Equinix is shutting down its bare metal service, D-Link advises people to dump old vulnerable routers, Google makes changes to how it ranks some affiliate-driven “reviews”, and data caps seem to be sticking around. Plus mixing different brands and types of disks, using other partitions on a ZFS drive, and scaling a fleet of FreeBSD hosts with jails…

Windows server unexpectedly upgrades major versions, Microsoft reinvents the idea of a thin client, restricting a friend’s access to just their backups, and the importance of warranties when buying hardware. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes DKMS vs kmod: The Essential Guide for ZFS on Linux News …

Jim and Allan discover modern charging tech and marvel at what’s possible in the USB-C era, more on IPv6 firewalls, using ZFS like Git, and running your own authoritative DNS server. Automox Check out the brand new Autonomous IT podcast. Listen in as a variety of experts in the IT Operations space discuss the latest Patch Tuesday releases, mitigati…

How using a copy-on-write filesystem like ZFS can get systems back online within seconds after ransomeware encrypts all your data, and even warn you more quickly that it’s happening. Plus Jim and Allan’s advice on getting a job as a sysadmin. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Klara: 5 Reasons Why …

It’s Halloween so Jim and Allan share horrific and spooky stories from their sysadmin careers. Plus picking a UPS for a homelab. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Klara: NAS: Maintenance Best Practices See our contact page for ways to get in touch.Av The Late Night Linux Family

SSL certificates are likely going to last less time, the latest Windows 11 update leaves a huge chunk of data behind and doesn’t play nicely with some SSDs, picking a modern dhcp server on a homebrew router, and storing encrypted backups on a friend’s NAS with ZFS. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometime…

The difference between monitoring and metrics analysis, the security pros and cons of cloud vs on-prem, why Jim and Allan don’t use Unraid, and cloud storage and email for a small company. Feedback Netdata Nagios ZFS and Unraid Free consulting We were asked about cloud storage and email for a small company. Automox Check out the brand new Autonomou…

NIST has finally proposed some sensible password standards, why server CPUs with high core counts make sense in a lot of deployments, the .io TLD is probably sticking around, and the best options for a Linux-based router. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Klara Halloween Webinar: ZFS Horror Storie…

Why cold storage is never as good as keeping your data warm and regularly tested, how the American air traffic control system became so outdated, and isolating your devices from a roommate’s shenanigans. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Music industry’s 1990s hard drives, like all …

A proposed solution to the WHOIS TLS verification problem gets a surprising amount of pushback. Plus isolating IoT devices, our thoughts on Ubiquiti gear, setting up WiFi in a new house, remote access with WireGuard, and our mini PC recommendations. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News Google cal…

The Malaysian government’s misguided plan to control its citizens’ DNS, the wrong way to deploy underwater servers, a philosophical question about how long a person’s photos will exist, and how we manage our SSH keys. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Malaysia’s plan to block overse…

A surprising way to exploit the WHOIS system, Microsoft will force old versions of Windows 11 to update, and the simple way to set up TP-Link Omada gear. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News Rogue WHOIS server gives researcher superpowers no one should ever have Windows 11 users still living in t…

Another example of the downsides of abstraction, whether AI can ever be truly “open source”, and the security benefits and drawbacks of different types of VPN. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Hackers infect ISPs with malware that steals customers’ credentials Debate over “open sou…

AMD will patch some old Ryzens against SinkClose now, but their benchmarking methods for newer CPUs didn’t live up to everyday reality. Plus Bcachefs devs annoy Linus Torvalds, the US government sues a college over compliance issues, and Jim disappoints a patron. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes N…

Insecure SSH implementations and a weak key that let a researcher control 200 MW of electrical capacity reignites the debate about versioned protocols vs pluggable protocols, follow-up on sharing files from your LAN with people on the Internet, and the pros and cons of encrypted backups. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with e…

Forcing Windows to undo updates and a separate IPv6 vulnerability, hardware bugs in AMD and Intel CPUs, and using Samba on Linux with Active Directory. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News Your victim’s Windows PC fully patched? Just force undo its updates and exploit away CVE-2024-38063 – Securi…

