@emaste @jaypatelani

One of these days, I'll get around to formally pointing out that the Euro symbol really is actually engraved at E04 on (according to Currys) most U.K. keyboards, like you used to have it in the U.K. keyboard layout back in 2014.

Yes, a few keyboards have it engraved at D03. Microsoft's U.K. (normal+extended) layout for Windows makes it Level 3 shift + E04, however, as engraved on the majority.

https://currys.co.uk/techtalk/how-to/how-to-find-the-euro-symbol-on-your-pc-or-laptop-keyboard.html

#FreeBSD #vt #KeyboardLayouts #BS4822 #IECTR15440

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A close-up of part of a U.K. keyboard with black keys, some of which are somewhat worn, illustrating where the Euro symbol is engraved.

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A close-up of part of a U.K. keyboard with black keys, illustrating where the Euro symbol is engraved.

@JdeBP @jaypatelani not sure I'm the arbiter of what keyboard layouts are allowed in #FreeBSD :)

We're quite happy to take keymap submissions. Keymap additions in the last year:
- keymaps: Add Canadian Mulitlingual Standard
- keymaps: add map for some Lenovo laptops found in Brazillian market
- vt: add US International keymap
- added alias to tilde on french layouts for consistency

@jaypatelani

It's wrong in a couple of places. For starters, systems with EFI firmware do not require EFI partition tables. In fact it has things backwards. It's the older firmwares that place the requirement on what partitioning scheme is used; not the newer ones.

And as far as I know @emaste does not reject German keyboard layouts for #FreeBSD. (-:

It's on point about "What the Hell is enable cgd?" though.

#NetBSD #EFI

#FreeBSD 5.0 BETA, installed for the first time on the first (dual) AMD Opteron server I ever met and owned. Hung during boot, the whole room full of pepole who wanted to see this technological marvel collectively clenching their b*ttholes. Upon closer inspection, the console read:

"Entropy device is blocked. Dance fandango on keyboard to unblock."

Collective clenching turned into collective roaring laughter. It was an incredible moment and although I had already switched from Linux to FreeBSD several years before, FreeBSD 5 on a 64-bit platform just felt "right", more than anything had done since I discovered OS/2 in the early 90s.

I think I need more reasons to use #OpenBSD. I used to be a heavy user, even used to run it on my laptop, but currently manage zero installations.

I also think I should give #NetBSD a fair shake, I've only ever installed it twice, and never really given it a chance.

Using OpenBSD is easy, I'll probably convert my wireguard router over to it.

But any suggestions on NetBSD use cases? I mean this from the context of a heavy #FreeBSD user with a massive emphasis on jails.

#BSD #UNIX

While tidying up the cabinet in my studio, I found this box with 3 CDs. Alpha, of course, refers to the architecture. And there's a long story behind it that made me smile - which I'll publish on one of my blogs soon.

#FreeBSD #NetBSD #Debian #Alpha

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A CD jewel case labeled by hand with several operating system names and versions: "FreeBSD 5.3", "NetBSD 2.0", "Debian 'Testing' Sarge", and "ALPHA". The case insert contains 3 TDK CD-R Speed-X discs. The handwriting suggests the CD contains installation or boot media for Alpha architecture systems.

yet another ACME client, based on uacme: https://github.com/llfw/lfacme

good:
+ uses uacme and POSIX /bin/sh
+ better configuration/hook system than dehydrated
+ comes with manpages
+ small and simple
+ supports Kerberized dns-01 domain validation

bad:
- only tested on FreeBSD (but this could be improved)

(edit: now supports http-01 challenges!)

/cc @_bapt_

#freebsd #letsencrypt #acme

@sirber

Just FYI, #FreeBSD has docker ;)

https://ports.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cgi?query=docker&stype=all&sektion=all

How are folks managing #FreeBSD systems at scale? As in: from just after you've been given access as root, and then ongoing system management operations as needed - across a large estate of non-homogenous machines. #sysadmin #configmanagement #devops

It's interesting to see who the early adopters in the BSD world are when it comes to various things. Such as the partitioning on their #RaspberryPi installer images.

#OpenBSD has an old "MBR" partition table. No container partitions, just a UFS1 volume in an OpenBSD primary partition and a FAT16 volume in a >1024cyl Microsoft primary partition.

