Is BOA for me?

Before you install anything, spend five minutes here. This page tells you plainly what BOA is, what it hosts, what kind of box it needs, and which edition to pick — so you can decide before you spend an evening on it.

Short version: if you want to run your own Drupal (or Backdrop) hosting on a single server, and you're comfortable enough to log in over SSH and paste a few commands, BOA is built for you. It's opinionated on purpose — it makes the hard choices so you don't have to — and once it's installed it's designed to keep itself up to date and largely stay out of your way.

What BOA actually is

BOA stands for Barracuda + Octopus + Ægir. Those are three parts that work together on one server:

  • Barracuda installs and looks after the stack — the web server (Nginx), the database (Percona MySQL), PHP, the firewall, the backup tools, and everything else a Drupal host needs. You run one Barracuda per box. When you upgrade BOA, Barracuda is what does the upgrading.
  • Octopus manages the hosting instances. Each instance is its own isolated tenant with its own sites, running as its own restricted Linux user (o1, o2, and so on). A single box can run several instances side by side, kept apart from each other. If you're hosting only your own sites, one instance (o1) is all you need.
  • Ægir (spelled Aegir in most places, pronounced "eye-geer") is the web control panel you actually click around in. It's a Drupal-based admin UI where you create sites, deploy them, back them up, and clone them — mostly without touching the command line again after install. The Ægir frontend is provided by a component called Hostmaster.

You don't have to keep these straight to use BOA. The one thing worth remembering: Barracuda = the server stack, Octopus = your hosting instances, Ægir = the web panel.

What BOA hosts

BOA is purpose-built for Drupal. It runs the whole supported range in production — from legacy sites up to the newest release:

  • Drupal — the current major families it ships are 7, 9, 10, and 11 (right up to the latest Drupal 11)
  • Pressflow 6 — a hardened Drupal 6 fork, kept around for old sites you haven't moved yet
  • Backdrop CMS — the community Drupal fork — supported, with fuller platform support arriving on the PRO track

It runs multiple PHP versions in parallel, so different sites on the same box can be on different PHP versions. You pick versions per site from the Ægir panel; you don't hand-manage PHP yourself.

If your goal is to host WordPress, plain PHP apps, or anything that isn't Drupal/Backdrop, BOA is the wrong tool — it's specialised, and that specialisation is the whole point.

What running your own BOA box takes

You need three things: a suitable server, a little command-line comfort, and some patience during install.

A clean, supported server. BOA wants a fresh VPS or dedicated machine — not a box you've already customised. The documented minimum is:

  • 4 GB RAM and 2 CPUs for a normal setup
  • 8 GB RAM and 4+ CPUs if you plan to turn on Solr search
  • Enough disk for your sites plus BOA's own backups (SSD/NVMe strongly preferred)

BOA is opinionated about the operating system, too — it runs on Devuan, and if you start from Debian it migrates the box to Devuan for you during install. That, plus the SSH-key and DNS prerequisites, is covered in the Before you install section; don't worry about it yet.

Basic command-line comfort. You should be able to add an SSH key, log in as root over SSH, and paste commands. You do not need to know Ægir internals, Nginx config, or MySQL tuning — BOA handles all of that. If "add an SSH key and run a command" sounds doable, you're ready.

Patience. This is the big one, so read it twice: a BOA install takes a long time and goes quiet for long stretches. It compiles and configures a lot of software from scratch. You will see the terminal sit still for many minutes with nothing new printed. This is normal. Do not panic, do not reboot, do not close the window. A finished install can easily take an hour or more, and part of it even continues in the background after your terminal looks done. The single worst thing you can do is interrupt it. Start it, then go make coffee.

LTS or PRO — which edition?

Two editions matter to a self-hoster, and you choose between them at install time. You can't get it wrong in a way that hurts — you install one, and you can move up later.

