System Administration

It was a crisp spring day on March 25, 2024, when I decided to take a detour from my usual BSD and Linux haunts. My destination? OmniOS, a distribution of the Illumos operating system. Little did I know I was about to embark on a journey that would challenge my assumptions and expand my Unix horizons. The Land of pfexec The first surprise came when I tried to elevate my privileges. No sudo? No doas? In OmniOS, I discovered, we pfexec. It’s like stepping into a parallel universe where everything is familiar, yet slightly off-kilter. I found myself chanting “pfexec, pfexec” like a mantra as I navigated this new landscape. ...

FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Me: A Tragicomedy in Three Acts Ladies, gentlemen, and Unix enthusiasts of all stripes, gather ‘round for a tale of network woe, BSD brilliance, and the kind of sleep deprivation usually reserved for new parents and cryptocurrency day traders. I present to you my 72-hour descent into the wonderful, maddening world of BSD. Act I: The Blinking Light of Doom Our story begins with a blinking light. Not just any light, mind you, but the PON light on my ISP’s router. For the uninitiated, PON stands for Passive Optical Network, but in that moment, it might as well have stood for “Panic! Outage! Noooooo!” ...