I work at Microsoft, and with that, I get free Azure credits.
Considering where I work, I have no use for FreeBSD at work, only Windows. However, I spent seven years of my life prior to getting $DAYJOB using FreeBSD, going back to high school and basically built my personal setup on it. I haven’t bothered to switch my personal desktop or home server to Windows (yet*), so I’ll create a FreeBSD VM in Azure and try to update it.
[Read More]
Use dummynet in a VM? High latency? Set kern.hz to 1000
As a hobby, I play with software routers in virtual machines (always FreeBSD). One recent project of mine was to emulate DSL bandwidth and latency in a VM, from varying bandwidths of 1.5 Mbps (ADSL) to 50 Mbps (VDSL2).
By default, when using FreeBSD on a hypervisor, the kern.hz tunable is set to 100. This is to prevent additional CPU use from idling.
But dummynet recommends kern.hz=1000 which is also the default on physical hardware.
[Read More]
Using Office 365 Mail on Android With 2FA Without Outlook or InTune
I’m a recent Microsoft hire. That being said, it’s obvious that they’re using Office 365’s Hosted Exchange for their email, which is a departure from G Suite at NYU and CacheCash, and my personal FreeBSD/Postfix/Dovecot setup.
Like many big companies, Microsoft requires 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) for logging in to company resources. Well, okay, I done this before. But then, to use corporate email “officially”, I have to use not only Outlook, but also the InTune App, which “manages” my device.
[Read More]
A Simple IPFW In-Kernel NAT Setup on FreeBSD
After graduating college, I am moving from Brooklyn, NY to Redmond, WA (guess where I got a job). I always wanted to re-do my OPNsense firewall (currently a HP T730) with stock FreeBSD and IPFW’s in-kernel NAT.
Why IPFW? Benchmarks have shown IPFW to be faster which is especially good for my Tor relay, and because I can! However, one downside of IPFW is less documentation vs PF, even less without natd (which we’re not using), and this took me time to figure this out.
[Read More]
OPNsense/pfSense on the HP T730: Use Broadcom NICs, not Intel
I recently picked up an HP T730 as my OPNsense firewall, mainly to repurpose my previous HP ProDesk as a desktop. With that, I also initially tried an Intel NIC primarily because the de-facto NIC choice for OPNsense/pfSense is in fact Intel. To my surprise, the T730 froze with the Intel-based NICs I tried, both igb and em based cards.
Many people have reported on pfSense’s subreddit that certain Intel-based NICs actually do freeze on the T730.
[Read More]
Installing GENI Tools/Omni on FreeBSD
I have been asked to use GENI to test some software I have written at CacheCash/NYU. To communicate with GENI, you usually use a tool called Omni.
FreeBSD has been my choice of desktop operating system since 2012, and since I am using my personal machine, my work is being done on FreeBSD.
However, Omni only supports Python 2 while FreeBSD’s default version of Python is Python 3. Not that a default of Python 3 is a bad thing (I think it’s a blessing), but some additional steps are needed to install run Omni in this case.
[Read More]
Fixing the "Segmentation Fault" error when installing OPNsense on the HP T620 Plus
I have gotten a HP T620 Plus as a firewall box, replacing a Chinese “Mini PC” which barely handles my 300/300 Verizon FiOS. The T620 Plus is a very popular choice in the pfSense world, however I wanted to go with OPNsense.
One issue with the T620 Plus with OPNsense is that when you attempt to install, you get a segmentation fault in the installer. From forum posts, many other people have had this issue with HP and non-HP hardware.
[Read More]
FreeBSD (or Linux) doesn't boot on a HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen10 when using "Smart Array SW RAID Support" in UEFI mode
Note: I am using FreeBSD as the operating system in the article, but the information should be generic to Linux or any non-Microsoft operating system. This should also apply to most other current HPE ProLiant servers (as of 2019) other than the MicroServer (UPDATE: Don’t own one, but this article should apply to the new MicroServer Gen10 Plus as well).
I recently got a Xeon 4108 HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen10 to replace my MicroServer as a home server along with two 1TB hard drives to run in ZFS RAID.
[Read More]
Automatic Switchover between Headphones and Speakers on FreeBSD with device.hints
If you’re like me and run FreeBSD on a laptop (mine is was a HP EliteBook x360 1030 G2 before I broke it in a bothed “repair” job), one issue you may encounter is the fact that switching between speakers and headphones isn’t automatic. This isn’t a HP-specific problem as I also know this impacts Dell laptops, and probably impacts other laptop brands as well.
However, not all hope is lost.
[Read More]