Category: FreeBSD

Installed FreeBSD security updates on krava.arved.priv.at. On reboot the kernel hang.

kernel.old also hang. Downgrade to 13.2 also hang.

Tried disabling hardware components via device.hints.

First suspected the keyboard, as atkbd printed the last line, but finally found out, that uart needs to be disabled

See https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/boot-hangs-on-cherrytrail-uefi-system-installer-preinstalled-stick-no-dmesg-written.57321/

So I am finally running FreeBSD again on a Laptop.

The HW probe can be found here: https://bsd-hardware.info/?probe=6c208c85a5

Notable obstacles:

DRM: I have to run the 5.7-wip branch and add my pciid. (https://github.com/freebsd/drm-kmod/pull/135)

WLAN: There is no driver for the integrated wlan. After some help from dch@ I have now got an EDIMAX rtwm USB dongle which needs the following patch: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=260952

Don’t believe the Connect-Box that you only get a /64 from UPC. Normal prefix delegation is possible, you just have to guess/experiment how big your prefix is. Here is my dhcp6c.conf

interface vr0 {
    send ia-pd 1;
    send ia-na 1;
#     send rapid-commit;
};

id-assoc na 1 {
};

id-assoc pd 1 {
 prefix ::/56 1800;

 prefix-interface vr1 {
   sla-len 4;
 };
};

My rtadvd.conf:

default:\
       :prefixlen#64:\

Some excerpts from my rc.conf:

ipv6_activate_all_interfaces="YES"
ipv6_cpe_wanif="vr0"
ipv6_gateway_enable="YES"
rtadvd_enable="YES"    
rtadvd_interfaces="vr1"

So I finally got it working.

Here is my list of things that don’t work:

• sddm gives only a blank screen. Use gdm or lightdm instead
• PATH is messed up. For konsole it is possible to specify the environment of a profile
• baloo just doesn’t work. Opens 100k files.

Looks like I have to get my hands dirty again..

If UTF-8 works in xterm but not in Konsole, the solution is to change the default font to “Liberation Mono”

FreeBSD, Why isn’t utf-8 default in 2017?

1. Install jboss5 port
2. ln -sf /var/jboss5 /usr/local/share/jboss5/server
3. edit /etc/rc.conf:

   jboss5_enable="YES"
   jboss5_jvm_opts="-server -Xms128m -Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m \
   -Dorg.jboss.resolver.warning=true \
   -Dsun.rmi.dgc.client.gcInterval=3600000 \
   -Dsun.rmi.dgc.server.gcInterval=3600000 -Djboss.bind.address=0.0.0.0 \
   -Djava.awt.headless=true"
   

   Notice the jboss.bind.address and java.awt.headless=true (to prevent annoying warnings about missing X11).

4. Edit /etc/sysctl.conf:

   kern.ps_arg_cache_limit=1024
   

   Necessary for the shutdown script to work

5. Add

   jboss.home=/usr/local/share/jboss5

   to seam’s build.properties

6. …to be continued

Long time no blog…
Today i discovered a nifty litte tool: pftop written by Can Erkin Acar lets you monitor network connections on your pf firewall.

I think the first time i saw IPv6 on the Internet was in the late nineties on IRC, when it was cool to have a hostname like 3ffe:1337::dead:babe. A few years later i tried out freenet6 but stopped using it, when most of the IRC servers k-lined freenet6 because of script kiddies abusing it. IRC was and maybe still is the only IPv6 killer application.
Since 2005 i have been using sixxs.net and started using IPv6 on my LAN. If i can trust the gif-interface counters my sixxs.net tunnel currently transfers about 70MB/day, while the IPv4 interface claims to transfer about 300MB/day.
I recently converted not only this webserver but also the kde-freebsd Teams’ development host to ipv6only. I did not expect this to be a big deal, as all people having accounts on it are unix geeks. I was quite surprised that more than half of the users did not have any ipv6 experience.
Another datapoint is freefall.freebsd.org, a system accessed by unix hackers only. According to netstat there are currently 43 tcp4 ssh sessions and only 10 tcp6 sessions,
Even worse, of these 10 sessions three are freebsd.org-LAN sessions and 2 are from my systems.
So if you have something interesting to offer on the internet, shut down your IPv4 interface.

If you can read this, the move has been successfull.
I have decided to move to euserv.de. The new webserver has more RAM and a better CPU. Unfortunately Euserv.de charges 10EUR/month for 6 additional ip addresses. So i decided it is time for IPv6.
Although IPv6 has been around for quite some time, there are still some rough edges:
FreeBSD jails IPv6 support requires a patch from Björn Zeeb.
For access via legacy IPv4 i wanted to use lighttpd with mod_proxy, but mod_proxy does not support fetching IPv6-content yet, the following hack is required.
What i still have to think about is aggregated content, like the planet or the weather-plugin. There are way too many sites out there, that don’t support IPv6. (Hello twitter, last.fm, weather.noaa.gov). Possible solutions are NAT, a webproxy, or i have to put the aggregated content somewhere else.

My old hoster decided to move all his servers to XEN. Since FreeBSD XEN Support isn’t really there yet, this means i need to look for a new hoster.
So i am checking out the FreeBSD-rootserver offers in the 20 – 40EUR/month range. I am quite sure, i don’t want to play with depenguinator, so a real FreeBSD system is the preferred solution.
I currently know about euserv.de and mainlink.de. Anything else?
My current system runs 4 jails handling my email and a few lowtraffic sites. It currently has 256MB RAM which is a bit low, so preferably the new system should have 512MB.