BSD Cafe Billboard

26/09/30

⇒ The Forty-Four Switches on ls

The standard asks ls for 26 switches. This machine gives it 44, and the GNU tree gives it 60. Every single one of them had a reason. Lean Software.

• https://vivianvoss.net/blog/forty-four-switches

26/09/29

⇒ What FreeBSD Charges at the Boundary

A system call on this machine costs fifty-two nanoseconds. The same call in a Linux guest on the very same processor costs eight hundred and sixteen. Neither number is about the kernel type, and that is the finding. The Bench Marker.

• https://vivianvoss.net/blog/kernel-boundary-cost

26/09/29

⇒ What about ThinkCentre M710q, M720q and *BSD

Thanks to being subscribed to self-hosting and homelab feeds, I yet again was trapped by compulsive buying and collector’s impulse while browsing the local refurb marketplaces. This may end now. Until then, here’s a quick look at ThinkCentre M710q and M720q on various BSD systems.

• https://www.tumfatig.net/2026/what-about-thinkcentre-m710q-m720q-and-bsd/

26/09/29

⇒ Installing Ubuntu 26.04 Server in an OpenBSD vmm(4) VM

I wanted to run Ubuntu 26.04 Server inside an OpenBSD vmm(4) guest. OpenBSD’s VM console is serial only, and the Ubuntu Server ISO does not boot correctly on a serial console out of the box. This post shows how to rebuild the Ubuntu ISO with the right kernel and GRUB options so it installs cleanly through vmctl console.

• https://rsadowski.de/posts/2026/vmm-ubuntu26-setup/

26/09/28

⇒ GhostBSD is Replacing MATE With a New Desktop Named After a Typo

Eric Turgeon has shown off a new desktop environment that would ship with custom components in GhostBSD.

• https://itsfoss.com/news/ghostbsd-new-desktop/
• https://github.com/mocka-desktop/mocka-dock

⇒ Weekly Echoes #2026W39: Open IT (Data, Hardware, Software, Standards) news, round-up, for the week 39; from 09/21 to 09/27.

• https://huc.fr.eu.org/en/echoes/week-39-2026/

26/09/27

⇒ My Ansible Plugin Had a Jail Escape: CVE-2026-55074

At the end of last year I wrote about jailexec, my Ansible connection plugin that manages FreeBSD jails by SSHing to the jail host and running everything through jexec. That article has a section called Security Design. It proudly explains the two-stage file transfer: upload to a temporary location on the host, then move it into the jail with privilege escalation.

• https://blog.hofstede.it/my-ansible-plugin-had-a-jail-escape-cve-2026-55074/

26/09/26

⇒ Adventures in FreeBSD Bringup on an RK3588 (Part 1)

Last month while sitting in a cafe, my friend Andrew showed me an article about a quirky new E Ink device that was launching (we're both huge fans of the technology). It was cheap enough to be impulse purchase material, so I went to order it. And on the checkout page, something happened which has literally never happened to me... ever... I saw a "you might also like" style sales pitch, and the product was actually so compelling that I bought it The company was basically nerd sniping me.

• https://blog.ianwwagner.com//adventures-in-freebsd-bringup-on-an-rk3588-part-1.html

26/09/26

⇒ Diff’ing NetBSD and FreeBSD ZFS zpool features

I’ve been backing up my home directories on my NetBSD machines to my FreeBSD backup server using rsync(1). But I’ve been experimenting with using ZFS for /home on NetBSD, so I thought it made sense to use zfs send for backups to the FreeBSD machine instead.

• https://www.rubenerd.au/diff-ing-netbsd-and-freebsd-zfs-zpool-features/

26/09/25

⇒ NetBSD: Playing with disklabels

Coming from DOS and Linux (and having largely ignored this on my OpenBSD systems -- yeah, shame on me), I'm not very familiar with the BSD disklabels. So let's have a look.

