Dovecot| www.tumfatig.net
Not matter how hard I try, I can’t stand and learn those systemd and ip censored swearing stuff on Linux. Call me an old fart with muscle memory amnesia but I just want to manage my servers using rc scripts, ifconfig and route commands, and read my logs in syslog flat format. Anyway, my Peertube instance was running on Debian and I wanted to use some BSD instead of Linux.| www.tumfatig.net
Last week-end, I was invited to the UNIX Social Camp in Dijon, France to talk about the reasons I still use OpenBSD these days and why should others do so; or at least, have a look at OpenBSD . This post is an English transcription of the original French slides that are available here .| TuM'Fatig
When I decided to stop publishing on Instagram, I seeked for alternatives and Pixelfed looked like a nice one. The fact that it had a migration feature from IG made me go for it. But for reasons, I don’t want to use this software anymore. And now that GoToSocial features the Gallery / Gram-style layout , it is time to migrate the account and its data to GtS.| TuM'Fatig
I already used a Mastodon account but wanted to migrate it to my brand new GoToSocial instance while keeping as much data as possible.| TuM'Fatig
I used to run GoToSocial on OpenBSD but, one day, the port was marked BROKEN and I switched to using Mastodon on Linux. Still, I kept testing running GoToSocial on NetBSD, Illumos, FreeBSD and Linux. Not so long ago, GoToSocial started to compile and work pretty nice again on OpenBSD. After using it for about a year on a SearXNG side project , I decided that I would also use it as my primary account on the Fediverse . This post is about installing and running GoToSocial on OpenBSD .| www.tumfatig.net
I don’t like the 50/50 tiling ratio of xfwm. I have cooked a patch to modify that ratio to my likings and already applied it to my OpenBSD local port tree. But the spare laptop runs Pop!_OS. And Debian / Ubuntu based Linux distribution comes with prebuild packages ; and that’s usually great! Getting and patching the software source to build a custom deb package is quite easy when you have the recipe. And here it is.| www.tumfatig.net
After watching Wolfgang’s review of the S920 , I went for chasing one and found a refurbished Fujitsu FUTRO S930 for 54€. I bought it with a few extra electronics parts and tested it with a few FOSS operating systems I know.| www.tumfatig.net
Some time ago, I adopted VictoriaMetrics as a replacement for Prometheus; which was already replacing InfluxDB. And recently, I realized that GoToSocial was exposing metrics in Prometheus format . So I decided to build a Grafana dashboard to keep an eye on my GtS instance.| www.tumfatig.net
Since I started using other Desktop OS than OpenBSD, I’m obsessed with limiting filesystem resources access from applications; especially Web browsers. This already applied to FreeBSD Web browsers here and there . This now has to be applied to Linux.| www.tumfatig.net
When it comes to rendering graphical representation of all the metrics I gather, I generally use RRDtool . Yes, I’m that old ;-) But I also have a Grafana instance from which I render stuff that can’t be done using RRDgraph. But, so far, I couldn’t generate a static PNG file from a panel to insert in a static web page. But this was until I found the Grafana Image Rendered plug-in.| www.tumfatig.net
As I was testing OpenBSD on my refurbished ThinkPad T480s, I noticed that the fan kept blowing even though the laptop was IDLE. Given that I am a vigilant reader of misc@ , I already knew a few ThinkPads had been reported to be sluggish because of some BIOS settings regarding Thunderbolt.| www.tumfatig.net
While discovering FreeBSD Jails, I wrote on how to run a web browser inside a FreeBSD jail . Time has passed and a couple of testing later, I ended up changing a bit the way I use my Web Browser jails.| TuM'Fatig
For reasons, I have a laptop running both Slackware Linux or OpenBSD. To have both available, I split the storage space in two and installed both systems. But if mainstream Linux distros use GRUB, Slackware has an historical love for LILO; and elilo when it comes to EFI-based computers.| www.tumfatig.net
