I wish all my #BSD people a happy weekend! 😎

#freebsd #openbsd #netbsd

Here is a small tip: to easily configure your installed FreeBSD, use the `bsdconfig` command as the root user. A lot of FreeBSD users or developers (including some IT/sysadmin folks) don't know this, but you can use `bsdconfig` to set up many system configuration settings, both for new systems and for changing settings on existing systems.

#unix #tips #freebsd #sysadmin

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A screenshot of bsdconfig(8) command running on my FreeBSD machine.

Today i gave a speech about #FreeBSD 15 in our local LUG (yes i know i should not do that since it is a LUG) but they approved it.

I had uploaded the video in #tubedu but it is in Persian (farsi) . i hope the subtitles for it get ready soon.

https://tubedu.org/w/89BHDTEXDoAT6BQUG3Ap6M

CC: @edboythinks@hachyderm.io

I've spent some quality time in #OpenBSD and now #FreeBSD, I'd like to try #NetBSD and #DragonflyBSD next.

(This is regarding https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/users/gumnos/statuses/115695846629134863. Not sure why the context got lost XD)

Well, fuck. As the apes at the end of the Spaceballs movie would say, there goes the planet.

https://aaif.io/press/linux-foundation-announces-the-formation-of-the-agentic-ai-foundation-aaif-anchored-by-new-project-contributions-including-model-context-protocol-mcp-goose-and-agents-md/

#FuckAI #RunBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD

I understand the strain on maintainers, but it's still sad to see #FreeBSD culling so many 32bit packages. #OpenBSD suffers from the same problem. It seems #NetBSD will remain the platform where you can still e.g. get a working web browser for a legacy system (#Arcticfox). Same applies to the Linux world.

BSDCan 2026 is now accepting submissions for the June 2026 conference, see https://www.bsdcan.org/2026/papers.html and links therein for instructions.

Submissions deadline is January 17, 2026, the conference runs tutorials June 17-18, talks June 19-20.

#bsdcan #conference #freebsd #netbsd #openbsd #bsd #development #networking #freesoftware #libresoftware

In order to enable audio support in a jailed #xrdp desktop, install pulseaudio-module-xrdp package. Viola! Works like a charm with MS Windows RDP app.

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2023/12/13/how-to-create-a-freebsd-jail-hosting-xrdp-and-xfce-remote-access-desktop/

#FreeBSD #RunBSD #RDP

@pfr As you wish

#crontab #FreeBSD #NetBSD

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Output of crontab -l on the two machines (first FreeBSD, second: NetBSD): drag0n@drag0n-laptop:~ $ crontab -l 0 3 * * * /home/drag0n/.bin/get_exchange_rate.sh */10 * * * * /home/drag0n/.config/conky/get_weather.sh drag0n@drag0n-laptop:~ $ ssh drag0n@drag0n-server.lair.internal Enter passphrase for key '/home/drag0n/.ssh/id_ed25519': Last login: Fri Dec 5 13:14:37 2025 from 192.168.1.3 NetBSD 10.1 (GENERIC) #0: Mon Dec 16 13:08:11 UTC 2024 NetBSD 10.1/amd64 (202412171413Z) Welcome to NetBSD! drag0n-server$ crontab -l 0-59/1 * * * * /home/drag0n/bin/smarthome.sh

Apparently users are ignoring the dire warning from freebsd-update to update ports first before finishing the upgrade to 15.0
*sigh*

#FreeBSD

Upgraded to #FreeBSD 15 on my main server, and also the jail running this #Pleroma instance. Other than all the traps I've been setting for myself since 14 came out, it went well.

Now just have to replace one of the SSDs that seems to be dying on me..

#FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE has landed!

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/15.0R/announce/

I’m proud of so many things in this release, but one most of all :-

The collaboration and contributions for hundreds of people from so many countries and continents around the world.

We may not agree about pineapple on pizza, but we’re all part of building a terrific community-lead freely-licensed open source OS, used in everything from massive storage appliances and internet-scale routers, down to gaming consoles, and embedded systems.

Thank-you everybody!

I run FreeBSD but I don't tend to build it. I consume binaries. So sometimes I make assumptions based on its similarities to NetBSD, which was the first free Unix I ran.

Today I read that FreeBSD finally does unprivileged builds, to which I thought, "What? It didn't before?"

https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/freebsd-now-builds-reproducibly-and-without-root-privilege/

Meanwhile, NetBSD has been incredibly sleek in this department for many years now:

https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-build.html

I should get back into NetBSD. I was initially enthralled by VNET jails but lately I find myself using simpler configs. I might find that I'm okay going back to running things in chroots. And it's not like I'd stop running FreeBSD.

#netbsd #freebsd

#FreeBSD Users
Do you run quarterly or latest packages on your #FreeBSD workstation? Or do you build ports?

Servers excluded this time, only #desktop systems 😉

#freebsd #unix #bsd

@uastronomer Possibly I disappoint you, but looks like the same situation with almost every binary package distribution. For example, if I try to install #Qemu to the **headless** server running #NetBSD , just to run some other OSes in the console mode, the dependencies bring to me:

- SDL2 and SDL2_image
- flac, giflib, lame, libjpeg-turbo, libogg, libopus, libvorbis, libwebp, mpg123, tiff — like I'm want to operate with images and audio files, not to launch some virtual machines
- spice-server, while I'm not planning to use it.
- wayland and wayland-protocols -- no comments

As @TomAoki stated one time on my ramblings about the same situation in the #FreeBSD world: "many of opensource audio and/or multimedia apps are developed on any of Linux distros, not on *BSD, thus, to minimize mandated works of porters / maintainers / commiters, depending on what upstream depends by default is the only feasible way not to cause toooo long delay from upstream".

