Notices by 💞 eva 💞 (winterschon@mastodon.bsd.cafe)

⚕️ Differently Abled? Scheiß Nein! ⚕️: https://prose.winterschon.com/2025/01/27/differently-abled-schei-nein.html

@feld @iliana QSFP-DD (probably 200 or 400G) signal validation tester in a ODM manufacturing or QA lab. Splitters are 16 lanes (each lane connected to a proximal length coaxial cable which is connected to a signal acquisition device located somewhere off camera), in this test mode they're likely evaluating per-lane signal consistency, strength, jitter, latency, and attenuation over distance in accordance with whatever this unit is required to conform to for proper blah blah blah money making product design and development.

I designed, scaled, and managed the hardware research lab for my previous $corp employer, and had equipment like that in the lab. Doing "breakout testing" and "performance analysis on fiber optic transceivers" as well as all the other fun stuff related to high speed networking is super fun.

I also have a small home lab where I engage in that and other performance engineering projects for fun (without profit, except for the profit of knowledge and nerdiness!)

[edit: corrected QSFP28 to QSFP-DD + 100G to 24x, lane count spec memory needed to finish coffee]

👾 wie geht's? vi geht's emacs 👾

more precisely a present probability of preference presuming an impermanence of perfection,,, endeavoring to spacemacs {https://spacemacs.org}

specifically, spacemacs running in regular emacs mode because, "why would I want to resume using emacs after a several year hiaitus into vi/vim land, only to desire the madness of modal editing within the context of sane-brain regular mode?" .. surely, a question for the ages.

anyway, spacemacs is interesting and I don't yet hate it. let's give it a week or two before informed opinion.

#emacs #vi #vim #editorwars #freebsd #bsd #unix #linux #commandLineIsBestLine #cli #bulletToTheBrainNotJustYet #itsTheThoughtThatcountsNotTheInherentlyCyclicalSurealismOfExistentialNihilism

💖 2025-0127,03:49.UTC-0600 💖

ADHD focus, native capacity: 4 PPIDs
ADHD context switching (ctx): 8 Thr
ADHD ctx concurrency layers: 3 PIDs
ADHD stalled execution rate: 3^89.170

🤯

#adhd #mentalhealth

💻 CDE for the Modern Era 💻

I've decided to return to my roots, in some respects. Unfortunately, the Sun Ultra 60 workstation is not (yet) sitting at my desk, but I can partially relive its day to day experience of the CDE desktop by using NsCDE.

It's clean, crisp, responsive, and fast. Maybe once I finish customizing its retro-ness there will be some time for screenshots.

Now, back to eBay to find a proper Ultra 60... 😊

#Solaris #FreeBSD #Linux #Desktop #Engineering #OldPeople #KidsTheseDays #OSS

@cullum it won't end until the entire codebase is merged into "Windows 13 OpenSource Professional", which will have a license cost.

FreeBSD Articles 2025 Q1 [projektierung]: https://prose.winterschon.com/2025/01/03/freebsd-articles-q-projektierung.html

"Understanding you does not mean that I agree with you."

- Tech @ CF99 TBB

@SteveBellovin @mms correct on all points. every single claim that systemd proponents make to its benefit is already an existing tool or command or method which has existed in Unix and BSDs (and to a lesser extent in pre-systemd Linux distros).

having been professionally involved with all of the major non-windows OS's for over a decade longer than systemd has existed, I can assuredly say that far too many of those claims exist simply due to the claimants vast inexperience with operating system design and engineering. they don't even know, and seemingly don't care, that we never needed systemd, and the vast majority never wanted it.

it's no coincidence that systemd was forced into the Linux communities at the same time that MSFT stopped trying to crush it from beyond -- instead that was the very same era in which they began their assaults on open source via "embrace extend extinguish".

Healthcare.gov is a horrendous bunch of bullshit. Time will tell if I loathe it more than KP.org, BCBS, UHC, Cigna, or whatever shitty other for-profit corporations are deciding to call themselves after a hundred different mergers & acquisitions done at the expense, pain, and suffering of hardworking American tax payers. Fuck your shitty coverage, assholes.

Before Death, The Experiences Adventure: https://prose.winterschon.com/2024/12/13/before-death-the.html

☁️ FreeBSD 14.2 Cloud Infra @ ClonOS ☁️

It's a great day for a new release of ClonOS, the preeminent private cloud architecture toolkit for FreeBSD, offered by the developers of CBSD.

This version contains the following tech stack:

**ClonOS 24xx highlights**

- FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE
- PHP 8.4
- Switched to base-in-packages distribution
- New simplified installer
- Added 'ClonOS console' -- text-based CLI menu
- ClI/ClonOS console shell accessibility via WEB browser
- Support for Linux jails (rocky, debian, ubuntu)
- Kubernetes clusters

ClonOS is a turnkey Open Source platform based on FreeBSD and the CBSD framework. ClonOS offers a complete web UI for easily controlling, deploying and managing FreeBSD jails containers and Bhyve/Xen/QEMU hypervisor virtual environments.

ClonOS is currently the only platform available which allow both Xen and Bhyve hypervisor to coexist on the same host. Being a FreeBSD base platform, ClonOS ability to create and manage jails allows you to run FreeBSD applications without losing performance.

