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not so recent news

[2023-09-16] I benchmarked my graphic cards for video encoding speed and kept the results as my personal reference.

[2023-09-15]

New version of privatebinc.py, which is a simple Python client for PrivateBin, now allows you to specify a password, which the user has to enter in order to view the text and maybe the attached file. In addition, it fixes the bug where I forgot to base64 encode the attachment 🤦
How to use Apache Tomcat and TLS/SSL certificates in PEM or PKCS12 format.

[2023-09-13]

Updated initramfs for LVM runs fsck (just for ext2, ext3, and ext4) if you add dofsck to the kernel command line, and shows how to create an LVM snapshot of your root filesystem if you add dosnap to the kernel command line.
Corollary of yesterday's SQLite ramblings: The following command initialises the database and the counter table, but does not modify them if the event counter has already been used. Thus, you may execute these statements several times without corrupting any data:
```
$ sqlite3 /tmp/counter.sqlite "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS counter (id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY); INSERT INTO counter SELECT 0 WHERE (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM counter)=0;"
```

[2023-09-12] The other day I needed an event counter shared between scripts written in Python and Perl. These scripts process incoming files at a very low rate, about 10 per hour. Their filenames should be prefixed with an increasing and unique id. A text file containing the next id, protected by a file lock, is complicated, error-prone, and most likely non-portable. Same counts for a shared memory segment, plus this is lost at a reboot. A full blown SQL server seemed to be overkill. Thus, SQLite came to my mind. It has been part of Python since version 2.5, and is available, if not even installed, on many operating systems. The scripts are quite trivial. For Python:

#!/usr/bin/python

import sqlite3

con = sqlite3.connect("/tmp/counter.sqlite", isolation_level=None)
cur = con.cursor()
(next_id,) = cur.execute("UPDATE counter SET id=id+1 RETURNING id").fetchone()
con.close()
print(next_id)

Perl counterpart:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use warnings;
use DBI;

my $dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:SQLite:dbname=/tmp/counter.sqlite", "", "", {
  AutoCommit => 1, RaiseError => 1
});
my ($next_id) = $dbh->selectrow_array("UPDATE counter SET id=id+1 RETURNING id");
$dbh->disconnect();
print "$next_id\n";

Of course you have to initialise the database and the counter table upfront, e.g. by using the sqlite3 command line tool:

$ sqlite3 /tmp/counter.sqlite "CREATE TABLE counter (id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY); INSERT INTO counter VALUES (0);"

A bonus variant written in C:

/* Compile with:
 * cc -W -Wall -O3 -pipe -s -o counter counter.c -lsqlite3
 */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <err.h>
#include <sqlite3.h>

int main ()
{
  const char sql[] = "UPDATE counter SET id=id+1 RETURNING id";
  sqlite3 *db;
  sqlite3_stmt *stmt;
  int next_id;

  if (sqlite3_open("/tmp/counter.sqlite", &db) != SQLITE_OK)
    errx(1, "sqlite3_open: %s",
         db ? sqlite3_errmsg(db) : "Generic SQLite error");

  if (sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, sql, sizeof(sql), &stmt, NULL) != SQLITE_OK)
    errx(1, "sqlite3_prepare_v2: %s", sqlite3_errmsg(db));

  if (sqlite3_step(stmt) != SQLITE_ROW)
    errx(1, "sqlite3_step: %s", sqlite3_errmsg(db));

  next_id = sqlite3_column_int(stmt, 0);

  if (sqlite3_finalize(stmt) != SQLITE_OK)
    errx(1, "sqlite3_finalize: %s", sqlite3_errmsg(db));

  if (sqlite3_close_v2(db) != SQLITE_OK)
    errx(1, "sqlite3_close_v2: %s", sqlite3_errmsg(db));

  printf("%i\n", next_id);

  return 0;
}

[2023-09-09]

double.pl, which finds duplicate files, updated after more than 17 years. I remember this being one of the very first Perl scripts I wrote on Linux. Thus, it must be 22 or so years old. Anyhow, it has been tidied, does not need any external programs, and uses just standard Perl modules.
rrdquery.pl version 5 just comes with correct examples.
pgnumeric.c shows how to store values of type numeric in a PostgreSQL database using C datatypes.
rtgen.py generates blackhole routes suitable for stress testing the Bird Internet Routing Daemon and other network gear, e.g. your BGP routers.
spf.pl shows how to use Perl's Mail::SPF module.
bsdrss prints the state and RSS of a process on DragonFlyBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.
regexplode.pl shows what happens if you accept arbitrary regular expressions, while regexplode.py shows why you want to use RE2 or pyre2.

