this.
{{Console|1=cat /boot/grub/grub.cfg {{!}} grep vmlinuz}}<br/>
{{Console|1=linux/boot/vmlinuz-linux root{{=}}UUID{{=}}52d0c25c-2e4e-473b-81eb-56b46711a793 rw  console{{=}}tty0 console{{=}}ttyS0,115200 quiet|prompt=false}}
Looks like extra entries to the kernel options on boot, if I had to guess I would say it is probably for the included KVM support. Making a note of this for later.
{{Console|1=cat /etc/systemd/network/eth0-dhcp.network}}<br/>
{{Console|1={{MagentaBold|[Match]}}<br/>{{Magenta|Name{{=}}}}eth0<br/><br/>{{MagentaBold|[Network]}}<br/>{{Magenta|DHCP{{=}}}}yes<br/><br/>{{MagentaBold|[DHCP]}}<br/>{{Magenta|UseMTU{{=}}}}true|prompt=false}}
This is a nice change from the sometimes complicated network configuration of my dedicated. Nice and simple.

For pure curiosity I took a look at how far away I was in the datacenter from my dedicated server.
{{Console|1=ping dark.kyau.net}}<br/>
{{Console|1=PING dark.kyau.net (198.245.62.167) 56(84) bytes of data.<br/>64 bytes from dark.kyau.net (198.245.62.167): icmp_seq{{=}}1 ttl{{=}}58 time{{=}}0.490 ms<br/>64 bytes from dark.kyau.net (198.245.62.167): icmp_seq{{=}}2 ttl{{=}}58 time{{=}}0.668 ms<br/>64 bytes from dark.kyau.net (198.245.62.167): icmp_seq{{=}}3 ttl{{=}}58 time{{=}}0.700 ms<br/>64 bytes from dark.kyau.net (198.245.62.167): icmp_seq{{=}}4 ttl{{=}}58 time{{=}}0.658 ms<br/>--- dark.kyau.net ping statistics ---<br/>4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3032ms<br/>rtt min/avg/max/mdev {{=}} 0.490/0.629/0.700/0.081 ms|prompt=false}}

= {{Icon24|sitemap}} Rescue Mode =
First in order to install Arch Linux from scratch we need to get the VPS netbooted into the OVH Rescue Mode. Enter the OVH Control Panel and select your VPS on the left. There should be a series of buttons on the right side of the screen, one named "Rescue mode". This process will take a few minutes in order to reboot the VPS into rescue mode, you should be able to see the progress of this in your dashboard. The login details for rescue mode will be emailed to your email address on file.
{{Note|This is one of the things I personally hate about OVH, the emailling of login details to the users. There are a lot more secure ways of going about this.}}
Once the machine has been restarted into rescue mode and you have the login information, login over ssh. These options I have here will make it so it does not record the hostkey (given that this is about to change once we install a new OS).
{{Console|1=ssh -oUserKnownHostsFile{{=}}/dev/null -oStrictHostKeyChecking{{=}}no root@X.X.X.X}}
Once logged in, take note of the Debian environment. First update the package registry.
{{Console|1=apt-get update}}
Then install the necessary package we will need for the Arch installation.
{{Console|1=apt-get install gdisk}}
== {{Icon|notebook}} Partitioning ==
Pull up a list of all of the disks in the system.
{{Console|1=lsblk}}
You should see the rescue disk mounted and your system disk then mounted into a directory inside of {{mono|/mnt}}. The only one we care about is the one mounted inside {{mono|/mnt}}. Un-mount this partition.
{{Console|1=unmount /mnt/vdX1}}
Take a look at the current partition table.
{{Console|1=sgdisk -p /dev/vdX}}
The default OVH Arch Linux Installation uses an MBR single partition table.

Wipe the current partition scheme and create a new GPT partition table with protected MBR.
{{Console|1=sgdisk -Z -o /dev/vdX}}
Then create the partition table for the disk. create a single full disk partition, set the type to {{mono|Linux}}, set the legacy boot flag and finally give it a nice label.
{{Console|1=sgdisk -n 1:0:-0 -t 1:8300 -A 1:set:2 -c 1:"Arch Linux" /dev/vdX}}

== {{Icon|notebook}} Formatting ==
For the root filesystem, using {{mono|metadata_csum}} will enable metadata checksums for added protection against disk corruption.<br/>
{{Console|1=mkfs.ext4 -O metadata_csum /dev/vdX1}}

[[Category:Arch Linux]]