#FreeBSD has an old "MBR" partition table. It too has a FAT16 volume in a >1024cyl Microsoft partition. It has container partitions, though, with an even older BSD disklabel in a FreeBSD primary partition and a UFS2 volume contained inside that.

Waving hello from the 21st century, #NetBSD has an EFI partition table. No container partitions, of course. There is a FAT32 volume in an EFI System partition, and a UFS1 volume in a NetBSD partition.

#UEFI #DASD #PartitionTables

#FreeBSD's FAT16 partition is 50MiB, and #NetBSD's FAT32 partition is 80MiB. These comfortably take additional files.

FAT32 is technically superior, with the variable-length root directory, but for DASD volumes whose whole purpose is to contain a couple of tens of boot loader files it's not much of a practical advantage here. And indeed on the downside, the FATs are an order of magnitude bigger.

#OpenBSD's FAT16 partition in contrast is a tiny 8MiB. #TianoCore UEFI firmware, approximately 4MiB, does not fit on it without deleting stuff.

Ironically, it is preceded by twice that amount, 16MiB, in free space not allocated to any partition. It's possible to delete the 8MiB Microsoft partition and re-create a 23MiB one, as long as one saves and restores the contents.

#UEFI #DASD #PartitionTables #RaspberryPi

This is good, because installing and using #TianoCore #UEFI firmware in place of u-boot seems to be the only way to get the #OpenBSD boot loader to recognize the #RaspberryPi's on-board display and a USB keyboard.

It is otherwise insistent on using the UART, which makes it impossible to press that "any" key to get the boot loader to stop so that one can type the magic incantation to get the kernel proper — in its turn — to use the display and keyboard. It too defaults to using the UART.

This is a Pi 4 in a PiHut "modular" case, still resembling that #Blakes7 prop. It's not designed for DB9 sockets, but it has HDMI and USB holes, plus optional plastic shields for covering them to just let power and Ethernet in when the Pi is in production.

Maintenance with just a keyboard and monitor is the goal. OpenBSD barely cleared this first hurdle of controlling its boot loader.

(It fell at a subsequent hurdle, which is why I'm now trying #NetBSD and #FreeBSD.)

#DASD #PartitionTables

The firmware on a #RaspberryPi 4 does not mind if one changes the partition types of the #FreeBSD and #OpenBSD FAT volumes to EFI system, matching #NetBSD in spirit if not in modern partitioning scheme.

OpenBSD again almost fell at the hurdle here. It is extraordinarily sensitive to the status of its UFS1 partition. Touch it, or attempt to use a fresh one made from scratch, and its booloader thinks that it is talking to an esp device instead of to an sd device, and fails. This is a very strange dependency.

NetBSD, in contrast, did not bat an eyelid when I splatted about 5GiB of home directory, dotfiles, and tooling onto its UFS1 volume, using pax on another machine which had the TF card in a card reader.

NetBSD also auto-fixes the backup copy of the EFI partition table after its device re-sizing step. It didn't bat an eyelid, again, when I adjusted the initial card myself ahead of time using FreeBSD's #gpart recover.

#UEFI #PartitionTables #pax

The #RaspberryPi hurdle that #OpenBSD fell at was its installer.

Despite it presenting two different partition table editors, I couldn't persuade it to just simply use the already existing single UFS volume that was already there. It just does not seem to cater for the idea that one might want to install to the same removable DASD that one is using, with boot, system, and swap as already defined. It either led me down a path where it zapped the existing partition table, and all of the install files, or demanded that there be another solid-state medium to install to.

Which is sad, because a Pi with just a TF card and a single purpose is still a significant use case.

Whereas in NetBSD's sysinst, choosing to install to the same system is the first option on its third menu, after picking the installer language and choosing to install.

This is a 2 horse race being comfortably won by #NetBSD, currently. I've not tried #FreeBSD yet.

#PartitionTables

Yay! #IPv6 working out of the box - finally! #FreeBSD #FreeBSD-15-CURRENT #RunBSD

Some random photos from OSDay 2025. I gave a talk about the BSD family and why to use them in 2025.

