FreeBSD on AWS with Ansible
I often have a need for a fresh FreeBSD install, to host a server, or perhaps just experiment with. My usual solution is FreeBSD jails. However, I’ve recently gotten interested in Ansible and AWS. There are quite a few advantages to installing infra with AWS, however the one I’m most interested in is automating the simple stuff and getting it right the first time. For example, remembering to: Add the service accounts Ensure that all files are added by the right accounts Add startup and shutdown scripts Configure pf Ensure logging is “just right” AWS also has the notable advantage that with VPC, I can configure not only the OS and applications, but build infra. With the help of these two pages (1,2) I’ve been able to provision a simple FreeBSD-12 host, in a VPC. Code is here.