Having answered the question a number of times, I decided to finally document¹ why/how I ended up using BSDs instead of Linux, taking a page from @npub10ad6...g5mh's playbook². tl;dr: a bit of push from Linux, a bit of pull from the BSDs. ⸻ ¹

Why BSDs? | Tim's blog

²

𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚗

Quare FreeBSD?

I really wanted to make this article short … but I failed miserably. At least I tried to organize it well so one may get back to it after &#8...

Is there a comprehensive list of IP addresses used by stock #FreeBSD updates (freebsd-update(8) and pkg(8) and/or any other default system-maintenance utilities I might be missing)? Looking at my /etc/freebsd-update.conf and /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf files, it looks like update.freebsd.org and pkg.freebsd.org The aim is to configure pf(4) to limit jails outbound connections to only those update servers. A first-pass approximation suggests just running host(1) against those two servers and using the resulting IPv4/IPv6 addresses, but I don't know how frequently they'd change (are they fronting any sort of CDN that might choose different IPs?) or if I'm missing any other critical names/IPs.

Hey, #FreeBSD jail/networking folks: I've been trying to figure out whether VNET jail-networking *requires* a bridge0 device with both the LAN-facing adapter and all the common epair ends, or whether, since the epairs are all virtual interfaces, pf(4) can manage to do the routing/NAT without everything sitting on the same bridge0 device. However, when I try this (including net.{inet.ip,inet6,ip6}.forwarding=1) traffic doesn't seem to flow. Is there some obvious thing I've missed or that I should be testing? Or do I just need to throw everything on a bridge0 and deal with it?

Had some time on my hands, so I wrote up a bunch of the lesser-known corners of less(1) that I use with various frequency:

Assorted less(1) tips | Tim's blog

There's a surprising number of features hidden in something that doesn't get used as more than just a $PAGER.

Me: Hey, VPS provider, I see that I can upgrade my instance for ~$10/yr which bumps it up from 30GB to 55GB, but that gets me two more vCPUs and another 1GB of RAM. That's nice, but is there a cheaper way to upgrade just the disk on my VM since that's all I'm looking for? VPS provider: Sure, you can upgrade just your disk for $1,08/GB/yr with a minimum of 10GB. Me: so I can spend $10.80 annually for just a mere +10GB of disk space; or I can upgrade my instance for $10 annually and get an additional 15GB, of disk two more vCPU cores, and another 1GB of RAM? 🤦

Parents, please check your kids' candy this Hallowe'en. I just found systemd inside one of their chocolates.

Dear, search-engine AI summaries, You and your hallucinations can go pound dirt. Sincerely, —me PS: there is no "tab-stop" option in tmux

Congrats to the OpenBSD folks for another mundane upgrade: $ doas syspatch $ doas sysupgrade [reboots, installs, reboots into the new system] $ doas sysmerge # a couple mail aliases and login.conf entries $ doas pkg_add -u and done. The only mild scare came from the old junker laptop taking forever to rebuild a new kernel. I hoped it hadn't hung or failed to set `apm -L` on the machine, because the fans can't keep up and it will have a thermal panic under high load. But it eventually completed and rebooted just fine into the new 7.8 system. Time to go upgrade the VPS instances. I'll defer the macppc box until packages are ready, usually in a couple weeks.

I'm just looking for a server-name to give my VM…

Dagnabbit, #Flock is increasing presence in our city 😠 While I lead a boring life and don't really have much worth hiding in my daily transit, the surveillance-state nature feels wrong.

Community Impact

Frisco expands license plate camera network to state intersections

Frisco will soon have more automated license plate recognition cameras.