I was today years old when I needed to change some of the parameters of my Prometheus service on OmniOS. It runs via pkgsrc and the provided SMF. And modifying the running parameters is not as simple as editing an rc.d file.| TuM'Fatig
When it comes to getting an OpenBSD virtual machine, you can go to your preferred Linux VPS provider and hack its rescue mode to install OpenBSD. Or you can go to a VPS provider that offers booting from an ISO file and getting access to the console. In that case, you’d probably get an OpenBSD VM running on KVM. Which is not that bad. But you can also book your VM from OpenBSD Amsterdam and let the 100% OpenBSD journey begin.| www.tumfatig.net
It is 2024 and people are still using Window Maker, the X11 window manager that reproduces the elegant look and feel of the NeXTSTEP user interface . One of them does not live in 1997 any more and has an irresistible love for flat themes.| TuM'Fatig
I got an HP Color Laser 150nw wireless printer some time ago and never really tried to use it with OpenBSD. Mostly because printers are… printers. But after discovering that it works well on my wife’s Slackware Linux laptop (better than on Windows 10), I decided to give it a try using OpenBSD.| www.tumfatig.net
Since the moment I started having servers in my house, I always put them under my desk or in a bookshelf. They shouldn’t be visible; because of Wife Acceptance Factor . They shouldn’t be too noisy; because I can’t stand fan’s noise. This led to pretty complicated arrangement as computers have not always been that small and that fanless.| www.tumfatig.net
When you edit a script using Vim, you may want to run the script without actually quitting the editor. This is easily done using the following Vim command: <Esc>:!%<Enter> Once the script has run, Vim will display its output and pause until you Press ENTER or type command to continue. That’s all. It is published here so that I don’t have to query stackoverflow the next time I forget about it 🤣| TuM'Fatig
Most of my workstations are laptops. But because “age”, they are connected to an external 27" 4K monitor. It is used as my primary display and the laptop’s screen is disabled. And as I use WindowMaker as my daily window manager, I sometimes blank myself when I unplug the USB-C cable from the laptop. There must be a way to automatically switch to the proper display when some USB-C monitors are (dis)connected… Other than switching to using Xfce, KDE, Gnome and other DEs that already imp...| TuM'Fatig
Using OpenBSD as a daily driver, I got used to having programs being restricted in their permissions. Especially Web Browsers from ports that are patched to implement pledge(2) and unveil(8). Long story short, this guarantees that Firefox, Chromium & friends will get killed if they try to access system resources that they were not allowed to access; be it a device or a file system space. FreeBSD 14.1, AFAIK, does not implement such feature. And getting a bit paranoid because of “Fish Linux...| www.tumfatig.net
On my OmniOS zones, I don’t use DHCP. Mostly because I don’t have that many of those; DHCP would be overkill and another service to manage. For those configured using IPv4 only, the zadm utility can configure the network stack from a JSON file. But I had that zone where I needed both IPv4 and IPv6 configured and couldn’t have it working via zadm. So I configured it from within the zone.| TuM'Fatig
While reading logs, I saw that my OmniOS server was not really time synced with the rest of the Wild Wild World. After a quick check, I realised I forgot to set up NTP on this server. Let’s solve this now!| TuM'Fatig
Believe it or not, I do all my editing stuff with Vim. This includes writing emails and editing this blog content. One thing I was missing, compared to using Thunderbird or LibreOffice, is the spell checking feature. Until I took 10 minutes to read the Vim documentation .| TuM'Fatig
I started using GoToSocial (the fast, fun and small ActivityPub server) in 2022 on OpenBSD. Because it was nearly the only OpenBSD-native ActivityPub options at that time, because it was light and because it could use the SQLite database engine . I stopped using it when it was marked BROKEN because of incompatibilities between modernc.org/sqlite and OpenBSD kernel. This is when I switched to Mastodon and stop using it. Until recently, when I discovered there was a pkgsrc option available.| www.tumfatig.net
