Guides

I recently switched from TrueNAS Core to TrueNAS Scale after reading about ix-System’s stance on FreeBSD development. As much as I love FreeBSD, I really just wanted a turnkey solution for my NAS needs at home and honestly I was getting a little sick of keeping custom jails for different applications I need. Their ‘plugin’ system was beginning to become stale/unmaintained and more reliant on community repos, which in most cases I WOULD LOVE but I evenetually was just making them custom through jails and ehhhh I don’t have time to keep up with that....

A quick guide/howtos to get SSL through Let’s Encrypt/certbot up and running and how to config for different HTTP servers. Create Cert bundle certbot certonly --webroot -w {your root path} -d {your www domain} -d {your non-www domain} Attach to HTTP servers Nginx Add to SSL base config into site config (taken from github) listen 443 ssl; ssl_session_cache shared:le_nginx_SSL:10m; ssl_session_timeout 1440m; ssl_session_tickets off; ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3; ssl_prefer_server_ciphers off; ssl_ciphers "ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384"; Add your generated certs from certbot: ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/{your domain}/fullchain....

A quick guide/howtos to get lighttpd up and running with SSL/vhosts so its easy to copy paste from one place. On SSL Enable mod_openssl in modules.conf You need to set a global SSL cert in lighttpd if multiple vhosts, and THEN you can override them per vhost in each vhost conf file. certbot doesnt have a module for lighttpd, but it is easy to just config yourself following this. Use the following command to create a Let’s Encrypt certificate....

Recently I started to play with repmgr. This was mostly so I could feel better at how Postgresql handles replication, but more so I wanted a way to have an easy failover/switch to primary system. Repmgr can do all this (and more!) very easily and quite painlessly, even with servers with existing data. The docs aren’t perfect, so here are my notes for when I tested this myself. https://repmgr.org/docs/current/getting-started.html Jank I had to deal with not clear in docs Had to put entries in pg_hba....

Upgrading a Postgreql database to the next major version can seem daunting, and the upgrade docs don’t do a very good job of explaining what the actual steps/considerations to make very well. (see links below) SO! I decided to write my own tests/docs on a successful upgrade process going from 12->14, and hopefully this helps someone else wrap their head around this process. What I wanted to test Upgrading a large DB from Postgres 12 to 14 How easily can standbys be upgraded after the primary Do tablespaces in other directories also get upgraded just as easily List any noteable jank I used 2 blank Ubuntu 20 VMs and installed both Postgresql 12 and 14 from the official repos....

Postgresql can be daunting and confusing. It’s a FANTASTIC tool to store your data, but can require a lot of heavy lifting in sysops/management that they don’t necessarily provide out of the box. BUT WHO CAN BLAME THEM, it’s an open source RDBMS with a focus on being a bit modular and open, and letting the users/developer decide what they want to get out of it. That said, it’s still daunting and confusing, and it doesn’t help that for whatever reason Google’s search results on their official documentation still points to Postgresql 9 (the current version is 14 btw)....

Just wanted to list the apps I use the most after I’m trying to take my privacy/my own data more seriously. I took the plunge to get off Google and stopped using Google Chrome earlier this year, and when I had to replace my beloved Pixel 2 XL, I got a Pixel 5 and used it as an opportunity to start fresh with CalyxOS Day 1 and haven’t looked back....

I would say that UT2004 (and UT99) are probably the some most diverse multiplayer games of all time, along with maybe Garry’s Mod, Minecraft, etc. The amount of content and variety just in the base game puts other games to shame. Tons of maps Easy to understand gameplay Fun team dynamic gamemodes Pretty smart bots for offline play Thousands of custom content It’s definitely in my Top 10 games of all time, and not just for nostalgia reasons....