New year, same love for clean code. 🧡

I saw @netbsd 🚩was short $327 on their 2025 funding goal, so I sent a donation to start 2026 on a high note.

Wishing the team a great 2026.

Wishing all BSD users Happy New Year ahead!

#NetBSD #Unix #OpenSource #linux #sysadmin #runbsd

Some records were broken this year!
- More than 1000 VMs running!
- Donated more than €60k!
- Crossed the C$20k (C$20998) threshold for this year... Gold is in sight!

We donated €1125 to the #OpenBSD Foundation, this year €13270, and €60830 since we started.

This month 27 new VMs were added and 57 VMs were renewed.

Thank you, our users, and OpenBSD developers for an awesome OS!

We want to wish you a Happier New Year! It's getting really time for a better one.
Stay safe & healthy!

#RUNBSD in 2026

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Paypal receipt for €1125

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Rainn Wilson as Dwight Kurt Schrute III in The Office US, looking straight in the camera. It has the text: Happy New Year!! Wrong: The happiness of the upcoming year has yet to be determined

Here is the CPU usage graph for the last 24 hours of the FediMeteo VM. A full 24 hours, during which a huge number of people are connecting, helped by the traction gained from being among the top stories on Hacker News and Lobsters, as well as the many shares across the Fediverse.

RAM usage? Active, around 450 MB. Then there is cache, ARC, and so on. But in practice, zero swap in use after days of uptime.

39 jails running, 39 snac instances, nginx serving the homepage, and HAProxy. HAProxy caching enabled. ZFS snapshots every 15 minutes, backups via zfs send and receive every hour. The same hourly schedule applies to the recalculation of cities, countries, and followers for the homepage.

All of this on a 4 euro per month FreeBSD VM.

If anyone has doubts about the quality and efficiency of FreeBSD, this is the data to show.

#FediMeteo #FreeBSD #RunBSD #IT #SysAdmin

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Time series graph showing CPU usage percentage over roughly 24 hours. The x axis represents time from about 13:00 to 12:00 the next day, and the y axis shows CPU usage from 0 to 100 percent. CPU usage fluctuates mostly between 15 and 35 percent, with periodic rises during daytime and early morning hours. Several short spikes reach around 45 to 55 percent, and one brief peak climbs to about 60 percent. Usage drops to lower levels, around 10 to 20 percent, during late evening and early morning periods. Overall, the graph shows moderate, variable CPU load with occasional sharp peaks.

This evening in "cli snippets for things I learned":
To more easily upgrade to #NetBSD -current, you can

1) build and install sysupgrade:

# cd /usr/pkgsrc/sysutils/sysupgrade
# make && make install

2) Then point it to the daily snapshots at:

# sysupgrade fetch https://nycdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/HEAD/latest/$(sysctl kern.machine_arch)

3) Follow the rest of the sysupgrade steps found at
https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-upgrading.html

Be warned that sysupgrade etcupdate is long, boring, but important.

#RunBSD

There we go. Have a modern web browser (midori) working on a 2008 netbook, with an 1.6GHz Atom processor and 1Gbyte of RAM, all thanks to the magic of BSD. First page to fire up is of course @exquisite

#RunBSD #NetBSD

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A netbook displaying the exquisite.social "About" page

TIL about Garage, extremely self-hostable #S3 storage with features like:

• Single-binary release
• Needs 1GB RAM and "a processor of some kind"
• Main claim is "we won't pull a Minio"
• "Use whatever hw you have"

This needs to be built for *BSD. This is awesome. Just looking at replacing Minio and this seems like an ideal candidate.

@ricardo https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@ricardo/115728350396298839

#runbsd #freebsd #openbsd

I think #RunBSD people will like this

https://neal.fun/size-of-life/

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

The holidays are fast approaching, so Happy Holidays for those who observe. :)

We will be upgrading all the hosts soon. Waiting for an errate to come in.

18 new VMs were added and 77 VMs were renewed.

We donated €1335 to the #OpenBSD Foundation, €59705 since we started.

Thank you, our users, and OpenBSD developers for an awesome OS!

Stay safe, healthy & sane!