1/X

#OSDay #OSDay25 #OSDay2025 #Conference #RunBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #OpenSource #OSS

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Group photo of the OSDay staff and speakers

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My laptop, with the BSD Cafe sticker, is projecting the BSD Cafe logo

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Me, giving my opinion about the Evolution of Open Source

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Me, explaining why I think we lost the value of stability

I know, many have been asking for this and even more out there didn’t even dare to ask.

But finally, the wait is over:

You can now use your #PinephonePro running #FreeBSD to do all your #Borland C++ #OS2 development while waiting for 1997 to arrive.

#RetroComputing

Some random photos from OSDay 2025. I gave a talk about the BSD family and why to use them in 2025.

2/X

#OSDay #OSDay25 #OSDay2025 #Conference #RunBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #OpenSource #OSS

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Me, standing up and presenting myself

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Me and my wife, smiling while listening to an interesting presentation

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One of the staff members asking me something about AI

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The trophy - I won :-)

The recording of the May 29th, 2025 #bhyve Production User Call is up:

https://youtu.be/5UepKTJ-ExY

We discussed the Sylve bhyve management project and were joined by its developer for long discussion that went an hour after the recording! We also discussed virtualization requirements and expectations, ZFS caching, ARM/ARM64 embedded development, the 2025-05 EDK2 update, and more!

"Don't forget to slam those Like and Subscribe buttons."

#FreeBSD #illumos

SysctlTUI is Out!

The sysctl() system call can get or set the state of the system, the #FreeBSD kernel exposes the parameters for sysctl() as objects of a Management information Base (MIB).

sysctltui is a Text User Interface #sysctl #MIB explorer. It allow to view a parameter’s properties and get or set its value.

Link: https://alfonsosiciliano.gitlab.io/posts/2025-05-29-sysctltui.html

#UNIX #kernel #C #terminal #opensource

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A terminal window running SysctlTUI, a text-based user interface for navigating FreeBSD sysctl variables. The screen shows a tree-like menu structure, with the path security.bsd.stack_guard_page highlighted. Navigation, Properties, Set Value, and Quit options are shown at the bottom.

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A detailed view in SysctlTUI of the security.bsd.stack_guard_page sysctl variable. It displays metadata such as OID values, name, description ("Specifies the number of guard pages for a stack that grows"), flags (RD, WR, TUN, MPSAFE, NOFETCH), type (integer), format (I), handler (Defined), and current value (1). A [Close] button is shown at the bottom.

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SysctlTUI displaying a prompt to change the value of the kern.securelevel sysctl variable. The current value is -1, and an editable input field with the value "-1" is focused. Buttons for [Set Value] and [Cancel] are available below the input. The background shows part of the sysctl variable tree.

I wanted a #Wireguard GUI client for #FreeBSD and there wasn't none so I put this QT6 thing together last night.

*sigh* so yes, I admit it - my daily driver still is @VoidLinux for various reasons that make me sound like a #1990s #windows user reluctant to switch to #linux. It involves cheap USB grabbers among other things.

Yet I have a weak spot for #NetBSD 🧡 and while #FreeBSD and #OpenBSD get some fair coverage here on the #fediverse, I am getting the impresson that NetBSD is a bit under-presented here.

So, do you also 🧡 NetBSD?!

https://netbsd.org/

⚠️ Resources got restocked:

- Two new nodes in Netherlands
- One new node in Ukraine
- Extended resources on nodes in Germany

@gyptazy is now improving the self-service portal and then we can go straight to the 1k free boxes :)

#RUNBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #MidnightBSD #DragonflyBSD

Today was an extremely long day - it started at 3:50.
Unfortunately, there was a problem this morning. Nothing critical, but it did cause a bit of chaos. It wasn’t directly my fault, but I probably could’ve prevented it.

This time, I didn’t exactly solve a problem. Or rather, I averted a disaster, but didn’t avoid a mess. Shit happens.
On its own, it wouldn’t be a big deal - but I tend to be forgiving with others and harsh on myself.

On the bright side? As often happens when I feel disappointed, I concentrated on urgent things and personal projects. So I merged a ton of scattered code into the (dev) BSSG repo - things I had lying around but hadn’t integrated yet. The next release will be a big one.

And tomorrow, a shiny "new" server is arriving. I’ll need to set it up at a client’s place before BSDCan - even though a few details are still unclear. The only certainties: it’ll run FreeBSD and ZFS.

