Jan 2023 Update: Looks like this is no longer an option. It’s still “free”, but requires renewal every month. Before, that renewal was free, but there is now a setup fee of sorts? Not sure if this is a recurring cost, or if they’re somehow charging for the initial setup years ago, but either way, it’s no longer totally free. Some discussion on lowendtalk.
While there are many paid VPS options out there, few are free – and for good reason. Somehow, EUserv manages to provide a free VPS with 1GB of RAM, 1 CPU core and 10GB of storage. This isn’t much, and it’s not fast, but it’s enough to run this site!
There’s a catch though: it’s IPv6 only. This makes sense, as IPv4 addresses are scarce, and and such have a cost associated with them. There is not (yet) a lack of IPv6 addresses, and so they are understandably significantly cheaper.
2838: eth0@if2839: mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:84:ed:64:ae:a0 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff link-netnsid 0
inet6 2a02:180:6:1::1234/128 scope global
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 fe80::284:edff:fe64:aea0/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
As it stands, they can still be used to host a website, with some outside help. First, the machine needs access to some IPv4 sites to download necessary software. This can be accomplished via NAT64 translation, of which there are a few free and public servers.
Assuming you have the ability to access IPv6 networks, either at home through your ISP or via a VPN, login to the VPS via ssh and take a look at /etc/resolv.conf:
search blue.kundencontroller.de options rotate nameserver 2a02:180:6:5::1c nameserver 2a02:180:6:5::1d nameserver 2a02:180:6:5::1e nameserver 2a02:180:6:5::4
Pick one of the NAT64 servers from the public list and set it as one of your nameservers, commenting out all the existing ones:
#search blue.kundencontroller.de #options rotate #nameserver 2a02:180:6:5::1c #nameserver 2a02:180:6:5::1d #nameserver 2a02:180:6:5::1e #nameserver 2a02:180:6:5::4 nameserver 2a01:4f8:c2c:123f::1
You should now be able to ping IPv4 only sites:
root@srv:~# ping -n -c 4 lgger.nexusbytes.com PING lgger.nexusbytes.com(2a00:1098:2c::2:2e04:c7e1) 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 2a00:1098:2c::2:2e04:c7e1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=244 time=47.2 ms 64 bytes from 2a00:1098:2c::2:2e04:c7e1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=244 time=47.1 ms 64 bytes from 2a00:1098:2c::2:2e04:c7e1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=244 time=47.4 ms 64 bytes from 2a00:1098:2c::2:2e04:c7e1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=244 time=46.9 ms --- lgger.nexusbytes.com ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3007ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 46.909/47.148/47.418/0.189 ms
Note that you can’t ping IPv4 addresses like 8.8.8.8 directly; you can only do it by hostname. Luckily, as time goes on, more and more sites now support IPv6.
Much of the above info came from Junxiao at yoursunny.com – thanks!
Next I’ll cover how to use Cloudflare to server your IPv6 only site to IPv4-only users.