oO.o's Neverending Tech Blog

I had stumbled upon FRR in the past but had forgotten about it. Thanks for that!

Wanna write something up on it? I did but i barely touched on it

1 Like

Wonā€™t be able to soon, but youā€™re right, I should.

2 Likes

The more obscure parts of DNS need some light shed on them by those of us who explore that deep dark abyss lol

4 Likes

Inb4 you join me in the void one day
Evt_psionics

:wink:

3 Likes

Whenever I have time to mess with Linux Desktop again, Iā€™ll probably drop Arch for Void unless I hit a blocker (donā€™t expect to though).

1 Like

I hit some blockers along the way. Xorg is a bitch but got through it

Wait, why are you using Xorg? The only reason I can think of is if youā€™d need vnc / freerdp.

Xfce does not support wayland and I have no intent of switching DEs

Also matlab and cadence do not support wayland yet

I hate to say it, but itā€™s been quite a while since Iā€™ve run into something that I couldnā€™t do pretty easily on my macbook. Iā€™ve had a Kaby Lake Thinkpad on my desk for months with the idea of using it as a Linux desktop but in that time, I have not needed it once.

The only Linux-specific workloads Iā€™ve needed to run on desktop this year were all AI-related and I ran them in WSL2 on my gaming pcā€¦ probably could have run them natively in Windows if I knew how to use Windows.

2 Likes

I mean way I see it BSD is as good as Linux in my book and osx is still bsd

1 Like

Also homebrew is somewhere between a distoā€™s repository and the AUR. It has good coverage, at least for the things I need.

I run into occasional snags, for instance, they dropped FAT16 support (or as far as I can tell they did), so thereā€™s an odd situation every now and then when I hit a wall. Pretty rare though.

1 Like

Any opinions on how to abbreviate ā€œclusterā€ or if it even needs abbreviation?

Leaning towards ā€œclustā€

1 Like

CL

Lol

2 Likes

Nix package manager can run on macs too, in case you need linux software on mac.

Clu or clstr, because cl can sometimes mean client.

Not evangelizing here, use whatever you are familiar with, but void is also a good server distro and it has a lot of server packages (although some are unmaintained, at some point zabbix was still at version 4 something, when the latest was v6, now it is at 6.2.2 in the repos). The void devs have proven void to be a really rock solid distro for servers with their infrastructure running all on void and I had grafana+prometheus (from the repos!) running on Void for a while and hasnā€™t even flinched back when I was using it.

One very good server tool, that I think all servers should have is xcheckrestart (I think itā€™s part of xtools on void). It checks what programs have been updated and what programs require a restart to apply the updates. Here is an output from it from my desktop.

$ doas xcheckrestart
12696 /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird (thunderbird)
12951 /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird (thunderbird)
13061 /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird (thunderbird)
1481 /usr/bin/rpc.statd (deleted) (nfs-utils)
16723 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
22243 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
29936 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
29998 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
6036 /usr/bin/pipewire (pipewire)
6040 /usr/bin/wireplumber (wireplumber)
6936 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
7218 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
7246 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
7283 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
7288 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
7306 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
7317 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
7324 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
7342 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
7571 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
8077 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
8121 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
8123 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
9761 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)
9819 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox (firefox)

I can just close and reopen programs like FF and TB, kill and restart the dbus-run-session pipewire process and for rpc, just restart the runit service rpcbind. How can other systems not have something like this? Sure, FF generally complains when it needs to be closed to be used again and things like Gitlab will just refuse to work until you reload the service with gitlab-ctl after every update, but having a built-in OS tool that tells you what needs restarting is a must-have. Iā€™d be grateful to get to know other tools on other systems (I want to run Debian for OpenNebula, I think nixOS just restarts everything with a nixos-rebuild switch without asking, but I never actually checked, I should look into that).

xcheckrestart has allowed me to skip reboots quite often, just restart a service and voila! But it wonā€™t show you when kernel updates are applied, you need to check for a new boot entry and uname to see if you need a reboot if you donā€™t check what things get updated when doing system updates.

What I also like about void, compared to arch is that old kernels donā€™t automatically get poofed out of the system. You have vkpurge to check for older kernels and do a cleanup whenever you feel your system is stable.

I also like how Void splits the kernel packages.