I run a lot of bhyve VMs on my OmniOS server because that’s the way I’m used to go with exposing services. For fun knowledge purposes, I decided that I would replace my Grafana virtual machine with an Illumos zone. Thanks to pkgsrc, this is really easy and straightforward.| TuM'Fatig
I often try various OSes on my spare laptops. This is where Ventoy turned out to be really useful. If you don’t know, Ventoy is a free bootloader that looks like Grub and let you boot whichever ISO files you put on the USB key it is installed. Just copy / paste the ISO on the dedicated USB key partition and it’s ready to boot. It works from Windows, Linux but not on OpenBSD. Well… until I discovered some error messages didn’t mean what I thought they did…| TuM'Fatig
By default, FreeBSD 14.1 does not recognized the multimedia keys of my NuPhy Field75 USB keyboard. Worse than that, the (beloved) metal knob used for volume control doesn’t work either. Hopefully, after a bunch of readings & trials & errors, I ended up finding the configuration bits required to have it fully working!| TuM'Fatig
My initial questionning was on the opportunity to run a desktop environment using virtual machines provided by the OpenBSD vmd(8). But vmd(8) doesn’t feature graphics, as of OpenBSD 7.5. Let’s see if this can be achieved anyway.| www.tumfatig.net
A year ago, I wrote about multibooting Windows, Linux and OpenBSD on my laptop. Since then, lots have happened. The most relevant part is that Linux is gone and I only multiboot Windows and OpenBSD. If I had done it from the beginning, I would have used rEFInd rather than Grub. And here’s how.| TuM'Fatig
To create the “OpenBSD Workstation for the People PeerTube” video, I used KDEnlive on OpenBSD. But for reasons, I also had to use other tools.| www.tumfatig.net
This is an attempt at building an OpenBSD desktop than could be used by newcomers or by people that don’t care about tinkering with computers and just want a working daily driver for general tasks. Somebody will obviously need to know a bit of UNIX but we’ll try to limit it to the minimum.| www.tumfatig.net
GoToSocial does not seem to support push notifications for iOS applications. As far as I understand, this is because it doesn’t implement the Mastodon Web Push API . But GtS exposes a notification API. So let’s poll this API and use Pushover to get push notifications on the iOS devices.| www.tumfatig.net
I recently got interested in so-called Generative AI. I tested a few things like ChatGPT, Dall-E or Bing Image Generator. Then I discovered things could be self-hosted rather that using Cloud resources. But I am no gamer, nor do I want to have a full machine eating 200W all day to run my little experiments. I decided I would use my new Topton GM1 Thunderbolt port and connect an eGPU to it. This way I can simply turn it on and off when needed.| TuM'Fatig
I wanted a communication tool for the NoGoo.me searxng instance I manage. But I want a software with small footprint. I used GoToSocial as my primary ActivityPub server and it was great. It only lacked a few features so I stopped using it as my primary Fediverse service. Let’s have it back again in my software ecosystem.| www.tumfatig.net
I bought a Topton GM1 Industrial Mini PC for my HomeLab. It is aimed at running Slackware Linux but I wanted to have a quick look at how well BSD OSes support it out-of-the-box.| www.tumfatig.net
I want to run GoToSocial on some *BSD system. Because I am who I am, I went for using NetBSD 10.0 . And because my hypervisor is running bhyve on OmniOS , you get the title of this blog post. Don’t get too anxious, it is quite straightforward. So let the journey begin.| www.tumfatig.net
Sometimes you just need a quick (and not so dirty) way to keep an eye on your server metrics. A nice thing with Prometheus is that it can be both a storage and a visualization solution for your metrics. Here follows a quick example of what can be done using Prometheus Console Templates .| www.tumfatig.net
