As file sizes increasingly become bigger in cameras such as Go Pro and Canon EOS D, the FAT file system has become unfit for purpose. As such, instead of looking to an open source file system (probably due to no support in the Windows or Mac platforms), these camera manufacturers have just done a bump to a more recent version of a Microsoft proprietary file system, exFAT. Continue reading
Category Archives: Blog
Reliable Bare Metal Server using TrueOS/FreeBSD
I currently have a project need for a simple FreeBSD base install that is hooked up to a NAS/SAN back end. Coming from a Solaris background, most SPARC machines (like the V220/V420) came rack mountable and space for 2 primary hard drives simply for the OS. You would spin up your OS install, install Solstice DiskSuite (Solaris Volume Manager), apply your secret sauce of configuration and you were away. One disk could fail and you could either hot swap replace and resilver or power down, boot off the disk that was functioning and then resilver to bring the new disk online (yes, I know there are more steps than this but that is out of scope for this article).
I wanted a similar, modern day solution like this, using commodity hardware and a free, open source and liberally licensed operating system.
While FreeBSD 10.x has a stable, binary update method for maintaining production machines, this doesn’t allow you to follow –HEAD to get the latest technology for the project that you are working on. The reason that I use OpenBSD so much in production, apart from the security aspect, is that you don’t have to wait long for new technology to appear in –release. This is why I think FreeBSD –HEAD is more suitable for my needs. Continue reading
Swiffy plugin for WordPress
I have just moved a WordPress instance from a standard cPanel installation, into a custom OpenBSD host. Everything ran smoothly from a data point of view but when I went to test the installation I got a 500 error. Turning on php error logging gave me the information I needed to start debugging the issue. Continue reading
OpenBSD on Digital Ocean
For OpenBSD users, it has been pretty disappointing that Digital Ocean didn’t launch other BSDs with introduction of FreeBSD, even though the technical barrier had been removed to allow it.
Today, I thought I’d try doing an OpenBSD load again (I have tried before without success due to CPU feature issues) and the results were pleasing – you can now enjoy OpenBSD on Digital Ocean. Continue reading
OpenBSD audio in virtualisation
While some use the documentation correctly and search the mailing lists, sometimes the answers don’t come up correctly due to formatting or google having issues indexing.
As I use OpenBSD more and more as a daily driver (be it still in VMWare Workstation on one machine and Virtual Box on the other), I still don’t have it on raw workstation hardware. I want my audio and video to work but out of the box on the above platforms, but my audio was either sketchy or non-existent. Continue reading
py-boto and LibreSSL
Having just recently performed an upgrade of OpenBSD 5.6 to OpenBSD 5.7, duplicity (my backup tool), stopped working for no apparent reason.
At first, I thought it had something to do with the 0.6 branch becoming deprecated, but in the end I found out that this was just a warning message. Continue reading
Ford Fiesta/Focus Oil Change Light – Reset
It appears that Ford Australia and the dealer servicing network are forgetful when it comes to resetting the oil change light when a vehicle is in for service. It makes you wonder if they actually did anything when they service your vehicle – they probably forget to even change the oil. Lets just say, for the price you pay for a service, you think that something this simple would be done like clockwork.
So this time instead of going out of our way to visit the dealer to have it reset again, I thought i’d just Google to see if anyone else has either had this issue or has worked out how to reset it because they service their vehicle themselves. Continue reading
ownCloud 4.5 Installed
With the whole Google Reader issue (not that I am a user), I got think – some of the facilities that I use on the internet could be taken away, without notice or have an ability to extract my data out of the applications.
It was time that I took some things seriously and roll my data back into my own controlled applications and servers. I was planning on doing this once the NBN rolled on by but with the Google Reader issue and the possibility that NBN won’t roll by due to the ‘I’m no Bill Gates’ lead noalition coalition possibly getting into governement, time was right to act on this at a faster pace and just put up with the speed hit that I will initially find. Continue reading
Nginx in OpenBSD 5.2-Release
Nginx(8) is the replacement web server for the old patched Apache 1.3 in OpenBSD. As of OpenBSD 5.2, Nginx(8) is still not the primary [default] web server in the BSD release and allows for users to slowly migrate from Apache to Nginx(8) without additional package install. Continue reading
Sorry Dick Smith – You’re not 100% correct
I was reading an article on a blog that appears to be a new outlet for Dick Smith called Australia What is the Real cost of Shopping at Costco & Aldi. I have sat on this for the last couple of days just making sure I really thought about what to write before shooting my mouth off.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of Dick Smith Foods products. I have been eating Bush Foods Breakfast for years and we always have had Dick Smith’s Crunchy Peanut Butter in the cupboard. Just recently, we have been able to compliment our stash of 333 MightyMite with OzEmite (just a shame the jar is so small, any chance of a bulk pack?). Continue reading