[2023-09-08]

HTML files and folder symbols
mce.py is just a Python CGI script to play around with TinyMCE.
argparser.py shows how to use Python's argparse module.
smtp.py shows how to send quoted-printable encoded emails containing UTF-8 characters in both the subject and the body using Python's smtplib and email.message modules.
s3.php shows how to use the AWS SDK for PHP with an S3 object storage.
Kernel-System-LinkObject.pm.diff is a patch for the LinkObject module of OTRS and Znuny. If have several thousand linked tickets and your system becomes sluggish, try this patch.
nswl@.service shows how to run multiple instances of the NetScaler web server logging client on a recent Linux distribution as it comes as service unit for systemd.

[2023-09-04] How to show git log entries up to a certain date:

$ git --no-pager log -1 --until "2023-06-22"
$ git --no-pager log -1 --until "last year"

You can then use the commit hash from the above outputs for further processing, e.g.:

$ git diff --stat <commit hash>

[2023-08-23] How to get the current date and time of Lisbon:

Python:

import datetime, zoneinfo
print(datetime.datetime.now().astimezone(zoneinfo.ZoneInfo("Europe/Lisbon")).isoformat())

Perl:

{
  local $ENV{TZ} = "Europe/Lisbon";
  print scalar localtime();
}

bash, zsh, sh:
```
TZ="Europe/Lisbon" date
```

(t)csh:

setenv TZ "Europe/Lisbon"
date
unsetenv TZ

/*
 * compile with:
 * cc -W -Wall -O3 -s -pipe -o dtlisbon dtlisbon.c
 */

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <err.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main ()
{
  char *oldtz, datetime[64];
  time_t now = time(NULL);

  oldtz = getenv("Europe/Lisbon");
  if (setenv("TZ", "Europe/Lisbon", 1))
    err(1, "setenv");

  strftime(datetime, sizeof(datetime), "%F %T %Z", localtime(&now));
  puts(datetime);

  if (oldtz && setenv("TZ", oldtz, 1))
    err(1, "setenv");

  return 0;
}

PostgreSQL:

SELECT now() at time zone 'Europe/Lisbon';

[2023-08-09] rrdquery.pl version 4 (obviously) comes with version numbering, an example section, and fixes two bugs, where a "IS NULL" predicate wasn't parsed correctly and an aggregate function was always expected.

[2023-08-03] dnskey2id.pl shows how to derive the key id for a given DNSSEC dnskey in Perl. Inspired by a Python snippet I found on https://lists.isc.org/pipermail/bind-users/2010-October/081724.html.

[2023-07-27] LogBlitz version 15 reduces the number and size of http cookies, and displays the number and size of the selected logfiles.

[2023-05-23] ampctrld version 2 lowers the number of addresses to listen on to a maximum of 16.

[2023-04-28]

New version of kvmlib comes with 5 new features:
- The cmd command, which connects you to the monitor of a running QEMU instance, now accepts additional parameters, which are passed to the monitor
- Previously, the detect-zeroes option for hard drives was set to unmap by default. As I encountered problems with virtual drives, regardless of the guest operating system, detect-zeroes is not set anymore
- Fixed the bug that prevented you from configuring up to 4 virtual cdrom drives
- You can close and eject any cdrom by specifing its drive number (0-3)
- Improved help
The CARP (Common Address Redundancy Protocol) of the upcoming FreeBSD 14 has two major changes:
1. By using the peer or peer6 parameter, carp uses unicast instead of multicast. This is helpful if your FreeBSD hosts run as virtual machines.
2. CARP creates no virtual network interface anymore. ifconfig carp0 create won't work. Instead, you assign it as an alias to the physical interface:
```
# ifconfig vtnet0 vhid 31 advskew 100 peer 192.168.0.29 pass foobar 192.168.0.31/24 alias
```
  Of course you have to load the carp module before: kldload carp. Then, ifconfig vtnet0 prints:
  
  To make this persistent after reboot, add it to /etc/rc.conf:
```
# sysrc kld_list+=carp
# sysrc ifconfig_vtnet0_alias0="vhid 31 advskew 100 peer 192.168.0.29 pass foobar 192.168.0.31/24"
```

[2023-04-25] New version of kvmlib allows you to use a different QEMU executable than qemu-system-x86_64, and exits with an error message if you use the cdrom command without a path to an ISO file.