Check out the site for downloads and additional information:

- https://clonos.convectix.com/index.html
- https://clonos.convectix.com/download.html

#freebsd #linux #cloud #virtualization #vm #jails #engineering #development #infrastructure #kubernetes #FOSS #projectsWhichHaveMySupport

@silverwizard potato foto, but it's nice to see another DevTerm out in the wild! How do you like it - and which compute module are you running?

🐚 TCSH, a shell for Fortune & Glory 🐚

Relevant blog post @ OpenSource.com

> "Why I still love tcsh after all these years. Bash may be more popular, but tcsh has advantages that make it more appealing..."

- https://opensource.com/article/20/8/tcsh

How about dot-files for my tcsh config, sure...
- https://codeberg.org/winterschon/dot-files/src/branch/main/.tcshrc

#freebsd #linux #sysadmin #engineering #terminal #shells #bash #tcsh #csh #modernSolutionsForModernProblems

Lina Khan, Merrick Garland, and Gary Gensler have completely wasted their reputations and every citizens' resources over the past four years of the present administration. Completely out of touch with the American public, operating with no concept of how the internet works, just more performative emotional theater with no substance.

#tech #usa #sec #litigation #politics #uspol #google #antitrust

A minor commentary on SED/Opal encrytion: https://prose.winterschon.com/2024/11/16/a-minor-commentary.html

🚒 iPhone vs Android 🚒

Round 394!

ok but in all seriousness, let's say I want to send some SMS/RCS using my cell, but I want to do that from the computer... should be feasible?

iPhone's iMessage: "we love our walled garden so much that NO ONE can send messages using a web interface, despite iMessage being an iCloud enabled app and the ecosystem having iCloud apps available online to any non-Mac -- but we decided that iMessage alone should never be usable on the iCloud web interface (because reasons?)"

Android via Messages App: "sure thing fellow Happy Camper! here you go! https://messages.google.com and it's just as secure as using the device itself."

Best part... Android's method WORKS ON FREEBSD!

#noFlameWarNeeded #iPhone #Android #mobileDevices #FreeBSD #Linux #Apple

💖 Lineage & Location 💖

Until very recently I never knew that my genetic grandmother had moved to Chicago, fell in love, and started a family. Prior to all of that she was certainly not in Chicago but somewhere entirely different, in a hospital, where she had to give my mother up for adoption.

Some decades later the story will unfold as her granddaughter moves to the same city, with a similar set of eyes, looking towards a new direction and renewed set of goals.

#genetics #ancestry #family #vintage #photography #chicago

💗 Workstation Update 💗

a tradition continues: new job == new workstation (@home)

supermicro store finally stopped being broken, and now this is on order:

CPU: EPYC 4564P, 16C/32T @ 4.50GHz, 170W TDP
RAM: 4x 32GB DDR5-4800MHz ECC-UDIMM
GPU: either A4000 or P2200 from the bench
NVMe: 2x Samsung 990 Pro 2TB M.2
NICs: 2x 2.5G Intel i226v
OS: FreeBSD 14.x (of course) :freebsd_logo:

Should be fun. Probably should decide on dual-redundant PSU to replace the basic/boring platinum one from the stock chassis, but no rush.

@feld OpenVPN can go head to head with Wireguard on hardware optimized deployments, and at a substantially lower cost*.

The performance reality is often, nearly always, occluded in the modern tech user's mindset... unless they have first hand experience with encryption offload accelerators.

OpenVPN can have it's encryption and compression/decompression fully offloaded from the CPU (via QAT Integration for OpenSSL), which substantially increases the throughput performance and reduces latency. This acceleration is available on all of generations of Intel's QAT cards -- which notably have full support in FreeBSD and OPNsense and PFsense (among others) where that type of network accel is heavily used for advanced scaling solutions.

On but wait... what about Wireguard and its default reliance on Poly ChaCha20?... well, the newest generation of QAT (no longer PCIe AIC, but are directly on-die for certain Xeon and Atom C5/P5/P7 series SKUs) also include acceleration offload for Wireguard's chacha20-poly1305.

[*] Since Wireguard needs newer gen QAT for its ChaCha20 offload, which are only CPU on-die, OpenVPN can utilize older Intel CPUs with inexpensive gen1-2 QAT as PCIe cards.

Examples:
* Gen1 8950 ~$65: https://www.ebay.com/itm/375502192437
* Gen2 8960 ~$150: https://www.ebay.com/itm/186265281944
* Gen3: https://www.servethehome.com/welcome-to-the-intel-ice-lake-d-era-with-the-xeon-d-2700-and-d-1700-series/
Gen4+: Xeon (Sapphire Rapids) 6438N https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/232397/intel-xeon-gold-6438n-processor-60m-cache-2-00-ghz/specifications.html

I have a decent amount of these options in my personal labs and production PoCs at various Corps, all super fun to work with. If it helps to sell the benefits, these are also used for similar performance gains on OpenZFS with native encryption and compression/decompression and maybe a little bit on checksumming. 💯

Maybe I should write a blog post with more details, perf metrics, pics, some code samples for integration.. ja?

@matuzalem @stefano