2.5 Admins

Our first look at the next generation of Arm, alarming claims about a recent Ubiquiti breach, and setting up a FreeBSD file server.   Plugs Customizing the FreeBSD Kernel Check out Joe’s albums Support us on patreon   News Containerize all the things! Arm v9 takes security seriously ARM Morello Whistleblower: Ubiquiti Breach “Catastrophic”   Free consulting We were asked about setti...

How we’ll get to 100TB hard disks by the end of the decade, the potential dangers of flipped bits in network traffic, how to organize multiple copies of your backups, and managing dynamic DNS.   Plugs Understanding Network Performance Support us on patreon   News Seagate: 100TB HDDs Due in 2030, Multi-Actuator Drives to Become Common Toshiba’s disk drive: WTF is the flux control ef...

The OVH data center fire and related tales, drama with WireGuard in FreeBSD, why you should plug your flash drives in regularly, and more.   News OVH data centre destroyed by fire in Strasbourg OVH outlines recovery plan as French data centres smoulder OVH founder says UPS fixed up day before blaze is early suspect as source of data centre destruction Hard lessons learned from the OVH datacen...

Why it’s so hard to build a PC these days, finding help for ZFS issues, getting started with a homebrew router, and more.   Plugs The history of ARM and FreeBSD Support us on patreon   Discussion We talk about why it’s so hard to find PC parts and peripherals at the moment. Jim wrote an article about buying a gaming PC .   Free consulting We were asked about how to get h...

Why hard disks will be around for ever, bad news for VR, slowdown from disk I/O, and when clustering isn’t necessarily the best solution.   Plugs Register for Open Source 101 OpenZFS: dRAID is coming Support us on patreon   News Seagate: Why SSDs will not kill disk drives Google Cardboard is no longer for sale   Free consulting We were asked about I/O wait on Linux, and cluste...

Where we draw the line when supporting friends and family, monitoring SSL certs, ZFS on single drives, Chromium finally cleans up its act, and more in this feedback-filled episode.   Feedback Chromium finally fixes its DNS issue , a Samba AD server called Zentyal, firewalls, Unraid and SnapRAID, xCloud, and Nagios plugins.   Free consulting We were asked about ZFS on single drives, and h...

Bad news for LastPass users, why Nvidia probably won’t buy Arm, what happens to our servers if we disappear, and using the cloud to avoid bottlenecks.   Plugs FreeBSD Jails – The beginning of Containers Support us on patreon   News Changes to LastPass Free Nvidia wants to buy CPU designer Arm—Qualcomm is not happy about it   Free Consulting We were asked about bus factor...

Stadia and game streaming, Bitcoin and Linux quirks in your feedback, and building a home server for more than just storage.   Plugs Simple and Secure VPN in FreeBSD – Introducing WireGuard Support us on patreon   News/discussion Focusing on Stadia’s future as a platform, and winding down SG&E   Feedback Follow-up on Bitcoin, and historical quirks of Linux.   Free Consultin...

Reddit trolls Wall Street, bad news for Parler’s new host, why you should learn iptables, and backing up S3-compatible buckets.   Plugs History of FreeBSD Part 4: BSD and TCP/IP Support us on patreon   News Understanding /r/wallstreetbets DDoS-Guard To Forfeit Internet Space Occupied by Parler   Free Consulting We were asked about firewall managers and backing up S3-compatible...

The Bitcoin price is booming again so we take the chance to laugh at Allan for selling too early, then we discuss some of your emails including Arm/x86 combos, switching to Ubuntu, and the importance of using a UPS.   Discussion The world’s cryptocurrency is now worth more than $1 trillion   Feedback Reproducibility , Arm and x86 in one machine, managing Ubuntu servers as a Red Hat user,...

Why Parler is unlikely to come back any time soon, free RHEL, and using a VPS to subvert VPN limits.   Plugs Exploring Swap on FreeBSD Support us on patreon   News Amazon cuts off Parler’s Web hosting following Apple, Google bans CentOS is gone—but RHEL is now free for up to 16 production servers   Free Consulting We were asked about using a VPS to avoid limits on the number of devi...

The merits of ECC RAM, why reproducible builds are a good idea, and where to buy used equipment.   Plugs Webinar: Introducing OpenZFS 2.0 Support us on patreon   News/Discussion Linus Torvalds rails at Intel for ‘killing’ the ECC industry Why don’t PCs use error correcting RAM? “Because Intel,” says Linus You don’t need reproducible builds   Free consulting We were asked...