[2023-04-23] If your recent Gentoo Linux box complains that /var/tmp already exists and is not a directory during system boot, i.e. maybe because it is a symlink to /tmp, then create a file named /etc/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf containing this configuration:

L /var/tmp - - - - /tmp

For further details, you'll have to read the man page of systemd-tmpfiles.

[2023-04-17] If you run a Cyrus IMAP server that suddenly stops exporting some or even all calendar events, you might consider reconstructing the respective mailboxes, e.g. on a FreeBSD server:

# su - cyrus
% sbin/reconstruct -nrGR user.username.#calendars
% sbin/reconstruct -rGR user.username.#calendars

[2023-03-29] grapheqd version 7 supports IPv6 addresses and can listen on multiple addresses at the same time.

[2023-03-28] As announced 18 days ago, ampctrld is a re-implementation of ampcontrol in plain C. It has two new features: It allows you to assign user-defined names to input sources, and can listen on multiple addresses, i.e. an IPv4 and an IPv6 address at the same time. Additionally, it saves system resources:

And:

[2023-03-27] How to get the base64 encoded SHA hash of an existing file, part two:

C, using the OpenSSL API: sha512.c

[2023-03-10] New version of ampcontrol handles initial connection errors, and makes use of the new Buffer API of Node.js.
I need to rewrite it again, though. This time in C, since memory consumption of Node.js is far too heavyweight for my taste:

[2023-02-25]

grapheqd version 6 fixes a typo which threw an error if compiling for ALSA, i.e. on Linux.
LogBlitz version 14 allows you to adjust the logout button, e.g. add a JavaScript onclick handler.

[2023-02-16] LogBlitz version 13 allows you to assign user roles based on additional environment settings.

[2023-02-15] LogBlitz version 12 introduces user roles.

[2023-01-28] LogBlitz version 11 saves selected filenames in a cookie, and uses different cookies for each user.

[2022-12-18] How to get the base64 encoded SHA hash of an existing file:

Python:

import hashlib, base64
print(base64.b64encode(hashlib.sha512(open("/etc/passwd", "rb").read()).digest()))

Perl:

use Digest::SHA;
my $b64_sha512 = Digest::SHA->new("sha512")->addfile("/etc/passwd", "b")->b64digest;
print($b64_sha512, "=" x ((4 - length($b64_sha512) % 4) % 4));

Shell:

$ openssl sha512 -binary /etc/passwd | openssl base64 -A

[2022-12-09] LogBlitz version 10 comes with a performance improvement if you don't search for regular expressions.

[2022-12-04] My new howto Apache and form based login makes use of mod_auth_form.

[2022-11-01]

New version of check_tvh.py allows you to pass options on the command line, power cycles the USB capture device, and drops support for Python 2
New version of s3file.py explains the meaning of file flags in the long format output of LS-L and such (see --examples), and adjust shown filenames to the left
Updated my howto Small Python container for Docker to run as unprivileged user, and to display the correct local time and date.

[2022-10-27] How to create a Small Python container for Docker

[2022-10-19]

New version of privatebinc.py, which is a simple Python client for PrivateBin, now supports attachments
cURL and self signed certificates on FreeBSD 13.

[2022-10-18] New version of s3file.py fixes a highly dangerous error in the examples output (DELETE where GET was meant), and has examples for dealing with metadata.

[2022-10-15] New version of check_tvh.py reloads the cuse kernel module as well.

[2022-10-12] My howto pgAdmin 4 on Gentoo now covers the latest version of pgAdmin 4, and explains how to handle updates of Python.

[2022-09-14] LogBlitz version 9 displays its execution time, and adds the name of the current user to the title of the logout link.

[2022-08-30] If you upgrade to LogBlitz version 8, you might configure a logout url.

[2022-08-25]

[2022-07-31] New howto: Automatic version numbers with Git.

[2022-07-15] Tvhead2TVB version 1.0.1.0 handles activation through a program's info popup correctly, and uses JGoodies as UI library, which comes bundled with TV-Browser.

[2022-06-25] grapheqd version 5 has 3 new features:

It can read PCM data from an external program, e.g. ffmpeg
It reopens the sound device in case of a failure
The RC script for FreeBSD supports profiles, i.e. you can configure multiple instances of grapheqd on the same host.

[2022-06-18] New howto: pgAdmin 4 on Gentoo.

[2022-06-13] Older versions of the ConvertFrom-SecureString cmdlet did not have an -AsPlainText parameter. When you have to use PowerShell prior to version 7, you might use ConvertSecureStringToPlainText.ps1.