You can still #RUNBSD in 2025

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Meerkat on it's belly with a paw in the air as it's reaching for something. It has the text: So Close

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Paypal receipt for €1335 to the OpenBSD Foundation

Forget the chaotic Black Friday sales! 🤯 NetBSD 🚩 offers the BEST deal: it's 100% FREE! Always has been, always will be. Perfect for self-hosters and anyone seeking pure, open-source goodness without spending a dime. No catches, just solid OS. #NetBSD #BlackFriday #FreeSoftware #SelfHost #RetroComputing #OpenSource #Linux #RunBSD

Also I'm in #Glasgow Saturday through Wednesday; I'll even take whisky with a fellow #RunBSD person there. ;)

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

"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

📢 NetBSD 11.0 release is imminent!

Release is getting a massive upgrade. Community need your help to ensure it runs smoothly on everything from modern servers to vintage workstations.

✨ What to test:
• Improved RISC-V Support
• ZFS & Kernel stability
• Your favorite pkgsrc tools

🔥 The Challenge: #RunOnAnything. Install the Beta on your most interesting hardware and show us the results!

⬇️ Grab the latest NetBSD 11 binaries here:
https://nycdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/netbsd-11/latest

#NetBSD #BSD #OpenSource #Unix #BetaTesting #RetroComputing #RunBSD

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

nixCraft 🐧 » 🌐 2025-11-17
@nixCraft@mastodon.social

Freshly installed Debian 13 Linux on a server just uses 270MB of RAM. Of course, once I install PgSQL, Redis, Apache 2/Nginx or Lighttpd, Python/PHP/Docker, etc., it will eat up 10GB. It is amazing how much good Debian is as compared to other bloated OSes out there, and it is all free. I can't believe that. Thank you all Debian devs for keeping it real.

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running the `htop` command on my freshly installed Debian Linux version 13 server.

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

RE: https://mastodon.social/@pitrh/115509098143295810

The BSD conferences are magical. The atmosphere is friendly. It's a family - a good one - with different views but a common goal: making great things, making smart choices in a positive environment.

#RunBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #EuroBSDCon #BSDCan #AsiaBSDCon

Hey #NetBSD 🚩community! There's been discussion over the years about whether the NetBSD project should have its own unique mascot (separate from the general BSD Beastie).

I outlined a proposal for one back in 2021, including some concepts:
https://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-advocacy/2021/01/21/msg000828.html

What's the general feeling today? #RunBSD #OpenSource #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #DragonflyBSD

💾 OpenBSD Amsterdam VM feature alert! 💾

Tired of reinstalling just because /var ran out of room while /home just sat there.
We fixed that.

Now when you book, pick your disk layout:
- Default (same old, same old)
- /home 5G; /var *
- /home 1G; /var *

#RUNBSD #OpenBSD

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A meme featuring Kenan Thompson with a skeptical expression on a game show set, SNL, inspired by 'Who wants to be a milionair' The game show question reads 'Best Disk Layout,' with options: A: DEFAULT, B: CUSTOM, C: /HOME 5G, /VAR *, and D: /HOME 1G, /VAR *. Above the man, the text 'PHONE A FRIEND?' is displayed, humorously suggesting the difficulty of the question."

Why and how we're migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs

My BSDCan 2025 presentation, PeerTube and YouTube links:

PeerTube: https://tube.bsd.cafe/w/x4oPuHpCJK3qWFfdZtr7hd

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnVp25-6Qao

#RunBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #BSDCan #ISolveProblems #Linux

I'm running some tests on my old and trusted Raspberry Pi A+.
I've installed Raspbian - latest release, lite version. At the prompt, it's using 92 MB of RAM, mainly due to systemd and NetworkManager. As soon as you use it (even just for apt), it starts swapping and becomes almost unusable. It took 5 minutes just to install Python.

I tried NetBSD (on the same memory card): 35 MB of RAM used (including Postfix!) and it's totally usable.

#RunBSD #NetBSD #Raspbian #Linux #Debian

OpenBSD 7.8 was released!! We will start the upgrade process soon!

15 new VMs were added and 59 VMs were renewed.

We donated €1035 to the #OpenBSD Foundation, €58370 since we started.

Thank you, our users, and OpenBSD developers for an awesome OS!

Stay safe, healthy & sane!

#RUNBSD in 2025

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Artwork for OpenBSD 7.8 Dark background with two colored squids floating, on the left a yellow/greenish and on the right one light blue. In the foreground it's written OpenBSD 7.8 with a fancy font in light blue.

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Paypal receipt for €1035

Here's a short video about my cloudless, portable, small, low-resource "smart thermostat". It doesn't need an internet connection and uses MQTT. Here, it's directly driving a relay.
It's running on a Raspberry Pi Zero W, powered by NetBSD, in read-only mode.
I used it for years and it's time to go back to it, cloudless and local.

