Void Linux in the Cloud

For those wanting to run Void Linux in the cloud, I figured out how to install it on UpCloud:

1. Create an account on UpCloud

2. Go to https://voidlinux.org/download/ and in the x86_64 tab Base section, copy the Live image link for either glibc or musl. Since glibc has better software compatibility I'll go with that for this demo.

3. Go to https://hub.upcloud.com/storage/devices and click Add storage from URL

4. Paste the Void Linux Live image link from the prior step

5. Call the Storage name something descriptive, like "voidlive", select your Cloud data center location, set the storage size to 2 GB (this is for the Live image boot media; we'll set the actual compute instance size later..), and set the Storage type to Standard (not MaxIOPS). Then click "Add a storage device"

6. UpCloud will retrieve the ISO and store it in the selected data center 

7. After waiting about 5 minutes, the ISO file will be ready to make into a bootable image. Do so by clicking on the page icon to the left of the trash delete icon:

8. Give it a descriptive name, like "voidlive" and click "Create"

9. After a couple minutes, the bootable image will be ready to deploy into your environment. Click the "Deploy" button to the left of the trash delete icon:

10. Choose your compute instance size and storage amount. For this demo I'll keep the defaults:

11. Feel free to change any other settings and then click the "Deploy" button:

12. Once the Live image has booted (dot in top-left corner turns green), copy the provided IPv4 address:

13. Open a terminal on your computer and enter ssh anon@111.122.133.144 (replacing the example IP address with the one provided by UpCloud), accept the warning when prompted, then use password voidlinux to login

13. At the prompt, type sudo void-installer to begin installing Void Linux to the compute instance

14. Follow this guide for the remaining installation steps: https://linuxiac.com/void-linux-installation/#4-installing-void-linux

Important: when you get to the cfdisk step, first remove all the listed partitions (the bootable ISO currently running in memory) so the only thing in the list is Free Space. Also, that guide doesn't mention it, but select "Primary" for each of the 1G, 4G, and remainder partitions.

Note: on the Filesystems step, you won't see the EFI partition listed since UpCloud handles that for you so just skip to the swap partition step.

15. After the setup has been configured, reboot the instance when prompted.

16. Since Void Linux doesn't enable SSH by default, we'll need to use the console connection -- click on the new UpCloud instance in the list, click on the "Console" tab, and then click on the "Open the console connection" button:

17. A browser popup will appear that mimics a terminal and you will be prompted to login with the new non-root user you created in the setup guide:

18. Type this command: sudo ln -s /etc/sv/sshd /var/service/

Note: you can verify it worked by running sudo sv status sshd

19. You should now be able to login via SSH with your non-root user you created in the setup guide. If successful, you can close the console connection browser popup.

20. As a last step, you should make sure Void Linux's package manager, xbps, is up to date by running this in your ssh terminal: sudo xbps-install -Su

Enjoy!