After a whole lot of YouTubing, I decided to get a NuPhy Field75 . I went for the Electro (Green and Grey) edition. This is my kinda-review of the mechanical keyboard from the POV of a ThinkPad keyboard long-lover and French user of OpenBSD as a desktop.| www.tumfatig.net
With my recent desk changes, I’m not using the ThinkPad keyboard and touchpad anymore. But I really like touchpads in general. So I got myself a refurbished Logitech Wireless Rechargeable Touchpad T650. Spoiler Alert: it works pretty well on OpenBSD.| TuM'Fatig
In 2020, I stole @gonzalo’s idea for a status bar using only XTerm and stock OpenBSD tools. I wrote about it there . In 2024, I was notified (Hi Fox) of a flickering issue in the rendering process. So here’s an updated version of the script.| www.tumfatig.net
tmux is not available on Synology by default. But it only takes a command call to get it.| www.tumfatig.net
For reasons, I’m turning my Synology DS918+ on and start using it again. One thing I need is files synchronization with my OpenBSD laptop. There is no Synology Drive client for OpenBSD so I’ll keep using Unison . But there is no Unison client / server binary for DSM 7.2.1-69057 Update 4. Here’s how to compile and install the Unison File Synchronizer for Synology DSM 7.2.| www.tumfatig.net
I am no Dev and have nearly no clue on how to deal with APIs. But I am a SysAdmin. And where there’s a shell, there’s a way. So those are my notes on how to deal with Mastodon API using shell tools.| www.tumfatig.net
I remembered my Dad brought home a Logitech TrackBall years ago and I have not bad memories of it. As part of my recent desktop changes, I decided to try a TrackBall. Internet reviews seem to acknowledge the Kensington SlimBlade Pro TrackBall is one of the best devices out there. So I decided to try it with my OpenBSD laptop.| www.tumfatig.net
I have a home lab running FreeBSD bhyve hypervisor and a collo server running OmniOS. From time to time, I migrate some VMs from one to the other. It is very simple when using ZFS and sharing a compatible bhyve implementation.| www.tumfatig.net
I got YouTubed with “look at my setup” content. So I started looking at what mechanical keyboards offer. Amazon proposed that RedThunder K84 Combo Keyboard and Mouse for 60€ so I decided to give it a try on OpenBSD.| www.tumfatig.net
Not so long ago, I bought a Dell U2723QE 4K monitor. I was not sure OpenBSD would support using it with only a USB-C connection. Spoiler alert, it does.| www.tumfatig.net
I have a Dell server in a colo. It (will) hosts some virtual machines and (private) data. And because trust does not exclude control (on your data), I do encrypt (at rest) some of the storage.| TuM'Fatig
All my servers use an SMTP relay to communicate via email. I have setup “service” accounts that they use to authenticate themselves on a smarthost. My OmniOS server is no exception.| TuM'Fatig
I rent a Dell R620 in a colo and decided I would install and run OmniOS on it. But it is hosted in a remote country and I can’t simply plug the install media in the DVD or USB port. So let’s go for a remote installation.| www.tumfatig.net
Because I’m not 100% satisfied with my OmniOS bhyve experiment for running OpenBSD virtual machines, I’m giving it a try on a stock FreeBSD 14. And as usual, I’ll write down how I did it in case you are interested too :)| www.tumfatig.net
I want to deal with flash, SSD and SATA drives connected to a ThinkPad A485 using its USB ports. This is my cheatsheet based on Managing USB Mass Storage Devices on Oracle Solaris 11.2 .| www.tumfatig.net
The bhyve hypervisor has been ported to Illumos and provides an altervative to KVM. SmartOS created an OpenBSD image but it’s quite old. I don’t know (yet) how to upgrade or make more up-to-date images. But I could manage to run OpenBSD 7.4 on OmniOS.| www.tumfatig.net
Because Apple does not allow Floccus to manage the bookmarks on Safari for iOS and iPadOS, I have no straight forward access to my few regular bookmarks. Sure, I could simply register them once for all. But building an HTML/CSS webpage to display them is more fun.| www.tumfatig.net
OmniOS / Illumos provides a native way to expose data stored on ZFS using the SMB / CIFS protocol. Furthemore, using zones limits the attack surface of a server ; or a least, the impact of a compromised service. Long story short: I replaced my UFS+Samba shares with ZFS+Solarish.| www.tumfatig.net