[2022-06-06] Gave both s3file.py and nextcron.py their own pages:

[2022-06-05] New version of s3file.py has command shortcuts for:

creating a bucket
creating a bucket with object locking
determining if a bucket has object locking enabled
setting object locking in compliance or governance mode
enabling object versioning
determining if a bucket has object versioning enabled
disabling object versioning
determining if a bucket has access logging enabled
listing all objects in a bucket, optionally with all object versions, human readable filesizes, and/or numeric user ids.

[2022-06-02] LogBlitz version 7 supports pyre2, highlights non-matching lines in case of an inverted search, and contains several optimizations.

[2022-05-26] LogBlitz version 6 allows you to display lines before and after each matching line, and highlights every found query string.

[2022-05-14] LogBlitz version 5 allows you to display line numbers and to restrict users to certain logfiles and subdirectories, stores your current settings in a cookie, and comes with a performance improvement.

[2022-04-28] graypold version 10 uses a new version numbering, and fixes a bug which was introduced in version 0.8 and prevented you from bypassing graylisting for certain senders and/or recipients.

[2022-04-19]

New version of nextcron.py contains a small optimization and can report its version number.
LogBlitz version 4 allows you to
- select logfiles and directories, which names start with a dot,
- show unreadable logfiles,
- and specify the logfile's charset in the webinterface.

[2022-03-16] graypold 0.9 does not fail the SPF check anymore if the sender's address is empty

[2022-02-19] New version of s3file.py comes with builtin help and examples, allows you to pass and display HTTP headers, may read credentials from a config file, and supports Python 3 only

[2022-01-16] How to combine Apache and Fail2ban in order to show a nice "access denied" page without blocking the client's ip address

[2021-11-21] New version of update_znuny.sh now even updates Znuny on FreeBSD across major releases, e.g. 6.0.38 -> 6.1.2

[2021-10-30]

New version of nextcron.py allows you to specify start date and time.
New version of update_znuny.sh does not proceed if the currently installed and the new version of OTRS/Znuny are the same.

[2021-10-28] update_znuny.sh updates Znuny on FreeBSD.

[2021-10-25] New version of nextcron.py now handles environment variables like HOME, MAILTO, etc., and dcron's @noauto correctly.

[2021-10-23]

LogBlitz version 3 does not need an external decompressor in order to read xz compressed files anymore.
nextcron.py reads one or more crontabs from stdin and displays upcoming cronjobs which are about to run next.

[2021-10-14] graypold 0.8 now supports SPF

[2021-10-10]

imapnotes now allows you to delete notes
My howto Upgrading PostgreSQL with pg_upgrade on FreeBSD now covers PostgreSQL 14 on FreeBSD 13.

[2021-06-13] LogBlitz version 2 allows you to display log entries in reverse order, i.e. latest ones first.

[2021-06-07] FastCGI with nginx and fcgiwrap on FreeBSD

[2021-06-06] LogBlitz is a CGI script to search through your (sys-)log files.

[2021-05-24] New version of rrdquery.pl fixes a bug which accepted aggregate functions written in lowercase only.

[2021-05-16] New version of kvmlib natively, i.e. without VM_EXTRA, supports:

UEFI boot
PCI passthrough
USB keyboard and mouse
ISCSI disks

[2021-05-09] New version of zfs-snap is compatible with (Open)ZFS on FreeBSD 13.

[2021-03-21] New version of kvmlib comes with 3 new features:

qemu will use the ALSA sound device given by VM_ALSADEV
If VM_LAUNCH_STOP is set to 1, then a graphical dialog is displayed where you can select by a simple mouse click to shutdown the VM
Commandline options startnovnc, startstop, and startnovncstop will override VM_LAUNCH_VNC, VM_LAUNCH_STOP, and both VM_LAUNCH_VNC and VM_LAUNCH_STOP, respectively.

[2021-01-23] If you compile ftp6proxy version 4 with support for netgraph along with ipfw, then it makes use of Capsicum.

[2021-01-17] You can now deploy ftp6proxy version 3 in a pure ipfw environment without pf. By default, it chroot's itself to /var/empty, has been prepared to support Capsicum, and allows you to specify a syslog facility.

[2021-01-12] New version of check_tvh.py supports the commandline option -f or --force in order to restart webcamd and Tvheadend forcefully.

[2020-12-31] New version of zfs-snap accepts a frequency per filesystem or volume, which optionally indicates the time that must have passed since the last snapshot was taken.

