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openSUSE Leap

Package management, updates, users, and firewall setup on an openSUSE Leap VPS.

Our openSUSE Leap image is the official openSUSE Leap cloud image, provisioned with cloud-init. Leap is built from the same sources as SUSE Linux Enterprise, so it’s a good fit if you’re already familiar with the SUSE ecosystem. For help deciding whether openSUSE Leap is right for you, see Choosing a Linux distribution.

What’s in the image

  • Packages: a minimal openSUSE Leap install with zypper, OpenSSH, and cloud-init.
  • Networking: configured by cloud-init at boot. See VPS networking for how your addresses are assigned.

To check which Leap release you’re running:

Shell
cat /etc/os-release

To check whether a firewall is active:

Shell
sudo systemctl status firewalld

Install packages

openSUSE uses zypper to install packages:

Shell
sudo zypper install htop

To search for a package:

Shell
zypper search htop

Update your system

To install the latest updates:

Shell
sudo zypper refresh
sudo zypper update

Reboot if the update installed a new kernel. zypper ps -s lists running programs that still use old, now-replaced files that should be restarted.

Upgrade to a new Leap release

Each Leap release is supported for about two years. To move to a newer release, follow openSUSE’s system upgrade guide. Take a backup before upgrading, and only upgrade one release at a time.

Add a non-root user

Create your user, set its password, and add it to the wheel group, replacing stackuser with your preferred username:

Shell
sudo useradd -m -G wheel stackuser
sudo passwd stackuser

Allow members of wheel to use sudo by creating a sudoers drop-in file:

Shell
sudo visudo -f /etc/sudoers.d/wheel

Add this line, then save the file:

Text
%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Then follow the SSH key steps in our non-root user guide to let your new user log in.

Set up a firewall

openSUSE uses firewalld. Install and enable it, then allow SSH and any services you run:

Shell
sudo zypper install firewalld
sudo systemctl enable --now firewalld
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=ssh
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=https # Example service
sudo firewall-cmd --reload
sudo firewall-cmd --list-all

See our hardening guide for more on SSH, firewalls, and fail2ban. The firewalld commands in the Fedora sections work the same way on openSUSE.