#BSD #FreeBSD #ZFS #SysAdmin #LongDays #RunBSD

People working on Linux or the BSDs (or illumos based OSes, etc), are you using two monitors? And, if so, what do you use them for?
I'm trying to understand if it makes sense to keep two monitors on my desk

Please boost

#Linux #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #illumos #SmartOS #OmniOS #IT #SysAdmin

My wifey approved #homelab had to move...

The reason is easy - you can probably already guess that there might be some thermal problems raising on the left picture. It resulted into permanently spinning & annoying fans. Also the temperatures went a way too high. So, easy solution - everything moved into a metal shoe rack under my working desk. From ~80°C CPU temperature it dropped to ~65°C without spinning fans.

#Proxmox #ProxmoxVE #Labs #Network #Lab #XCPng #FreeBSD #DevOps #IPv6

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Old wifey approved homelab on the left had to move due to a temperature issues and better airflow into a shoe rack under my desk

Does anyone use #signalmessenger on #freebsd ?

Last time I tried it, the messaging bit worked but the audio/video calling did not but I think I was testing on 13. At the time the linuxulator was missing the system calls for it or something.

@justine

For all its missing features, it's dead easy to get a decent GUI up and running with #OpenBSD.

#FreeBSD has a lot of capabilities, but takes some work to get going.

NomadBSD is elegant, and works well, but you only get a choice of a single desktop (IIRC), and kind of like Arch Linux derivatives, if something happens and you're left with a non-functioning system, you're a bit at a loss for what to do, because someone else essentially set it up for you.

Exactly one month from today, I'll be at #BSDCan to present my talk "Why (and how) we're migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs" (AKA: "I solve problems").

As the days go by, I feel increasingly honored to be a speaker at this event, more and more excited to live an experience similar to the incredible one I had last September at #EuroBSDCon in Dublin, and more confident than ever in the technical choices I’ve made over the years - which I’ll be happy to share.

BSD conferences aren’t just technical events - they’re snapshots of the BSD community as a whole: friendly, collaborative, pragmatic, and positive.

To everyone attending: see you in Ottawa!

https://indico.bsdcan.org/event/5/contributions/123/

#BSDCan2025 #RunBSD #BSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #DragonflyBSD

@b9AcE @dec_hl Yeah I know. I think I'm still in the "this is too good to be true" phase, after having used ZFS in production and just about everywhere else since #FreeBSD 7 in 2008 or so.

One thing I'll never understand, though, is how it can be considered "overwhelming" next to btrfs: The little I've had to do with the latter (so yes, I may not have any right to say anything here..) I am downright intimidated by it, particularly the interactions with underlying storage and the wildly confusing way redundancy is - and isn't - configured.

But I guess it matters what the out-of-box experience is like. And at the end of the day, whatever you know and trust is likely to be the right choice.

(Won't comment on XFS since it's legendary; I am not worthy.)

Some N150 tests:
#FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE installs and runs. Wifi is detected (not tested, yet) but X doesn't seem to start. Will investigate.
#OpenBSD 7.7 installs and runs, X runs. I'm trying with IceWM and it's ok. I'm trying to install KDE Plasma. Wifi doesn't seem to be detected.

There's a report that installing #FreeBSD/i386 from the BETA 14.3 image results in a non-booting system, but I was unable to reproduce the issue in QEMU.

Anyone want to give it a try and add details to the PR if you can reproduce the problem https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=286655

Overheard at Lefty’s Bar: -What’s the commercial alternative to FreeBSD? -FeeBSD! Har har har….!!! #RunBSD #FunBSD #dadjoke #freebsd

Yesterday, I told you about incus - today I tell you how you can easily run #FreeBSD, #OpenBSD & #NetBSD with #incus!

#RUNBSD! #opensource #homelab #virtualization #proxmox

https://gyptazy.com/run-freebsd-openbsd-netbsd-vms-in-incus/

Great article from @gyptazy :

Run FreeBSD, OpenBSD & NetBSD VMs in Incus

https://gyptazy.com/run-freebsd-openbsd-netbsd-vms-in-incus/?utm_source=discoverbsd

#FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #Incus #VM #Virtualization