2.5 Admins

Nginx is forked, Broadcom/VMware kills ESXi, dedup is finally fixed in ZFS, using multiple network interfaces on a NAS, and more.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   News announcing freenginx.org Broadcom-owned VMware kills the free version of ESXi virtualization software OpenZFS Native Encryption Use Raises Data Corruption Concerns F...

Trying to report a security issue lands a consultant in trouble, a new take on the drop shipping scam, setting up your first NAS – including the benefits of RAID, picking a distro, choosing the right disk size, and more.   Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   News/discussion IT consultant in Germany fined for exposing shoddy securit...

Microsoft’s rudimentary error that allowed an attacker access to its executives’ emails, Pixel phones have another serious storage bug, hidden malware payload found at Ars Technica, and when to upgrade your hardware for Windows 11.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes BSDCan 2024 – Call for papers   News In major gaffe,...

Y2K was a pretty serious problem and 2038 is coming soon, work on Arm servers is improving the experience on the desktop, and what to do with an old unsupported Synology NAS.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes OpenZFS Best Practices: Part 2: File Serving and SANs   News/discussion The ‘nothing-happened’ Y2K bug – and how IT...

Hard drives are pretty much an enterprise product now, GitHub’s malware problem, and spreading services across different machines and VMs to keep downtime to a minimum.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes OpenZFS Storage Best Practices and Use Cases Part 1: Snapshots and Backups   News Hard disk drives are next in line to become m...

Why the problems with open source licenses aren’t quite as easy to fix as some people think, the reasons you should never pay ransomware gangs, and running a Nagios distro on a Raspberry Pi.   Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   News/discussion What comes after open source? Bruce Perens is working on it A tale of 2 casino ransomwar...

What does “incognito mode” in Chrome actually mean and whether documenting browser standards in code is a good idea, the serious implications of a fun story about messing with a ChatGPT instance, and maximizing performance when using mixed disk types on ZFS mirrored vdevs.   Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   News Google agr...

Twitch pulls out of Korea thanks to the opposite of Net Neutrality, it’s not clear to what extent smart devices are listening to your conversations, more on water usage in data centers, and our thoughts on mandatory access controls.   Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   News Twitch to shut down in Korea over ‘prohibitively expensiv...

What you need to know about the recent SSH vulnerability, yet another privacy issue with cloud-connected security cameras, why it’s difficult to get to the bottom of an obscure ZFS encryption bug, and more.   Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   News SSH protects the world’s most sensitive networks. It just got a lot weaker UniFi de...

Google Drive client users lost months of files, a feature of UEFI that has left millions of computers potentially vulnerable to persistent malware, and why you probably shouldn’t buy cheap resold volume Windows licenses.   Plugs Support us on patreon to get ad-free episodes that are sometimes a day or so early.   News/discussion Google Drive users say Google lost their files; Googl...

Jim and Allan break down the details of the recent ZFS data corruption bug, and give their tips for managing a fleet of 40+ servers.   Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   News Two new versions of OpenZFS fix long-hidden corruption bug   Free Consulting We were asked about managing 40+ servers.         Automox Sav...

Why a small island nation’s top level domain ended up with such a terrible reputation, an ssh vulnerability that’s not as scary as it sounds, whether software can be “finished”, and using powerline or WiFi for security cameras.     Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   News How a tiny Pacific Island became the...

Why and how Allan installed a set of new Power over Ethernet wireless access points, and our hardware recommendations for a media server and NAS in one.   Allan’s new WiFi setup Access points Controller     Free Consulting We were asked for hardware recommendations for a media server and NAS in one.             HelloFresh With HelloFresh, you get...

A Cloudflare outage shines a light on sloppy data center practices, and why you shouldn’t run a mail server at home. Plus followup on the Android multi-user bug, package managers on Windows, and Toshiba hard drives.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   News/discussion Cloudflare claims Flexential data center outage was behind ser...

Okta seems to not be taking its security seriously enough, crashing iPhones is far easier than it should be, Jim’s report from the Ubuntu Summit, and what to do when you find a company’s sensitive data on the Internet.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   News No, Okta, senior management, not an errant employee, caused you...

The large water consumption of AI and data centers in general, China’s big push towards IPv6, why we don’t talk about Toshiba hard drives very often, and the implications of poor Bluetooth security on an e-bike.   Plugs Support us on patreon Unlocking Infrastructure Sovereignty: Harnessing the Power of Open Source Solutions for Business Flexibility and Cost-Effectiveness   Ne...

What Google should do to prevent malware sites in their ads, why you might want to avoid using multiple profiles on Android devices, a speculative execution vulnerability in Apple Silicon, and the pros and cons of TP-Link Omada and Ubiquiti Unifi.   Plugs Support us on patreon   News Clever malvertising attack uses Punycode to look like KeePass’s official website pixel 6 can’...

The nuances of copyrighting AI-generated art, getting the best speeds with Samba, and building an SSD-only NAS.   News/discussion Opinion: The Copyright Office is making a mistake on AI-generated art   Free Consulting We were asked about building an SSD-only NAS.         Kolide Kolide ensures that if a device isn’t secure, it can’t access your apps. It’s Device Trust...

Why enabling password autofill isn’t a great idea, Jim’s adventures in network repair, and setting up a home router/WiFi hotspot.   Feedback Don’t use autofill on your password manager   Story Time Adventures in network repair   Free Consulting We were asked about hardware for a home router/Wi-Fi hotspot.         HelloFresh With HelloFresh, you get fa...

A network breach teaches us all a valuable lesson about threat models, Allan and Jim’s TV setups, and picking the right external storage solution.   Plugs Support us on patreon   News/discussion How Google Authenticator made one company’s network breach much, much worse Amolith’s wiki page about passwords   Feedback Allan’s TV remote control   Free Consulting...

Google and Apple do a bad job of disclosing a pretty serious vulnerability, why hard drives aren’t physically bigger, and setting up a distributed backup system with a group of friends.   Plugs Support us on patreon   News Submit your ideas or articles – OpenSource.net Incomplete disclosures by Apple and Google create “huge blindspot” for 0-day hunters Google quietly corrects...

The future of archive storage using lasers and ceramics, self-hosting an Internet archive, more on Windows 11 Home, and setting up storage inside VMs.   Plugs Support us on patreon Jim and Allan host Klara’s latest Webinar: OpenZFS Data Replication   News/discussion Cerabyte roadmaps ceramic nano-memory storage   Feedback Archivy ArchiveBox   Free Consulting We were asked...

Unity causes a stink with its new pricing model, running out of disk space causes a very expensive problem, how one-off promotional domains can come back to bite you, and picking the hardware and software for a router.   News Unity has changed its pricing model, and game developers are pissed off Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume unity_to_godot_converter: An...

The user experience on fresh installations of Windows and Edge is terrible and we get to the bottom of why. Unfortunately the reason isn’t exclusive to Microsoft’s offerings – it’s a pattern that we’ve seen from numerous companies, even Mozilla. Plus why it’s a bad idea to power your server on and off regularly.   Plugs Support us on patreon   News/dis...

Dropbox once again proves that there is no such thing as “unlimited” anything, Intel isn’t going to support WiFi 7 on Windows 10 (but it doesn’t really matter), managing ssh keys, setting up data storage for containers, and more on IPMI for Raspberry Pis.   Plugs Support us on patreon   News Dropbox limits ‘all the storage you need’ unlimited plan, bla...