• https://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-09-25/0/POSTING-en.html

26/08/25

⇒ 2026 just became the year of FreeBSD on the (Amazonian cloud) desktop

Desktop AMIs ‘designed to behave as much like Windows as possible’ now available as an on ramp for new users

• https://www.theregister.com/a/5299025

26/09/23

⇒ Biggest ZFS Misconfigurations and How to Fix Them: Part 1

ZFS configuration decisions can affect storage performance for years, and some cannot be changed without rebuilding the pool. Learn how to identify and fix common misconfigurations involving ashift, recordsize, vdev layout, dedup, and pool capacity.

• https://klarasystems.com/articles/zfs-misconfigurations-how-to-fix-part-1/

26/09/24

⇒ BSD Now—682: NAS NAS NAS

Multiple new BSD Bases NASes have appeared, FreeBSD intern bringing ROCm to FreeBSD, OpenSSH 10.5, and more...

• https://www.bsdnow.tv/682

26/09/21

⇒ The udev Rule That Runs as Root

Six actions make up the entire rule language that decides what my machines show in /dev, and not one of them can execute anything. The other answer to the same problem grew a technique number in the ATT&CK catalogue. Unix Universe.

• https://vivianvoss.net/blog/devfs-vs-udev

26/09/23

⇒ The Two Dollars Between dma and the Inbox

A 67-kilobyte program in the base system will send your mail. The invoice is for the part where somebody agrees to accept it. Lean Software.

• https://vivianvoss.net/blog/dma-and-the-inbox

⇒ Weekly Echoes #2026W38: Open IT (Data, Hardware, Software, Standards) news, round-up, for the week 38; from 09/14 to 09/20.

• https://huc.fr.eu.org/en/echoes/week-38-2026/

26/09/19

⇒ Google Summer of Code 2026 Reports: Port the Enlightenment desktop environment to NetBSD, part 2

This report was written by Dimitris Gounaridis as part of Google Summer of Code 2026. It is the 2nd part of a series.

• https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/gsoc2026_enlightenment_2

26/08/18

⇒ Void Linux is very dangerous for FreeBSD on my laptop

This whole thing started because of Stefano and his blog. His guide to installing Void Linux on an encrypted ZFS root with hibernation support was the thing that got me curious enough to actually try it — and, as these things go, curiosity turned into an afternoon spent repartitioning a laptop I use every day. My setup below is simpler than his (no LUKS-encrypted swap, no hibernation), because I just wanted ZFS-on-root dual-booted alongside my existing FreeBSD/GhostBSD/OpenBSD rEFInd menu, but the bones of the approach — and the credit for pointing me at zfsbootmenu in the first place — are his.

• https://vincentdelft.be/post/post_20260918

26/09/18

⇒ Website Migration To OpenBSD!

I had an issue with my previous webserver running Arch Linux where my SSH private key suddenly disappeared from the machine. I'm not sure whether it was due to the OpenSSH update from the prior day or a hack, but I wasn't too keen to find out. The main issue I had with running Arch Linux as a webserver was surrounding the replacement of cron with systemd timer files which I found really annoying to use. I personally don't get why the developers chose to replace a solid well-known tool that is simple to use with a tool that has so much complexity to it.

• https://tech-idea.systems/blog-posts/webserver-migration.html

26/09/18

⇒ NetBSD on my Netbook

I wanted to try something new and different. I'm running Linux for over 25 years now (and almost 20 years exclusively Linux on my PCs at home), my servers are on OpenBSD for almost ten years, and I had toyed with FreeBSD every now and then. And then there's the distant past with DOS, OS/2, and Windows, of course.

• https://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-09-18/0/POSTING-en.html

26/09/16

⇒ FreeBSD: The Hidden Cost of Upgrading in Production

FreeBSD is free to license, but production upgrades carry operational costs. Learn how upgrade best practices can reduce those costs and how LTS can bridge the gap when a production fleet cannot migrate before EOL.

• https://klarasystems.com/articles/freebsd-the-hidden-cost-of-upgrading-in-production/