[2020-12-24]

New version of kvmlib fixes a bug which prevented you from changing cdrom media
rrdquery.pl now supports trivial aggregates (avg(), count(), min(), max(), and sum()).

[2020-12-05] Updated howto Upgrading PostgreSQL with pg_upgrade on FreeBSD now mounts devfs inside the jail.

[2020-08-15] grapheqd version 4 fixes a bug that became apparent on a MIPS box running Linux (thread stack size too small).

[2020-07-22] grapheqd version 3 comes with support for OSS on FreeBSD, fading to immitate afterglow, a client/server mode, and several bux fixes.

[2020-07-19] grapheqd version 2 comes with slowly decreasing peak values, improved error handling, and revised logging.

[2020-07-16] grapheqd displays the frequency spectrum of an audio signal via its HTML5 webpage or ASCII interface.

[2020-07-10] rrdquery.pl retrieves one datasource from an RRD (round robin database) and optionally filters its values.

[2020-07-07] Building a digital video recorder with FreeBSD.

[2020-04-05] New version of kvmlib does not connect all network interfaces to one virtual hub anymore, but makes use of the netdev and device commandline options of qemu in order to connect each virtual network card only to its assigned tap interface on the host.

[2020-03-15] privatebinc.py is a simple Python client for PrivateBin.

[2020-02-23]

ldif2xml.pl converts LDIF to XML

From the (s)hell one-liners department: Print the names of all revoked certificates (invoke from inside the pki directory of an Easy-RSA CA):

openssl crl -noout -text -in crl.pem | grep "Serial Number: " | while read L; do serial="${L#*: }"; openssl x509 -subject -nocert -in "certs_by_serial/$serial.pem" 2>/dev/null || openssl x509 -subject -nocert -in "revoked/certs_by_serial/$serial.crt" 2>/dev/null || echo "ERROR: Cannot find certificate $serial" >&2; done

[2019-11-24] New version of check_tvh.py supports Python 3 and reports the size of memory allocated by device drivers

[2019-11-23] New version of kvmlib supports inserting and ejecting of cdrom images via commandline

[2019-11-09] Resizing an UFS2 filesystem on FreeBSD 4.x

[2019-10-05] Updated my howto Upgrading PostgreSQL with pg_upgrade on FreeBSD which now uses /etc/libmap.conf instead of LD_LIBRARY_PATH

[2019-08-03] Negotiate authentication with Python and PycURL on FreeBSD

[2019-07-01]

ftp6proxy 0.2 is a maintenance release and fixes a bug which could lead to stale temporary firewall rules
libalias-passive-ftp.patch adds support for outgoing passive FTP to FreeBSD's libalias

[2019-06-23] Updated jupdate.sh, which is a script to update jails on FreeBSD

[2019-06-10]

New version of kvmlib allows you to specify a non-default sound hardware, e.g. hda instead of ac97; added an example for graphics card passthru as well
How to Virtualize Windows 10, convert to UEFI, and install virtio drivers on KVM/qemu
Try adding nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=5500 to your kernel commandline if you are experiencing problems like nvme nvme0: I/O 506 QID 5 timeout, aborting

[2019-05-25] Uploaded a script in order to update jails on FreeBSD

[2019-04-15] Pidgin and the new ICQ WIM protocol on Gentoo

[2019-04-14] Transparent proxy with nginx and pf on FreeBSD

[2019-03-26] new version of ampcontrol avoids stalling after NET/USB commands and accepts multiple consecutive volume changes

[2019-03-25] OAuth IDP with NetScaler

[2019-03-19]

pomavold 0.8 comes with updated udev rules
new version of ampcontrol has controls for network / Internet radio!

[2019-03-18]

Uploaded two scripts for updating OTRS and installing required Perl modules
Jails on FreeBSD
New version of kvmlib fixes a bug that occured when the fileformat was not specified

[2019-01-06] How to netboot and install NetBSD/sparc updated to NetBSD 8.0. You still have to use the second stage bootloader from NetBSD 3.1.1, though.