Secure boot is compromised on hundreds of devices, Amazon’s desperate attempt to make money from Alexa, and how to decide which open source software on GitHub to trust. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Secure Boot is completely broken on 200+ models from 5 big device makers old and…

How and why the recent huge Windows outage was caused by a bad CrowdStrike update and how it could have been avoided, a hilariously dumb ESXi vulnerability, and using SAS drives with a PCIe card. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News A closer look at what caused the CrowdStrike Windows crashes Ran…

How a Bitcoin mine made life in a Texas town absolutely miserable, why paying for extended support for end of life Windows versions is just doubling down on technical debt, and the best way to manage router redundancy. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Inside the ‘Nightmare’ Health …

A widely-used login system is still using MD5 which is bad news, miscreants took over some domains when they moved from Google to Squarespace, Linksys’ sloppy app isn’t a huge problem but is a bad sign, and why backing up an Android phone in one go is pretty much impossible without root. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with e…

We didn’t get to all of your questions for our Episode 200 free consulting special so here is another full episode of your questions and our answers. Our thoughts on a new UK smart devices law, backing up 30TB off-site, how to learn ZFS, SMB vs other ways to share files, and backing up secrets. Smart devices: new law helps citizens to choose secure…

Why we didn’t mention pocket fluff when we talked about USB-C charging issues, Microsoft abandons its promising underwater data center experiment and didn’t monitor it’s SSL certs, why you should be careful which WordPress plugins and themes you install,an Australian ISP’s tech debt comes due, and remoting into desktop Linux. Plug Support us on pat…

Vulnerabilities in Asus hardware make us think there should be some regulations about what can be sold as a router, a VPN feature that we hadn’t heard of is removed from Windows, and why we don’t believe that Microsoft will ever take security as seriously as they claim. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes some…

It’s our episode 200 free consulting special. Jim and Allan answer your questions about hard drive availability, USB-C robustness, ZFS performance on a VPS, cold storage with a 2.5″ form factor, how we gained our level of knowledge, disk enclosure issues, and monitoring Windows servers. Tailscale Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss…

How to prepare for your loved ones to have the access they need if the worst unexpectedly happens, Joe’s weird issues with wireless access points, and dealing with email accounts that shouldn’t exist. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion After you die, your Steam games will be stuck in…

Microsoft is tightening up SMB security in Windows which might break access to your old NAS, a Cogent root-server mysteriously goes out of sync without them spotting it, and protecting hard drives from electromagnetic pulses. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News Installing Windows 11 24H2 might m…

Linux kernel developers were infected with malware for 2 years, another nail in the coffin of proper federated email as Exchange Server moves to a subscription model, followup on zfsbootmenu and IPv6, and learning unfamiliar topics. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Linux maintainer…

Microsoft’s new Copilot+ feature will record everything you are doing on your computer for some reason, but it will only work on new Arm hardware for now. Plus Apple’s weird iOS bug that restored deleted files and photos, and sharing files over the Internet from a NAS on your LAN. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early e…

Why Windows 10 might be gaining users at Windows 11’s expense, an old DHCP option is a potential risk for VPN users, we should probably say “renting” rather than “buying”domains, and avoiding tracking when using IPv6. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Jim was on Late Night Linux again News Has Win…

Mastodon’s link previews are causing downtime for web servers without properly configured caching, locking down DNS inside Windows networks, why using write-once backup media is a bad idea, and increasing the performance of a Microsoft SQL Server with SSDs and ZFS. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometime…

How a smart TV broke a Windows machine on the same network by pretending to be hundreds of different TVs, Jim’s alarming theory about AI malware, and encrypting offsite backups. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Is your PC having trouble? Your smart TV might be to blame Free Consult…

ZFS on root is back in the Ubuntu installer but there’s a better way to do it, next-generation hard drives are proving to be reliable but prices are going up thanks to storage-hungry AI, why getting started with ZFS is really easy, and the best filesystem for a single SSD (take a guess). Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with …

Why updating iPhones in their sealed boxes might have some downsides, Amazon’s “AI” turned out to just be people, LLMs hallucinating imaginary dependencies is potentially a security risk, Aruba backs up its government data to the Internet Archive, and disk queue schedulers in Linux. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early …

