FreeBSD in GCE
Yes there are supported images of amd64 freebsd available in GCE to boot, but I needed an i386 variant so here are the steps I took. I downloaded the mini memstick image, converted it to a disk format virtualbox recognised VBoxManage.exe convertfromraw FreeBSD-11.1-RELEASE-amd64-mini-memstick.img FreeBSD-11.1-RELEASE-amd64-mini-memstick.vdi --format vdi Then made a virtual machine with that as it's disk, booted and chose the shell option, then remounted as read/write, and put this into /boot/loader.conf mount -o rw /dev/ufs/FreeBSD_install / boot_multicons="YES" boot_serial="YES" comconsole_speed="115200" console="comconsole,vidconsole" then shutdown the machine (gracefully!) now I have an image that supports install via a serial port, just need to make it the right format for GCE to consider as a boot disk VBoxManage.exe clonehd FreeBSD-11.1-RELEASE-amd64-mini-memstick.vdi disk.raw --format raw tar -Sczf /tmp/compress...