#RunBSD #NetBSD #IoT #OwnYourDevices #OwnYourData #Cloudless

Yes, my old python program to control my heaters is still working. I just had to adapt it to python 3 and modify the code so the old ds1820 sensors aren't needed anymore, I can connect it to my mqtt server. And get the temp from the esp8266 I placed many years ago, all around the house. I've also put a relay on one of them and it works fine.

Oh, and all is running on a Raspberry PI Zero W, powered by NetBSD.

#RunBSD #NetBSD

Think NetBSD is just some spooky, complicated thing for old-school hackers? Nah.
But all that legendary portability and rock-solid reliability? That doesn't happen by magic.
Every stable update, cool new feature, and wild new platform it supports (yes, even your toaster) comes from the hard work of the NetBSD community. And honestly, they're powered by support from people just like you.
When you donate to the NetBSD Foundation, you're directly helping to:
Keep NetBSD's code clean, secure, and ready for whatever's next.
Supercharge the build systems and infrastructure that our devs live on.
Cook up more docs, guides, and resources for new users and seasoned pros.
Make sure "Of course it runs NetBSD" stays a free-for-everyone reality.
Your contribution is what keeps NetBSD stable, modern, and running on (almost) everything. Pitch in to support the work that keeps #NetBSD awesome!

#OpenSource #Halloween #donate #runbsd #linux #retro #ewaste

It's that time of the year again!! 🐡

Changes by: deraadt@cvs.openbsd.org 2025/10/21 19:29:37
Log message:
release 7.8. 59th release. crazy.

https://www.openbsd.org/78.html

As always, there are great vmm/vmd improvements.

Start your sysupgrade engines!!

Artwork by Apsephion

#OpenBSD #RUNBSD

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Artwork for OpenBSD 7.8 Terraodontidae Artwork by Apsephion

But removal of #Yubikey OTP functionality in the upcoming 7.8 was real a shit.

It's a paradox that I have to remove #OpenBSD from our list of approved operating systems due to this, while working in the infosec business. #RunBSD #UNIX

It was 2019 and I think I was fed up with people posting gdm p0rn. So I did some using #xenodm on #OpenBSD.

It probably still works these days.

https://www.tumfatig.net/2019/customizing-openbsd-xenodm/

#xdm #xorg #xenocara #RunBSD

I have discovered a simple way to host a What's My IP-like service with just a little of #nginx and #GeoLite2. Should you want to do it yourself, here are the notes: https://www.tumfatig.net/2025/check-your-ip-infos-using-nginx/

If you're not into hosting it yourself, I have also made it available on https://ip.nogoo.me, of course running on #OpenBSD.

#RunBSD

This is how my 1 Euro per month #NetBSD VM is reacting to the sudden popularity of my last blog post, on HN:

load averages: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00; up 72+04:35:09 15:17:29
33 processes: 32 sleeping, 1 on CPU
CPU states: 3.7% user, 0.0% nice, 1.2% system, 0.7% interrupt, 94.3% idle
Memory: 737M Act, 43M Inact, 17M Wired, 25M Exec, 701M File, 16M Free
Swap: 1024M Total, 1024M Free / Pools: 138M Used / Network: 171K In, 4522K Out

#RunBSD

When you promised the office moose-head something something from #EuroBSDcon2025 #Moose #Stickers #RunBSD

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Moose head on a wall with the mouth full of stickers

Another small victory today.

A salesperson had almost convinced a client to move their email from 365 to Google because "they hold all the cards now". I stepped in and suggested they keep their email on servers that they control instead. The salesperson almost mocked me, treating me like a "nerd" who doesn't understand how the world works.

I was happy to be a nerd, if necessary, to explain the pros and cons of the solution to the client.
The result? The salesperson was politely thanked and "sent home", and I'm now evaluating some details of the new mail server, which, by the client's choice, will be based on OpenBSD.

Because people need explanations, not brochures.

#OwnYourData #OpenBSD #RunBSD

OpenSSH, TCP/IP, Berkely sockets—even vi—all came from the BSD camp, and they're everywhere now!

BSD innovations have influenced nearly all of modern computing and don't often get enough credit.

Cheers to all the unsung engineers (and to Bill Joy for half of that list at least!) 🍻

#FreeBSD #BastilleBSD #runBSD #BSD