Doing some tidying in my network, computers and VPS collection, I went looking for a piece of software that could be used : at home, as a file server, a backup server and a VM lab. at colloc, as an hypervisor. After looking at SmartOS , I tried OmniOS . It is also based on Illumos . The notes go here.| www.tumfatig.net
I had that Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W lying in a box. And because I changed my network configuration, I decided I could use that Pi as a DNS et DHCP server. But I also wanted to take benefits from my POE switch. It turns out to be really simple, with the proper hardware. Here are the notes.| www.tumfatig.net
Doing some tidying in my network, computers and VPS collection, I went looking for a piece of software that could be used : at home, as a file server, a backup server and a VM lab. at colloc, as an hypervisor. I (re)discovered SmartOS and decided to look at how it would fit or not. I keep my notes here.| www.tumfatig.net
I was lucky enough to attend to EuroBSDCon 2023 and offered the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite OpenBSD stock daemon: relayd(8). The talk was recorded and made available on the EuroBSDCon YouTube channel. . One may check the EuroBSDCon 2023 program for more material. This post attempts a reboot of the slides content in a more browser-friendly format.| www.tumfatig.net
After reading about Mastodon UI theming options, I decided to follow the directions from the TangerineUI-for-Mastodon project to get another look’n’feel on my instance. The directions were pretty clear and short, so I went for them. But something failed during assets compilation process. And my Mastodon instance got wrecked. As a personnal “challenge”, I decided I would write a software post-mortem about this event. The end of the document will also summarize actions that were taken d...| www.tumfatig.net
I got a refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 and I’m not really happy with how the fan is managed by OpenBSD. Plus, the ThinkPad A485 running Windows for $WORK has been freezing quite a few times recently. So I decided I could try using a single ThinkPad for both $WORK and $HOME using different Operating Systems. I recently loved Slackware Linux again and wished I could use it too on that machine. So this is how I configured a multiboot environnement on the ThinkPad with Microsoft W...| www.tumfatig.net
Once you have self-hosted email up and running, you may want to add the Calendar and Addressbook features to your service bag. Nowadays, the standard protocols regarding those subjects are CalDAV and CardDAV. I decided to go with Baikal , the dedicated CalDAV+CardDAV server based on the sabre/dav framework ; the same framework used in Nextcloud DAV services AFAIK. It relies on PHP and is available as a package on OpenBSD.| www.tumfatig.net
Some time ago, I discovered and used searx on OpenBSD . This worked quite well but there were a few annoying bugs that I couldn’t solve. Mainly using OpenSearch with Firefox and timeouts with some Big Tech search engines. After struggling enough, I decided to switch to SearXNG . It has some cons compared to SearX but, regarding my needs and beliefs, the pros win.| www.tumfatig.net
I’ve long time used NextCloud and the floccus iOS App and Firefox plugin to store, manage and use my bookmarks. In reality, I don’t use the NC interface. I only use floccus ; and it works really well. In my journey to quit NextCloud, the only acceptable option to keep using floccus was getting a DAV self-hosted share. But, AFAIK, httpd(8) does not provide a DAV feature (yet?). I already use Baikal to self-host my calendars and addressbooks and it’s working great. So here’s a quick’n...| www.tumfatig.net
Looking at my notes , it seems I haven’t setup an email services server from scratch since 2015. Of course, mine have evolved following OpenBSD updates and upgrades. Let’s benefits from the fact that I’m migrating from Vultr to OpenBSD Amsterdam to write a few notes about the mail server (re)creation. At the time of writing, OpenBSD is available in version 7.2.| www.tumfatig.net