[2018-12-26] As recent versions of MacOS support Time Machine backups on an SMB share, I updated my howto Building a FreeBSD backup server

[2018-12-25] I've been using Linux almost exclusively on the desktop at home for 15 years now. Time to switch to a graphical login screen with xdm on Linux

[2018-12-24] kvmlib now supports absolute filenames for disk images, e.g. /dev/sdb

[2018-12-09] UTF8 filenames with Java

[2018-11-25] kvmlib now supports different image formats, e.g. qcow2

[2018-11-04] ipc.py demonstrates how to use POSIX / BSD IPC with Python

[2018-10-29] Updated guaca as guacamole on FreeBSD now expects the client and server configuration in different directories

[2018-10-28] Updated both my howtos on Upgrading PostgreSQL with pg_upgrade on FreeBSD and PostgreSQL with replication slots on FreeBSD as PostgreSQL 11 was released a couple of days ago

[2018-10-27]

Added software requirements to mysql2oracle.pl
Added an example configuration for Apache to my dehydrated on FreeBSD howto

[2018-10-14] mysql2oracle.pl copies an OTRS database from MySQL to Oracle

[2018-09-29] New version of Captcha.pm uses Digest::SHA instead of Digest::SHA1, as the former comes bundled with recent versions of Perl

[2018-09-22] Patches for libidn to support the German ligature ß updated to version 1.34

[2018-06-17] kvmlib now supports up to 10 network cards, a serial console, and shutdown of JunOS based devices via serial console

[2018-06-02] How to use dehydrated on FreeBSD to automatically get SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt

[2018-05-22] Minimal logging with Apache

[2018-05-05] pomavold 0.7 comes with a udev rules file

[2018-05-02] pomavold 0.6 prevents multiple instances per USB device

[2018-04-15]

Tvhead2TVB exports program schedules from TV-Browser to Tvheadend
Scripts for VMware Fusion
How to create self signed certificates

[2018-04-08] released graypold-0.7

[2018-02-22] AuthFail version 2 for OTRS 6

[2018-02-07] Added a small section to kvmlib about booting from an iSCSI lun and passing a PCI device from the host to a guest

[2018-01-07] How to netboot and install NetBSD/sparc updated due to Meltdown and Spectre ;-)

[2017-11-12] Upgrading PostgreSQL with pg_upgrade on FreeBSD

[2017-11-05]

PostgreSQL with replication slots on FreeBSD
New release of ampcontrol comes with an improved RC script and a command line option to avoid logging each single request

[2017-10-31] New release of ampcontrol allows you to adjust the volume in 5dB steps by simply clicking on the volume display

[2017-10-05]

initramfs for LVM may be of help if your Linux root filesystem resides in an LVM volume
initramfs for Btrfs may be of help if your Linux root filesystem resides on a multi-device, i.e. mirrored Btrfs volume

[2017-09-25] watchdog.sh is a simple shell script for FreeBSD to demote local carp announcements if a daemon is not running

[2017-09-22] New version of check_tvh.py checks whether another instance is already running, and will exit if it has been running for 42 seconds

[2017-09-19] imapnotes is a Python script to read and write notes stored on an IMAPS server

[2017-09-03]

nsnitro.sh is a shell script for the NITRO API of a NetScaler loadbalancer
Put patch-postfix-11y-queuelifetime.patch in /usr/ports/mail/postfix/files on your FreeBSD box, and reinstall Postfix. Then, maximal_queue_lifetime and bounce_queue_lifetime default to 4096 days, and may be set to a maximum of 10000 days.

[2017-08-11] Latest kvmlib implements the restart commandline option in order to restart a virtual machine.

[2017-08-10] check_tvh.py checks and restarts webcamd and Tvheadend on FreeBSD

[2017-06-17] New version of ampcontrol fixes some issues with various browsers

[2017-05-21] licq-1.8.2.20170520.patch is a patch for licq 1.8.2 to build on a recent Gentoo Linux box

[2017-03-17] s3blkdev 0.10 fixes another bug where a not yet synced block could get deleted

[2017-03-15] s3blkdev 0.9 fixes a bug where a not yet synced block could get deleted

[2017-03-11] Monitoring sendmail with snmp on FreeBSD

[2017-03-05] Guacamole on FreeBSD, including adhoc sessions and the NoAuth extension

[2017-02-25] Backup restore on a NetScaler

[2017-02-18] AmpControl & ampcontrol are a Java application and a Node.js application, respectively, to control your Onkyo receiver or amplifier

[2017-02-12] OTRS modules and patches

[2017-02-04] NanoBSD for Raspberry Pi based on FreeBSD 11.0

[2017-02-02] Cacti and Fail2ban

[2017-01-22] Running CDE on FreeBSD on a Mac Mini

[2017-01-14] Captcha.pm is a simple Perl module providing CAPTCHA images and code checking

[2016-12-27]

Yay, what the world needs most: zfs-snap, just another script to create and delete ZFS snapshots on FreeBSD
s3blkdev 0.8 croaks when exporting devices of or larger than 8 TB due to a bug in the nbd kernel module

[2016-12-25]

Perl's GD library does not detect libgd correctly. Apply both my patches patch-Build.PL.1 and patch-Makefile.PL to have this fixed, e.g. put them into /usr/ports/graphics/p5-GD/files on your FreeBSD box. Reported to freebsd-perl and upstream.
New version of kvmlib makes use of qemu's discard and detect-zeroes options.

