thoth's Journal: Choosing a Linode distro

I've been thinking about setting up a VPS system, through Linode. I figure it would be fun to have an actual server on the net, rather than just a webpage/homepage like I have had so many years. It would host a new homepage for me, and be "live" for fiddling around with other projects.

Since this is just for fun, I would start out with the Linode 512, the smallest VPS available. For $20 a month, I'll get 512 MB of memory and 20 GB of storage. Perfect! After viewing the list of available distributions, I pared it down to Debian or CentOS, since those are the two I am most familiar with.

Before opening an account, I decided to "simulate" my future Linode with VirtualBox. So I created two VMs of 512 MB and 20 GB disk. The Debian install went smoothly - I unselected windowing, and selected web server and ssh server, since that's how I'd start. Soon enough the system was ready, and I was able to pull up the "yes it's here" default web page. Cool!

I did the same with CentOS. Or I should say, tried to do the same. No matter what I did, the installer wouldn't run. Double-clicking led to no response. I thought to myself "perhaps 512 MB isn't enough for the installer to run", so I shutdown the VM, bumped it up to 1024 MB, and tried again. Sure enough, the installer started right up when I double clicked.

I'm not sure how the Linode folks actually provision their machines - do you essentially receive an empty VM with an attached ISO for you to start up and install? If that's the case, it appears I can't have CentOS on the Linode 512 because the installer won't run!

That's OK, my home server is Debian and it would probably be best if I match, so I can test things out at home (twice, once in the VM I made to simulate the Linode 512, and once on my actual physical server) before rsycing files to the live Linode.