A backdoor has been found in xz-utils, OpenZFS improves ZVOL performance on Linux, Twitter devs fail at regex, and adding SATA ports to a home NAS. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Hybrid Cloud Show is a new show that’s part of the Late Night Linux Family! News backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma lead…

Glassdoor seemingly doesn’t understand its raison d’etre, Telegram wants to cheap out on sending verification codes, law enforcement makes YouTube give them details of everyone who watched certain videos, and tuning a low end VPS to host a blog. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Use…

The FreeBSD version of TrueNAS is going away, a major Apple antitrust case begins, encrypted LLM chat responses are relatively easy to read, and scaling a fleet of FreeBSD hosts with jails. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News TrueNAS CORE 13 is the end of the FreeBSD version zVault Apple’s antit…

Prison officials took away inmate student laptops for no good reason, Warner Bros. ruined gamers’ experiences, Google’s terrible office WiFi, and managing gold images. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion An engineer bought a prison laptop on eBay. Then 1,200 incarcerated students lost…

Roku stops its users watching TV until they accept a new ToS, the line between journalism and computer fraud and abuse, and when using jumbo frames on a network makes sense. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News Roku disables players and TVs with attempt to coerce arbitration agreement Over 15,000…

The boss of Nvidia says kids don’t need to code because they can just use AI, companies sell their users’ data to train models, and why 2.5Gbps networking probably isn’t worth bothering with. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Jensen Huang says kids shouldn’t learn to code — they sho…

More cameras leak footage, Avast is fined for selling user data, a vending machine quietly scans students’ faces, using a small NVMe drive with ZFS, and taking snapshots of VMs. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News “So violated”: Wyze cameras leak footage to strangers for 2nd time in 5 months Ava…

Why it’s not a great idea to install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, quantum computing hype has been replaced by AI, toothbrushes can’t be part of a botnet, Google has killed cached search results, and testing your backups. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Windows 11 24H2 goes…

Nginx is forked, Broadcom/VMware kills ESXi, dedup is finally fixed in ZFS, using multiple network interfaces on a NAS, and more. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News announcing freenginx.org Broadcom-owned VMware kills the free version of ESXi virtualization software OpenZFS Native Encryption U…

Trying to report a security issue lands a consultant in trouble, a new take on the drop shipping scam, setting up your first NAS – including the benefits of RAID, picking a distro, choosing the right disk size, and more. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion IT consultant in Germany fin…

Microsoft’s rudimentary error that allowed an attacker access to its executives’ emails, Pixel phones have another serious storage bug, hidden malware payload found at Ars Technica, and when to upgrade your hardware for Windows 11. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes BSDCan 2024 – Call for papers Ne…

Y2K was a pretty serious problem and 2038 is coming soon, work on Arm servers is improving the experience on the desktop, and what to do with an old unsupported Synology NAS. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes OpenZFS Best Practices: Part 2: File Serving and SANs News/discussion The ‘nothing-happen…

Hard drives are pretty much an enterprise product now, GitHub’s malware problem, and spreading services across different machines and VMs to keep downtime to a minimum. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes OpenZFS Storage Best Practices and Use Cases Part 1: Snapshots and Backups News Hard disk drive…

Why the problems with open source licenses aren’t quite as easy to fix as some people think, the reasons you should never pay ransomware gangs, and running a Nagios distro on a Raspberry Pi. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion What comes after open source? Bruce Perens is working on i…

What does “incognito mode” in Chrome actually mean and whether documenting browser standards in code is a good idea, the serious implications of a fun story about messing with a ChatGPT instance, and maximizing performance when using mixed disk types on ZFS mirrored vdevs. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes s…

Twitch pulls out of Korea thanks to the opposite of Net Neutrality, it’s not clear to what extent smart devices are listening to your conversations, more on water usage in data centers, and our thoughts on mandatory access controls. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News Twitch to shut down in Kore…

What you need to know about the recent SSH vulnerability, yet another privacy issue with cloud-connected security cameras, why it’s difficult to get to the bottom of an obscure ZFS encryption bug, and more. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News SSH protects the world’s most sensitive networks. It …