I lost link to his toot on the old account, but I have a screenshot: https://eugene-andrienko.com/assets/static/tomaoki.png

One way to get rid of unnecessary dependencies — build necessary programs by yourself, looks like…

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drag0n-server# pkgin install qemu pkg_summary.bz2 100% 3935KB 67.8KB/s 00:58 calculating dependencies...done. 36 packages to install: SDL2-2.32.10 SDL2_image-2.6.3nb6 capstone-5.0.6 dtc-1.7.2 fftw-3.3.10nb2 flac-1.5.0nb1 giflib-5.2.2nb1 gmp-6.3.0 hicolor-icon-theme-0.17nb1 jbigkit-2.1nb1 lame-3.100nb7 lerc-4.0.0 libcbor-0.13.0 libepoll-shim-0.0.20240608 libgcrypt-1.11.2 libgpg-error-1.55 libiscsi-1.19.0 libjpeg-turbo-3.1.2 libogg-1.3.6 libopus-1.5.2 libsamplerate-0.2.2nb5 libslirp-4.7.0nb2 libsndfile-1.2.2nb2 libssh-0.111nb2 libtasn1-4.20.0 libusb1-1.0.29 libvorbis-1.3.7 libwebp-1.6.0nb1 libxkbcommon-1.7.0nb6 mpg123-1.33.2 qemu-10.1.0nb1 snappy-1.2.2 spice-server-0.15.2nb1 tiff-4.7.0nb3 wayland-1.23.0nb7 wayland-protocols-1.45 0 to remove, 0 to refresh, 0 to upgrade, 36 to install 107M to download, 898M of additional disk space will be used nroceed ? [Y/n]

Does anyone manage to use the #keyboard media controls in #FreeBSD #Xorg? I have a DasKeyboard with a volume jog that works out of the box on #OpenBSD.

The events seems to be working using xev tester. It regognizes the RaiseVolume and LowerVolume events.

Not sure where to actually start looking for a solution.

#RunBSD

Have a great Friday everyone in the #BSD community! 😎 (The weekend is almost upon us!)

...and don't forget:
#RUNBSD

#FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD

"The contrast with Docker is striking: while the Docker container required 100% CPU to reach peak for the HTTP and HTTPS throughput, the FreeBSD jail delivered the same speed with ~60% of the CPU sitting idle. In terms of performance cost per request, Jails are drastically cheaper."

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/11/19/static-web-hosting-intel-n150-freebsd-smartos-netbsd-openbsd-linux/

#ITNotes #Linux #Docker #Containers #FreeBSD #RunBSD #IT #SysAdmin

Static Web Hosting on the Intel N150: FreeBSD, SmartOS, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux Compared

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/11/19/static-web-hosting-intel-n150-freebsd-smartos-netbsd-openbsd-linux/

#ITNotes #freebsd #illumos #jail #linux #netbsd #openbsd #ownyourdata #server #smartos #sysadmin #zoneshosting

RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/115566280074527897

"Just" 270 MB for...an idle server?
Debian is still a great distribution but let's measure the ram consumption of a freshly installed *BSD or Illumos based server. The numbers are totally different.

#RunBSD #illumos #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #DragonflyBSD

Last week I had a chat with a colleague who is highly specialized in Microsoft solutions. Young but not too young, smart, not very up to date simply because he has little time for anything else. His specialization depends entirely on where he works, not on personal interest. Lately he seemed a bit disillusioned with some choices made by "other operating systems", and he was starting to consider moving his personal projects toward Microsoft as well, since he already had the experience. Still, he said it with boredom. With the attitude of someone who is tired of wasting time.

He had heard of the BSDs but had never tried installing them. He was convinced that there were no decent hypervisors outside the Linux world and that KVM belonged to Linux alone. I had the terrible idea of showing him the BSDs, how great bhyve is, and how nvmm on NetBSD uses qemu underneath, making it almost a replacement for KVM in many setups. He lit up with the look of someone waking up from a long sleep. I also had the terrible idea of showing him illumos and its distributions. He had no clue it existed and thought old, great Solaris had been dead for years thanks to Oracle.

He called me a little while ago. He was furious. He spent the whole weekend doing tests and now he has no idea what to use among FreeBSD with bhyve, NetBSD with nvmm, and illumos with bhyve or kvm. He is slowly starting to explore jails and illumos zones. He was annoyed (in a positive way) because now he does not know what to pick since everything feels so different from what he was used to, and he found advantages in each option.

I am obviously happy about it, but I also wonder: instead of reinventing the wheel every time, would it not sometimes be better to simply broaden our horizons?

#IT #SysAdmin #OperatingSystems #FreeBSD #Linux #NetBSD #OpenBSD #DragonflyBSD #illumos #SmartOS #OmniOS #OpenIndiana #Tribblix

Which of the usual suspects will have the first dmesg sent in from the new Steam cube computer machine thingie, #OpenBSD, #NetBSD, or #FreeBSD?

RE: https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@gumnos/115551343732704834

This is a great post.
It's not "against" something - it just explains why Tim prefers to use the BSDs.

#RunBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #DragonflyBSD #IT