Long story short: I have an important system failing to boot, and I've already broke something, and I would really appreciate someone giving some suggestions before I break it even further.
So I have a home server running FreeBSD, with a zfs-root SSD and a separate zfs volume with some spinning disks keeping all the data.
All of a sudden, the machine went down and failed to reboot. I connected a monitor to it and it was stuck with an error saying it was unable to boot an operating system, pressing a key got me to the "OK" prompt, and waiting for a reboot got me into the bios config.
It's been a while (and one upgrade to FreeBSD 14) since I installed it, and booting from the FreeBSD installer and using gpart to check the partitions shows that I have both an EFI and a freebsd-boot partition on there.
Hello everyone! I wanted to share some exciting updates about the development of BSD Mail, our privacy-focused email service designed with robustness, security, and transparency in mind. Here’s a deep dive into the technical choices I've made, focusing on my use of open source solutions and open protocols:
🌍 Servers & Location
We're running on two physical servers:
One hosted by OVH in France
Another by Hetzner in Germany
Both servers operate on FreeBSD with NVMe drives in a ZFS mirror configuration for speed and data integrity.
🔒 Virtualization & Security
We utilize jails on both servers to ensure isolated environments for different services, managed via BastilleBSD. On one server, jails are set up directly on the hardware, whereas the other server employs nested jails.
Each server hosts a bhyve VM running OpenBSD with OpenSMTPD for handling SMTP duties securely.
🔗 Networking
A Wireguard setup connects the two servers, facilitating routing capabilities so that jails and VMs can communicate seamlessly, supporting both IPv4 and IPv6.
📧 Email Services
Dovecot is configured for maildir replication across the servers using Dovecot sync, ensuring email availability and redundancy.
Rspamd instances are tied to local KeyDB jails, set up in master-master replication for consistent and reliable spam detection and greylisting.
ClamAV runs in corresponding jails for virus scanning, maintaining a high level of security.
SOGo provides a web interface for email management, connected to MySQL databases in master-master replication to handle sessions and authentication smoothly.
💾 Data Management
Email data is stored on separate, encrypted ZFS datasets to secure emails at rest.
MySQL databases are used for storing credentials and managing sessions for SOGo, also in a master-master replication setup. Importantly, all passwords are securely hashed using bcrypt, ensuring they are salted and safe.
🔎 Monitoring & Reliability
Our DNS is managed through BunnyNet, which continuously monitors our server status. Should one server—or a specific service—become unavailable, DNS configurations are dynamically adjusted to avoid directing users to the affected IP until full service is restored.
🌐 Commitment to Open Source and Open Protocols
Every component of BSD Mail is built exclusively using open source software and open protocols. This commitment is crucial for ensuring data freedom and the reliability of the solutions we use.
This setup not only emphasizes our commitment to privacy and security but also our dedication to maintaining an open and transparent platform.
We're excited to bring you a service where your privacy, data integrity, and freedom are prioritized. Stay tuned for more updates!
There's a KVirc (https://www.kvirc.net/) update approaching for #FreeBSD ports, and more and more we're getting "do we update this for Qt6 or not?" I think there's going to be a sea change to Qt6-based things "soon".
(for me personally, that would require VirtualBox to go to Qt6 as well, although I'm not afraid of having multiple UI toolkits installed)
The other day I have also committed an update to the sync(8) manual page, which documents that running sync three times in a row hasn't been necessary since the 80s.
I started a simple project called checkrc that validates the /etc/rc.conf file on #FreeBSD. I'm still a beginner in C programming, but I'm giving it a shot with something usful:
The project is still a work in progress, right at the beginning, so don't expect too much yet. But I'll be working on it every day. :blobfoxcofecute: :blobfoxcomputerowonotice: One day I'll be great!
What a wonderful conversation, discussing BSDs, communities and the joy of using cough legacy software, with @stefano, @gyptazy and a few more people whose handles I don't know yet.
With the deprecation of the armv7 architecture in pfSense's upstream operating system, FreeBSD, it looks like pfSense+ 24.03 will probably be the one of the last major releases that I'll be seeing for my Netgate 3100 firewall.
I'm debating on replacing it with one of their newer appliances (either a 4200 or a 6100, as the 2100 doesn't have any 2.5 GbE ports) or getting a cheap-ish N100 or N300 passively-cooled system and pay for a pfSense+ subscription.
If I use NFSv3, then all my shares are full of #AppleDouble files (i.e., with the "._" prefix).
If I use #NFSv4, then "git fetch" just hangs forever and never finishes.
If I use #Samba, then either 1) everything is 755 but I cannot delete files xD or 2) (after applying https://askubuntu.com/a/1126633/413683) the permissions are correct, but something is wrong with my .git: ad_convert: Failed to convert [.git].
For more than 25 years, Beckhoff Automation has used Windows as the exclusive operating system for its products. By adopting FreeBSD, they decreased their operating system footprint over sevenfold. Beckhoff came for FreeBSD’s permissive license and stayed for its smaller footprint.
Hey everyone, I'm studying #C and planning to contribute to some open-source projects soon. I have a question: in #FreeBSD, do you usually use #gmake, #bmake, or #cmake more frequently? (I'm a beginner, but I got the impression that cmake is the most comprehensive). Is there one that's more universal and can be used across all projects, or does it depend on the project? And for #Emacs, which one helps more with configuration?