xbps-query -Rs linux
[*] linux-6.3_1                               Linux kernel meta package
[*] linux-base-2023.05.29_1                   Linux kernel base dependencies
[*] linux-headers-6.3_1                       Linux kernel headers meta package
[-] linux-lts-5.15_1                          Linux LTS (Long Term Support) kernel meta package
[-] linux-lts-headers-5.15_1                  Linux longterm support kernel headers meta package
[-] linux-mainline-6.5_1                      Linux latest mainline kernel meta package (for experts only)
[-] linux-mainline-headers-6.5_1              Linux latest mainline kernel headers meta package
[-] linux-tools-5.10.4_11                     Linux kernel tools meta-pkg
[-] linux-vt-setcolors-1.0.0_1                Utility tool to set the linux VT default color palette
[-] linux-wifi-hotspot-4.5.0_1                Feature-rich wifi hotspot creator
[-] linux4.14-4.14.295_2                      Linux kernel and modules (4.14 series)
[-] linux4.14-headers-4.14.295_2              Linux kernel and modules (4.14 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux4.19-4.19.294_1                      Linux kernel and modules (4.19 series)
[-] linux4.19-headers-4.19.294_1              Linux kernel and modules (4.19 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux4.4-4.4.261_1                        Linux kernel and modules (4.4 series)
[-] linux4.4-headers-4.4.261_1                Linux kernel and modules (4.4 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux4.9-4.9.330_1                        Linux kernel and modules (4.9 series)
[-] linux4.9-headers-4.9.330_1                Linux kernel and modules (4.9 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.10-5.10.194_1                      Linux kernel and modules (5.10 series)
[-] linux5.10-headers-5.10.194_1              Linux kernel and modules (5.10 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.11-5.11.22_1                       Linux kernel and modules (5.11 series)
[-] linux5.11-headers-5.11.22_1               Linux kernel and modules (5.11 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.12-5.12.19_1                       Linux kernel and modules (5.12 series)
[-] linux5.12-headers-5.12.19_1               Linux kernel and modules (5.12 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.13-5.13.19_1                       Linux kernel and modules (5.13 series)
[-] linux5.13-headers-5.13.19_1               Linux kernel and modules (5.13 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.14-5.14.21_1                       Linux kernel and modules (5.14 series)
[-] linux5.14-headers-5.14.21_1               Linux kernel and modules (5.14 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.15-5.15.131_1                      Linux kernel and modules (5.15 series)
[-] linux5.15-headers-5.15.131_1              Linux kernel and modules (5.15 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.16-5.16.20_1                       Linux kernel and modules (5.16 series)
[-] linux5.16-headers-5.16.20_1               Linux kernel and modules (5.16 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.18-5.18.19_1                       Linux kernel and modules (5.18 series)
[-] linux5.18-headers-5.18.19_1               Linux kernel and modules (5.18 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.19-5.19.17_1                       Linux kernel and modules (5.19 series)
[-] linux5.19-headers-5.19.17_1               Linux kernel and modules (5.19 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.4-5.4.256_1                        Linux kernel and modules (5.4 series)
[-] linux5.4-headers-5.4.256_1                Linux kernel and modules (5.4 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.5-5.5.18_1                         Linux kernel and modules (5.5 series)
[-] linux5.5-headers-5.5.18_1                 Linux kernel and modules (5.5 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.6-5.6.19_1                         Linux kernel and modules (5.6 series)
[-] linux5.6-headers-5.6.19_1                 Linux kernel and modules (5.6 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.7-5.7.19_1                         Linux kernel and modules (5.7 series)
[-] linux5.7-headers-5.7.19_1                 Linux kernel and modules (5.7 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.8-5.8.18_1                         Linux kernel and modules (5.8 series)
[-] linux5.8-headers-5.8.18_1                 Linux kernel and modules (5.8 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux5.9-5.9.16_1                         Linux kernel and modules (5.9 series)
[-] linux5.9-headers-5.9.16_1                 Linux kernel and modules (5.9 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux6.0-6.0.19_1                         Linux kernel and modules (6.0 series)
[-] linux6.0-headers-6.0.19_1                 Linux kernel and modules (6.0 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux6.1-6.1.51_1                         Linux kernel and modules (6.1 series)
[-] linux6.1-headers-6.1.51_1                 Linux kernel and modules (6.1 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux6.2-6.2.15_1                         Linux kernel and modules (6.2 series)
[-] linux6.2-headers-6.2.15_1                 Linux kernel and modules (6.2 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[*] linux6.3-6.3.13_1                         Linux kernel and modules (6.3 series)
[*] linux6.3-headers-6.3.13_1                 Linux kernel and modules (6.3 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux6.4-6.4.16_1                         Linux kernel and modules (6.4 series)
[-] linux6.4-headers-6.4.16_1                 Linux kernel and modules (6.4 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
[-] linux6.5-6.5.3_1                          Linux kernel and modules (6.5 series)
[-] linux6.5-headers-6.5.3_1                  Linux kernel and modules (6.5 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules

You can install linux-lts, linux-mainline, or just linux (and linux-lts-headers / linux-mainline-headers / linux-headers if you need dkms, like zfs module) and your system will always be up to date with whatever comes next (although not the latest and greatest of all, the packages I would say are debian rock-solid stable level). Or if you know your hardware has issues with linux 6+, just install linux5.15 manually and remove other linux metapackage and the higher kernel versions. You have a lot of control over your system.

1 Like

Wow, so if you sign up for an account at fs.com, they log what items you look at, then scrape your website and send you a tailored marketing email.

If they offered a 10Gbase-T SONiC switch, Iā€™d actually be interested, but sadly, they do not.

3 Likes

I had to use one of those privacy policy generators and send it to their contact inbox to stop fs.com from sending those.

2 Likes

Funny, I was looking for a fs.com S3200-8MG4S. They also used to send us marketing emails, although a lot of time passed since the it account was created, so it was more like ā€œhey, we got this pretty cheap, wanna try it out?ā€

The mikrotik CRS310-8G+2S+IN seems similar (2 less sfp+ ports), but half the price.

Anyway, thatā€™s almost creepy levels of stalking. I remember when I was looking at TV online and then immediately get ads for TVs, I hated every second of that and installed an ad-blocker and clicker (ad nauseam).

1 Like

Iā€™m running gigabit and sfp+ Mikrotik kit now and itā€™s fine but looking ahead to upgrading that to 10Gbase-t and SFP28, I want to get some datacenter tier hardware, and of course open source, so that means SONiC. Sometime next year Iā€™ll begin actively looking for Dell S5248F-ON and S4148T-ON switches. Per @wendellā€™s advice, I think my switch needs are modest enough that I shouldnā€™t run into weirdness (VLAN, ACL, MLAG and RSTP should be pretty much it). As a person who generally hates switches, my approach is the have them do as little as possible.

2 Likes