  • BOA LTS is the free edition, and it's the one this whole guide assumes. It's the stable, community track most self-hosters run. Install it and it keeps working — but be clear-eyed about what "LTS" now means: it entered a code-freeze at the end of 2025, so going forward it receives security patches and critical BOA fixes only, not new features. Your Barracuda can still pull newer Devuan system packages, but the bundled services (PHP, Percona, Nginx, and so on) stay at their frozen versions. For a personal or small production box you just want to keep running, that's often exactly what you want.
  • BOA PRO is the licensed (paid) edition — the actively-developed, future-proof track. It's where new features land and it comes with support options. Choose PRO if you want ongoing feature updates, newer service versions, or a support safety net. PRO requires a licence from Omega8.cc: omega8.cc/licenses (no pricing repeated here — see their site).

At install you tell BOA which one with a single word: in-lts for the free edition, in-pro for the licensed one. Everything else in the install is the same. If you're unsure, start with LTS — it's free, it's the supported path for this guide, and you can upgrade an LTS box to PRO later with a licence, without reinstalling. That's a decision you can make when you actually need the newer features.

Both editions share BOA's self-update system, nicknamed SKYNET: when a new release is published, boxes that have it enabled quietly update themselves in the background, so you're not left running stale software. You can also run upgrades by hand whenever you want — see Keeping BOA current.

What this guide covers (and what it doesn't)

This Self-Hosting guide sticks to a deliberately narrow, well-lit path — the three things that matter to someone running one box:

  1. Install — get BOA onto a clean server, end to end.
  2. Keep it current — let SKYNET update it, or run an upgrade yourself.
  3. Recover — get back on your feet when a service won't start, you're locked out, or you've run out of disk.

For each task there's one recommended way, spelled out step by step, with "here's what you should see" checkpoints and a warning before anything risky. We don't hand you five expert variants — we hand you the one that works.

What this guide deliberately leaves out: performance tuning, security hardening beyond the safe defaults, the full control-file reference, the monitoring stack, and multi-instance operations. Those live in the advanced guide, and we'll point you there by name at the exact moment a task needs that depth — never mid-step.

A few words you'll keep seeing

You don't need to memorise these — skim them once and come back when a term trips you up.

  • Barracuda — the part of BOA that installs and upgrades the server stack. One per box.
  • Octopus — the part that manages hosting instances (tenants) on the box.
  • Ægir / Aegir — the Drupal-based web panel you manage sites in.
  • Hostmaster — the software that provides the Ægir web panel.
  • Platform — a Drupal codebase that one or more sites run on. You upgrade a site by moving it onto a newer platform; BOA manages this for you.
  • Site — one hosted Drupal (or Backdrop) site: its domain, its database, and the platform it lives on.
  • Instance (also oN user, e.g. o1) — one isolated Octopus tenant, running as its own restricted Linux user. Your sites live inside an instance.
  • Control file — a small settings file on the server (for example /root/.barracuda.cnf) that overrides BOA's built-in defaults. Beginners touch very few of these; safe defaults are provided.
  • SKYNET — BOA's automatic self-update system. When enabled, boxes update themselves when a new release lands.
  • LTS — the free, stable BOA edition (the one this guide assumes). Now in code-freeze: security and critical fixes only, no new features.
  • PRO — the paid, licensed BOA edition: the actively-developed track, with newer service versions, new features, and support options.

Ready to go?

If a single Drupal-hosting box that mostly runs itself sounds right, you're in the correct guide. Head to the next section to check your server and prerequisites before you install, then walk the install step by step. When it comes time to keep the box updated, see Keeping BOA current.

Going further (advanced, root required): once you've got a box running and you want to understand how the pieces fit together in depth — the full Master/Satellite architecture, tuning, and security — see Operating BOA → Architecture overview. That guide assumes you're comfortable with Aegir and Linux internals, so it's a deliberate step up from here. You can also look up any BOA command in the command reference, or check what's been retired in Discontinued features.