[2016-11-20] New version of kvmlib does not rely on netcat anymore, places pid files in /tmp (which should be a tmpfs residing in memory), and has more commandline options to terminate or kill intractable virtual machines.

[2016-10-29]

s3blkdev 0.7 no longer comes with its own nbd service unit, integrates with systemd, and has an updated installation guide on Ubuntu 16.10
taputil (part of my kvmlib) no longer throws an error if an interface already is part of a network bridge

[2016-10-03] New version of kvmlib creates ethernet bridges and tap interfaces dynamically, i.e. no need to create them during system boot anymore

[2016-06-26] syswatch.pl now can not only send email when a log entry matches a (positive) pattern, but will ignore the entry when it matches a (negative) pattern. E.g. if your /usr/local/etc/syswatch.conf looks like this one:

ERROR
!ERROR debug
!ERROR test
faulty

Then syswatch.pl will send an email for each log entry that contains the word ERROR, but only if it's not followed by either debug or test, and for each log entry that contains the word faulty.

[2016-05-29] Redundant ethernet bridge with FreeBSD and tinc

[2016-05-08]

Updating a FreeBSD system revisited
Avoid swapping on FreeBSD (if you know what you're doing):
```
$ sysctl vm.defer_swapspace_pageouts=1
```
On Linux:
```
$ sysctl vm.swappiness=0
```

[2016-04-17]

webcam is a CGI shell script for fswebcam running on OpenWrt
New version of kvmlib which starts vncviewer after launching a VM
AugTV version 0.0.0.9 handles multiline descriptions of recorded programs correctly
How to replace strings in AppleScript

[2016-03-30] Adding custom MIBs to SNMP

[2016-03-21] Huawei E392 USB LTE modem on FreeBSD

[2016-01-30] s3blkdev 0.6 comes with an HTML frontend based on Node.js. Here's a screenshot.

[2016-01-17] freebsd-update with a custom kernel

[2016-01-10]

Successfully build and deployed s3blkdev on Ubuntu 15.10 server. As it's based on systemd, I added a service unit and released s3blkdev-0.5
Building Netatalk on Ubuntu 15.10

[2016-01-03]

Network tuning on FreeBSD
Updated my simple S3 tool s3file.py. It now is compatible with Python 3, and can upload data passed on standard input
Version 0.4 of s3blkdev supports multiple, simultaneously running instances of s3blkdev-sync
Removed my FreeBSD repository for Raspberry Pi (armv6) since 10.2 and 11-CURRENT come with official packages.

[2015-12-14]

Version 0.3 of s3blkdev fixes a bug that caused s3blkdev-sync to die when multiple device had been configured. Two new config options, s3name and s3maxreqsperconn, have been added
Updated my simple S3 tool s3file.py. It now is compatible with Python 2.6, and will print the object's etag (read: md5 checksum of the requested file) if called with the command line option -e.

[2015-10-24] Version 0.2 of s3blkdev:

s3blkdev-sync now terminates after a given time
fixed a bug that might have occured when the local cache device becomes full
removed various typos
renamed the project

[2015-10-03] s3blkdev is a gateway between S3 compatible storages and Linux network block devices (NBD)

[2015-09-05]

fproxy 0.7 fixes a bug (added EPOLLOUT to avoid stalled data), has support for splice() on Linux, and is a code cleanup release
Somewhat related: Added a short note to my splice() on Linux howto that you can't use splice() with Unix sockets.

[2015-07-04]

If your qemu/KVM based virtual machines have some issues with IPv6 (e.g. neighbor discovery) or multicast in general, then deactivate multicast snooping on your bridge interfaces: Add
```
SUBSYSTEM=="net",ACTION=="add",KERNEL=="br*",ATTR{bridge/multicast_snooping}="0"
```
to /etc/udev/rules.d/99-local.rules and do a udevadm trigger
Not strictly related: new version of my kvmlib.

