Notices by Stefano Marinelli (stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe)

In the countryside, there are rituals that have endured for hundreds of years, unchanged.
This elderly woman, her body bent by time and hard work, walks each day to meet her chickens - who roam freely across a vast open space.
She gathers a few branches and leaves, then returns to fetch the food she’ll give them, to complement what they’ve already foraged in nature.

The chickens, friendly and orderly, follow her all the while.
And watching them, I’m reminded of people who are no longer here - people who were part of my life for a long time, who lived those same rituals, even if hundreds of kilometers away.

Even as everything around us changes, there are places that never do.

#Photography #PhotoMonday #FotoMontag #MonochromeMonday #Countryside #Time

In less than 2 hours, I created and put in production 3 new FreeBSD servers - each one with haproxy, nginx, mariadb, etc. - backups and monitorings included.

I created a set of jails then cloned them. Then customised them.

Those setups will run for *years* with some updates as they're meant to be stable and reliable.

Now, I can have another coffee and relax for some minutes 🙂

#FreeBSD #RunBSD

@stu Let me think. The first Linux server I exposed was in 2001. Fun Fact: my ISP used to truncate the connection if the traffic was low. My friend Simone ( @henomis - do you remember?) and I were supposed to take a university exam, and we had decided, as a practical demonstration, to do it by showing a real remote connection. Simone had written a rlogin daemon from scratch - as a project for the exam - and we wanted to demonstrate how we could connect from the university to my server at my parents' house (hundreds of kms away) and that it would work. So, I launched Napster just to keep the connection active, generating traffic. The professor was amazed and excited by our "alternative" approach.

I believe the first exposed FreeBSD server was around the end of 2002 or early 2003. But the first exposed server I did "professionally" (i.e., to host services for clients) was shortly after, probably at the end of 2003, and it was based on NetBSD.

Italian Breakfast

#Italy #Breakfast #Food

@justine sweets for breakfast is typical in Italy (and at least in part of France). I've been doing a sweet breakfast for years - now switched to different things to contain the weight 🙂

Now that it's official, I can announce it - although I may have dropped a few hints earlier! 😉

My talk "Why (and how) we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs" has been accepted, and I’ll be honored to present it in June at BSDCan in Ottawa.

The joy of meeting BSD friends in person again (and those I haven’t had the chance to meet live yet) will be immense, and the honor of sharing my story in Canada is truly beyond measure, especially considering the level of other talks and all the people attending.

Of course, I’ll be bringing various BSD Cafe gadgets with me!

For more information, here’s @mwl 's post with further details: https://blog.bsdcan.org/2025/03/18/bsdcan-2025-talks-tutorials-and-registration/

#BSDCan #RunBSD #BSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD

Thank you, Nature. For everything.

#Photography #Photo #Flowers #SpringIsComing #ThankYouTuesday #Nature #Italy

I was thinking about how it was possible to stop using a gem like HAProxy for so long. It used to be my go-to choice, but then I switched to using Nginx for everything, and I almost forgot about it.
Well, it’s great to reconnect with old friends!

#HAProxy #Nginx #SysAdmin

"Goodbye, Fediverse Chick!"

This is a nice addition to #Mitra

https://mitra.social/objects/01959b84-3160-ee50-662e-2cb2cc68e10a

@mitra

#Fediverse

Wello!

#Caturday #Cat #Cats

Just saved by a zfs snapshot. Again.
Thank you, ZFS

#ZFS #OpenZFS #FreeBSD

These days, I decided to renew the company website. I wanted it to be more modern and better aligned with the message I want to convey, as well as with our use of the BSDs. I’ve worked on it a bit – it’s still incomplete, but I decided to put it online since it’s already better than the previous version.

I’ll continue working on it, bit by bit, in the coming days to fix other things and add some content.
Of course, no CMS, just HTML, with a focus on usability even if browsed without images and JavaScript.

https://prodottoinrete.it

#RunBSD

The threat of shutting down Starlink to Ukraine is one of the best advertisements for #OwnYourData - that I've been advocating for many, many years. Geopolitical and commercial changes can be unpredictable and sudden.

Some clients are finally deciding to move to infrastructures under their control (even if not in their offices, and in many cases, I can agree).
So here's the suitable soundtrack.

https://song.link/s/1CKvinIoExZec5pv8OHtzU

#MondayMood #Soundtrack #Music #MastoMusic #MastoRadio #FediMusic #FediRadio #JukeBox

Waterfox, Ironfox, Fennec... I love open source but sometimes it's hard to decide...

I'm pleased to announce that my company, Prodottoinrete Group SRL, will be a BRONZE SPONSOR of EuroBSDCon 2025.

The organizers do a great job managing everything, and the least we can do is offer a (small) contribution to help the conference maintain the current standards, which, in my opinion, are extremely high.

So, a big thank you to the organizers, the speakers, and everyone who contributes to making this event so great.

https://2025.eurobsdcon.org/

#RunBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #DragonflyBSD #HardenedBSD #GhostBSD #AllTheBSDs #BSD #EuroBSDCon #EuroBSDCon2025 #EuroBSDCon25

Tired of the constant changes to phone plans, I’ve just activated a new SIM with 300 GB of monthly data (including 5G). A few years ago, Iliad had coverage that was completely inadequate for my needs, but it seems things have improved significantly.

In the next few days, I’ll test it on my Pixel 7 (still running GrapheneOS) and we’ll see how it goes. This could solve a lot of my problems.

@GeraintLlanfrancheta No, they're not a public sector and they're ok with FreeBSD 🙂
They already have some FreeBSD servers (mainly running VMs on bhyve) and are happy

About a month ago, while talking with a colleague who had experience only with Linux, he mentioned that he knew of the BSDs but had never "had the courage" to try them. I suggested he give them a shot, reminding him not to think of BSDs as "just another Linux" but as entirely different operating systems. Focusing on security, I recommended OpenBSD - also mentioning HardenedBSD, sure it would pique his interest.

A few hours ago, he called me about something else and confirmed that for weeks now, he's been using OpenBSD on his laptop (disk encrypted), FreeBSD on two servers, and NetBSD on an embedded device at home. He plans to experiment with HardenedBSD and DragonflyBSD in the coming weeks.

However, he did have one complaint: we've known each other for five years, and I never encouraged him to try this earlier! 😀

#BSD #OpenBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #HardenedBSD #DragonflyBSD #Security #Tech #FOSS #RunBSD

Regulations, originally designed to protect citizens and end consumers, are evolving into such complexity that they end up limiting choices.

Today, I received two calls about this. One from a client (amazing people, both personally and professionally). They received a request from a minor client working in the social sector, to whom they provide a service without any profit, charging only a flat rate for reimbursement of expenses. Their goal is to help in their mission.

But there's an issue: their social classification forces them to obtain certifications—required from their suppliers—that would cost so much they make it impossible. In my opinion, these certifications are unnecessary and inapplicable to their reality, yet there seems to be no choice. The alternative? Turning to a big player. That way, they’d feel reassured because "no one has ever been fired for choosing ***."

Now, forcing them to spend more, hand over their data to a foreign company (which could use it for AI training), and receive inferior service—just to have some papers that would protect them from potential lawsuits or fines—doesn't seem fair. A worse service, lower security, and far higher costs.

Regulations are welcome, but within reasonable limits.

#Regulations #ConsumerProtection #SocialImpact #OwnYourData

@angel I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing this. Sometimes I wonder if it's just my feeling - but when shared, a feeling becomes more concrete.