Author name: Dan Langille

I've been playing with computers since I read an Elementary Electronics magazine way back in the 1970s. I started contributing to open source projects in 1998. After that, I gradually moved from being a software developer to being a systems administrator.

Updating a FreeBSD 14.2 host to FreeBSD 14.3 via freebsd-update

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I’m ready to update r730-01 (I see that link is from 2024 – I’ll refresh it after this update) from FreeBSD 14.2 to FreeBSD 14.3. First, some clean up: [21:04 r730-01 dvl ~] % bectl list BE Active Mountpoint Space Created 14.2-RELEASE-p4_2025-08-08_112039 – – 342M 2025-08-08 11:20 default NR / 11.6G 2024-06-19 16:38 testing – – 74.0M 2025-08-09 10:59 [21:04 r730-01 dvl ~] % sudo bectl destroy 14.2-RELEASE-p4_2025-08-08_112039 [21:04 r730-01 dvl ~] % […]

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Running short on space on the FreshPorts development zpool

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It’s been some time since I asked for public donations for hardware. In this case, I’m asking for donations to buy two more storage devices to expand this zpool: [18:08 r730-01 dvl ~] % zpool list data02 NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CKPOINT EXPANDSZ FRAG CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT data02 1.73T 1.39T 351G – – 66% 80% 1.00x ONLINE – Most of the space is used for FreshPorts, however it is not for the

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Connecting to Time Capsule provided via Samba (on ZFS)

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I use Mac laptops. Have for years. I make use of their Time Machine backups. I configured Time Capsule instance using Samba, FreeBSD, and ZFS (latest) and today I added a new user to that configuration. Next, I wanted to start the backups. I didn’t find details in my blog, so that prompted this post. In this post: This post assumes you’re already configured the server (see above links). FreeBSD 14.2 samba 4.16.11

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Can’t get to some Disney links

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This is mostly for my future reference, for when this happens the next time. I hope it saves me 10-15 minutes of pondering. I noticed this problem a few days ago. I was clicking on links in an email from Disney. The hostname didn’t resolve. I passed it off as: well, they got problems… It happened again today. Hold on, this isn’t likely. I tried the link again, from my phone, with wifi

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Using a sparse git checkout to build vuxml files

2 Comments / FreeBSD, git, Open Source / By /

This post shows how I used a git spare checkout to build vuxml files without having the whole ports tree present. In this post: FreeBSD 14.2 FreeBSD 14.3-STABLE git-2.50.1 git-tiny-2.50.1 This came about when recent commits to security/vuxml weren’t showing up on in my host, despite doing pkg audit -F – this was several hours after the commit. trouble told me to check this jail on that host. Eventually I figured out the

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Clear the existing good drive and add it to the new zpool

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In recent posts: Doing a bit of stress work on a new HDD x8dtu: adding in the smaller drive Swapping zpools – moving from using main_tank to using data If you have a look over those posts, you’ll see why you never want to downsize a zpool. In this post: FreeBSD 14.2 removing the zfs labels from an drive which was part of a zpool which is no longer in use destroying the

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Swapping zpools – moving from using main_tank to using data

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As mentioned in Doing a bit of stress work on a new HDD, I have a failing 5TB drive which is going to be replace by a 4TB drive. Only about 1.45TB are used, so there’s plenty of space to grow. If you get one thing from this post, don’t be downsizing zpools like this. I would have had much less work and opportunity for error, if I had returned that 4TB drive

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x8dtu: adding in the smaller drive

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I was up at 5:30 AM today. I packed the car and headed out. I arrived within the datacenter at about 8:15 or so. By 8:50, I was on IRC and the photos of the FreeBSD racks were uploading. Since I was going there anyway, I did some inventory and disposal work (a decommissioned server, about 25 old HDD, and various bits and pieces). I must say though, I’m not liking this option.

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Doing a bit of stress work on a new HDD

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As foreshadowed in x8dtu – drive problems, I will be visiting a data center soon to replace a 4TB HDD. The replacement HDD arrived last night. It was unceremoniously tossed onto the front porch by the courier. However, it was properly packaged. I’m sure it’s fine. The original idea: put this drive into a host, and write some data to it, to exercise it a bit. As you will soon learn, that is

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x8dtu – main ssds: how worn are they?

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Let’s look at these two SSDs (full smartctl output appears at the end). pool: zroot state: ONLINE status: Some supported and requested features are not enabled on the pool. The pool can still be used, but some features are unavailable. action: Enable all features using ‘zpool upgrade’. Once this is done, the pool may no longer be accessible by software that does not support the features. See zpool-features(7) for details. scan: scrub repaired

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