FreeBSD

Where’s my backup?

Nagios was telling me: FILE_AGE WARNING: /usr/home/rsyncer/backups/aws-1/postgresql/freshports.org.dump is 117636 seconds old and 3608113799 bytes That means the FreshPorts backup is more than a day old, and it should have been refreshed by now. OK, let’s go look. I log into the host known as aws-1 and check the files. They look fresh to me: [rsyncer@aws-1 ~/backups/database-backup/postgresql]$ ls -lt total 3525154 -rw-r–r– 1 rsyncer rsyncer 3963 Jul 16 02:14 globals.sql drwxr-xr-x 2 rsyncer rsyncer […]

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Transferring a VM from one provider to another

Yesterday, I mentioned (in more than one place) that I planned to move a 2017 Digital Ocean droplet over to Azure. As I sit here, with coffee, on the balcony, overlooking lot of green trees, at 7:45 AM, I’m trying to put into words the plan I came up with about 30 minutes ago. In this post: Digital Ocean Microsoft Azure FreeBSD 14.1 Why move? There is no technical issue or dissatisfaction involved

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Updating some jails from FreeBSD 14.0 to FreeBSD 14.1 via mkjail

I’ve updated all my hosts to FreeBSD 14.1 – but not all the jails. I’m going to do some of that today. In this post: FreeBSD 14.0 FreeBSD 14.1 mkjail-0.0.4 What’s on r730-03 to update? Full disclosure: mkjail was originally written by Mark Felder, and I joined him in maintaining it. I use it for: Creating jails Updating jails (patching, like freebsd-update fetch install) Upgrading jails (as in going from FreeBSD 14.0 to

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Notes on running net-snmp as non-root

When feasible, I prefer to run things as non-root. A recent commit to net-snmp has made this possible. By its nature, being a new change, it took me some time and help to figure out what needed to be changed. Before doing this yourself, I recommend waiting until the two code reviews mentioned below are committed. In this post: FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p6 net-snmp-5.9.4_2,1 librenms-24.5.0,1 I include commands from different host; please do not be

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Copying an existing jail to try bind918

bind916 will be EOL in a few months (April 2024). In this post, I’m going to copy an existing jail (running bind916) and configure it to run the new bind. If all goes well, the new jail will replace the old jail. This has an added benefit of effectively renaming the old jail (toiler) to dns2 (my other dns server at home is called dns1). Given the jail runs both dhcpd and named,

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Moving local settings for pg_hba.conf and postgresql.conf out of PGDATA

One of the configuration aspects of FreeBSD I have long liked is the concept of default values which are overridden by the user. For example, /etc/defaults/rc.conf (see The /etc directory). The default values in this file can be overridden by the user with their preferred values in /etc/rc.conf (or /etc/rc.conf.local, and other locations if you so choose (search for rc_conf_files)). With that approach in mind, I wanted to do the same thing with

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Adding another pair of drives to a zpool mirror on FreeBSD

Today, I’m ready to adding two recently obtained 12T spinning disks to r730-03. This host is the work-horse which houses all the main backups and database regression testing. It also hosts my newly-created but not yet-functional graylog jail. I will be following a previous post about adding drives because I don’t want to remember these things. They occur infrequently enough that documenting it is a good idea. In this post: FreeBSD 14 The

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Clearing out multiple drives – while watching Band of Brothers

The accomplished reader will first ask, how is this post any different from Clearing-out multiple drives concurrently – while Watching Fargo Season 5? Well, first, it’s a different server. This one is r720-01. Second, I’m watching Band of Brothers, which is completely different. However, the approach is the same: Boot the host using an mfsBSD thumb drive ssh in as root wipe the drives watch Band of Brothers profit What’s not to like?

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Configuration for running poudriere in a jail on FreeBSD 14

I run poudriere in a jail on FreeBSD – it really is becoming the thing-to-do with all the cool kids. Everyone’s doing it. It is nifty. I will provide only the jail configuration, and not any file system configuration. That is left for you. I think these links might be most helpful: Using poudriere to create a custom FreeBSD repository for package installation Moving poudriere from the host into a jail In this

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Clearing-out multiple drives concurrently – while Watching Fargo Season 5

It is time to let the knew server go. It has gone through multiple upgrades, new drives, new boards, and new chassis. It has been replaced by r730-03. Before I let it go, I want to clear off the drives. By that I mean: I did this by booting the host using mfBSD (a lovely USB-bootable version of FreeBSD). I then ssh‘d in as root (one of the few situations when ssh as

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