2025

Get faster OpenVPN on FreeBSD by enabling DCO – easily done

Leave a Comment / FreeBSD, Open Source, OpenVPN / By /

I’ve been configuring a new gateway server for use in my basement data center (home lab). I had recently read about DCO and FreeBSD’s opvn device. DCO (Data Channel Offload) let’s OpenVPN use the encryption features available in many CPUs. In my previous post, I checked; my OpenVPN server and most of the clients are DCO-capable. I decided to try it. I found documentation lacking as to how to use it. I took […]

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Problems with OpenVPN when server is FreeBSD 14.2 and client is 14.1

Leave a Comment / Bacula, FreeBSD, Open Source, OpenVPN / By /

After replacing an existing gateway with new hardware, the OpenVPN connections had issues. The clients would connect, but non-trivial amounts of traffic would cause errors. This post contains a workaround, by upgrading the OS. I would like to know the cause. In this post, these are the version in use: FreeBSD 14.2 (for the OpenVPN server and some of the clients) FreeBSD 14.1 (for some of the clients) OpenVPN 2.6.13 (on the server

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Invoking ddclient from dhclient to update 3rd party dynamic dns hosts on FreeBSD

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In this post: FreeBSD 14.2 ddclient-3.11.2 Ansible playbook for ddclient: https://github.com/dlangille/ddclient/ forked from https://github.com/hammadrauf/ddclient/ In my previous post, I configured dhclient to setup my Hurricane Electric tunnel and notify HE of same. First attempt: [12:39 gw01 dvl ~] % sudo ddclient [12:47 gw01 dvl ~] % tail /var/log/messages … Mar 6 12:47:50 gw01 ddclient[52929]: WARNING: ” is not a valid IPv4 or IPv6 address Mar 6 12:47:50 gw01 ddclient[52929]: WARNING: found neither IPv4

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When my home DHCP address changes, I want stuff done

Leave a Comment / DHCP, Firewalls/Gateways, IPv6, Networks / By /

I recently moved from an appliance to a FreeBSD 14.2 gateway. In this post: FreeBSD 14.2 gw01 gw01 photos These are the main things I need done when my IP address changes: restart OpenVPN restart my Hurricane Electric IPv6 tunnel with the new IP address – written Tell HE.net about my IP address change – written Notify OpenDNS.com about my IP address change Update a dynamic DNS entry so my VPN clients can

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Debugging aids for pf firewall rules [on FreeBSD]

Leave a Comment / Firewalls/Gateways, FreeBSD, General, Open Source, pf / By /

It is not often that I need to debug pf firewall rules. Yet, when I do, I cannot remember the commands for what I want to do. What is being blocked First, I want to see the firewall rule numbers in the tcpdump output. I am logging all blocked packets, via pflog0. I can use that to see what is being blocked and by what rule. These are found in my /etc/pf.conf: There

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Configuration of net-mgmt/net-snmp on FreeBSD

Leave a Comment / Open Source, snmp, snmpd / By /

I have several posts about net-mgmt/net-snmp – this is the latest. I wrote it back in June and it’s been sitting in drafts ever since. If you read the previous post, you’ll understand why I wrote a new one. In this post: FreeBSD 14.1 net-snmp-5.9.4_6,1 This is the configuration I start with. [dvl@r720-02-nginx01:~] $ cat /usr/local/etc/snmpd.conf agentAddress udp:127.163.0.80:161,tcp:127.163.0.80:161 sysLocation BSD Cabal HQ sysContact dan@langille.org extend nginx /usr/local/etc/snmp/nginx-python3.py extend phpfpmsp /usr/local/etc/snmp/phpfpm-sp When adding auth,

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gw01 – setup photos – very little commentary

Leave a Comment / hardware, Qotom / By /

Earlier today, I installed FreeBSD 14.2 on gw01. EDIT: 2025-02-11: Yesterday, I found out the gateway draws 22W. And yes, as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Here’s the link for that hardware. Here are some of the photos. The system is very quiet. I cannot hear it from 10 ft away. First boot – that first boot can take some time. 1-2 minutes. First boot trying the USB drive. Selecting

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gw01

Leave a Comment / hardware, Qotom / By /

Three weeks ago, I tooted about getting a new gateway/route/firewall for the home lab. After many fantastic suggestions, I settled on a Atom-based solution in a 1U case. It’s the “Qotom 5X 2.5G LAN 2 SFP+ Barebone Mini Router Q20322G9 with C3558 1U Rackmount Mini Server” as sold on Amazon and shipped from China. The unit arrived 8 days after ordering. It could have been 7. It was out for delivery yesterday, but

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Converting pgeu-system schedule to HTML

Leave a Comment / Conferences, nginx, PGCon / By /

I’ve been using pgeu-system for conference organization since 2000. Once feature I wish it had: export the schedule to HTML. The primary reason for that is to decouple the schedule from the software. That way, the schedules are available on the website when the software is not running. That is, instead of pulling the page from the database, you’re pulling the page from static HTML files. Such a feature is useful should you

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Is deleting empty snapshots faster?

Leave a Comment / FreeBSD, Open Source, ZFS / By /

During the 2025-01-22 OpenZFS Production User Call, ‘atomic operations’ was mentioned with respect to ~/tmp/deleting zfs list -r -t snapshot data01/snapshots/deleting > ~/tmp/deleting 2.54s user 48.47s system 99% cpu 51.042 total 50 seconds. That’s OK. 60,000 deletes starting on the 23rd I started the delete. Actually, it’s not 60,000 deletes. It’s one destroy, of 60,000 snapshots. [12:52 r730-03 dvl ~] % time sudo zfs destroy data01/snapshots/deleting@1%60000 After starting the above command, I started

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