A cruel but necessary phishing test, ancient standards in brand new legislation, using Windows when it makes sense, and commissioning and decommissioning servers.   Plugs Webinar: Introducing OpenZFS 2.0 Klara: Routing and Firewalling VLANS with FreeBSD Support us on patreon   News GoDaddy Employees Were Told They Were Getting a Holiday Bonus. It Was Actually a Phishing Test Brexit trade...

Why Google services like Gmail went down recently, the potentially promising future for RISC-V, and using ZFS for home and root.   News Google Mail outage Google incident report New RISC-V CPU claims record breaking performance per watt Seagate working on RISC-V SoCs   Free consulting We were asked about using ZFS for root and home partitions.     Linode Simplify your cloud inf...

Potentially improving DNS privacy, the big new ZFS release, and the best way to automate Linux installations.   Plugs Webinar – Best Practices For Optimizing ZFS – Part 1 Support us on patreon   News Improving DNS Privacy with Oblivious DoH in 1.1.1.1 OpenZFS 2.0 release unifies Linux, BSD and adds tons of new features   Free consulting We were asked about the best way to automate L...

How Intel and AMD have fought it out over the years, Apple changes the industry with their M1 SoC, and we repeat the mantra that RAID is not a backup.   Plugs Support us on patreon . If enough people do, we will go weekly.   News A history of Intel vs. AMD desktop performance, with CPU charts galore Hands-on with the Apple M1—a seriously fast x86 competitor Intel’s Disruption is Now Comp...

Google proves that “unlimited” anything doesn’t exist, GitHub shenanigans, Apple’s new Arm computers, and which distro to start with as a sysadmin.   Plugs Allan’s ZFS Webinar – Nov 18th, signup soon Support us on patreon . If enough people do, we will go weekly.   News Arm Macs announced Google Photos is the latest “Unlimited” plan to impose hard limi...

We wade through Cloudfare’s marketing fluff, forced WordPress plugin updates, a bunch of your questions, and the shocking revelation that FreeBSD actually has graphics drivers.   Plugs History of FreeBSD, Part 2   News Introducing Cloudflare One Introducing Cloudflare Browser Isolation beta WordPress deploys forced security update for dangerous bug in popular plugin   Free con...

How not to store test results, AMD firmly on top of the desktop space, what moving to remote work means for corporate networks, and deduplication of disorganized data.   Plugs Allan’s summary of the OpenZFS Devsummit 2020 All Things Open Support us on patreon . If enough people do, we will go weekly.   News Why using Microsoft’s tool caused Covid-19 results to be lost AMD’s n...

Intel almost catching up to AMD with Tiger Lake, the .uk fiasco, and why you shouldn’t be using dd.   Plugs OpenZFS Developer Summit All Things Open 2020 Support us on patreon . If enough people do, we will go weekly.   News Hands-on with Intel’s i7-1185G7 Tiger Lake prototype laptop Intel’s run at the GPU market begins with Tiger Lake onboard graphics What the hell is going on wit...

Cyber insurance for ransomware, more confusing WD specs, the truth behind the return of the Gateway brand, and managing config files.   News Ransomware accounted for 41% of all cyber insurance claims in H1 2020 Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM” We found out who makes Walmart’s new Gateway laptops, and it’s bad news   Free consulting We were asked about managing config...

How Internet standards are decided, what a new one means for the Web, a surprising “feature” of Chrome, and the best ways to monitor your systems.   News WebBundles Harmful to Content Blocking, Security Tools, and the Open Web RFC8890: The Internet is for End Users A Chrome feature is creating enormous load on global root DNS servers   Free consulting We were asked about moni...

Low power x86 vs Arm boards, hard disk failure rates, and the intricacies of ZFS snapshots.   Plugs OpenZFS Developer Summit Support the podcast on Patreon   News Seeed Studio’s Odyssey is a mini-PC for big projects and small wallets Backblaze Hard Drive Stats Q2 2020   Free consulting We were asked about ZFS on root, snapshots, and Jim’s project called Sanoid .    ...

Intel’s 7nm woes, hosts files, Mozilla’s VPN service, and automating ssh between remote hosts.   News Heads roll at Intel after 7nm delay Intel’s 7nm is busted, chips delayed, may have to use rival foundries to get GPUs out for US govt exascale super AMD is now following Moore’s Law: More chips, more money, more pressure on Intel, more competition in the x86 space AMD...

New types of hard disks, recovering data from dying drives, AMD makes Jim reach for the calculator, and what to do with obscure software that you need.   Plugs FreeBSD Fridays: A Series of 101 Classes Joe’s podcast consulting   News Western Digital releases new 18TB, 20TB EAMR drives Tales From The Sysadmin: Impending Hard Drive Doom AMD Ryzen 4000 desktop CPUs will be here in Q3 2020 &n...