[2015-06-22] Advanced TCP Bandwidth Calculator shows why a single TCP connection almost never saturates a data link

[2015-06-21] adpasswd.php shows how to change your active directory password with PHP

[2015-06-07] OpenVPN routing with BIRD on FreeBSD

[2015-06-04] mksnapback creates and deletes filesystem snapshots on FreeBSD during system boot and shutdown

[2015-05-25] minicom.scpt launches minicom (or any other console program) like a normal Mac OS X application

[2015-05-17]

netscalers3.py outputs configuration snippets for a Netscaler in order to make it an HTTP gateway for an S3 object storage. Since policies on a Netscaler can compute SHA1 digests and can convert strings to their base64 representation, but have no HMAC functions, we have to place both the ikeypad and the okeypad in the configuration. Yuck!
Updated my simple S3 tool s3file.py. It now supports HEAD requests and both S3 url syntaxes, plus you may specify an alternate port and may optionally disable ssl.

[2015-05-02]

s3file.py is a simple S3 tool. It's written in pure Python (uses no additional libraries) and can get, put, or delete files to/from an S3 bucket
ami.pl shows how to place a call using the Asterisk::Manager module
jabber.pl shows how to connect and to talk to a jabber server using the Net::Jabber module

[2015-04-13]

rarp.pl shows how one can send raw ethernet frames with Perl, e.g. reverse arp
PCI and VGA passthrough on Xen (old stuff)

[2015-04-12]

innochecksum.count.patch is a patch for innochecksum (MySQL) to print details about undo pages
mcast.pl and mcast6.pl demonstrate how to send multicast packets with Perl
svnmail.pl sends an email after every commit to a subversion repository
FirewallTest.cs is a code snippet which shows how to create Windows firewall rules programmatically

[2015-04-06] A few things I came across while setting up sslh in transparent mode on FreeBSD

[2015-01-04]

NanoBSD (based on FreeBSD 10.1) for Raspberry PI
New version of kvmlib, a shell script which sums up all commonly used options of my KVM based virtual machines

[2014-12-24] Bandnudel V0.3 fixes a tiny bug (minutes vs. seconds) and is a small code cleanup

[2014-12-21] How to create a bootable USB flash drive to install VMware ESXi 5.5 from

[2014-12-09] Both AugTV 0.0.0.8 and graypold 0.6 fix signal handling issues, plus graypold 0.6 fixes two MySQL related issues

[2014-12-07] graypold 0.5 is an almost complete rewrite of my graylisting daemon. There's no blackwhite list anymore as one can easily achieve that functionality with Postfix lookup tables. Mail sent by SASL authenticated users now can open the graylisting for mails sent in the opposite direction. Thus, when an authenticated user sends an email, the reply will be delivered immediately. And by using different local unix sockets, a Postfix admin can now decide whether (s)he wants only graylisting, mail counting, SASL graylisting bypassing, or any combination of those there functions.

[2014-12-06] AugTV 0.0.0.7 no longer comes with a cgi script and thus does not depend on a webserver and any sudo rules for osascript. Instead, I wrote a nice helper app called augtvd.app which contains a small webserver written in Perl and the reminders of the old cgi script.

[2014-11-27] Looking for VMware tools for FreeBSD 10.1? Grab the ones which come bundled with ESXi 5.5U2!

[2014-11-22] Is Firefox moaning Getting printer information failed when you try to print to a network printer? Make sure that you have the correct PPD file in /etc/cups/ppd and that it has the same name as your local printer queue.

[2014-09-12] Let FreeBSD's inetd listen on a Unix socket

[2014-08-20]

Kernel-System-Auth-Sync-LDAP.pm.diff is a patch for the LDAP sync module of OTRS. Read about the patch on Otterhub [local copy]
ezjail-admin from 3.2.3 fails if one installs from the FreeBSD disc1 cdrom as it doesn't set $ezjail_release properly. My patch fixes that. I sent this patch to the maintainer, too, but he didn't answer.

rsyncd.conf of one of my el-cheapo backup servers (fake super is very handy if the underlying filesystem supports extended attributes):

address = 192.168.0.23
pid file = /var/run/rsyncd.pid
uid = rsyncd
gid = rsyncd

[some.host.name]
fake super = yes
hosts allow = 192.168.0.42
path = /data/backup/some.host.name
read only = no

[2014-08-10] You might want to use vmrun2.sh or vmrun3.sh in order to start Ubuntu 14.04 server or CentOS 7 virtual machines, respectively, on a recent FreeBSD with bhyve installed.

[2014-07-25]

Uploaded an improved version of addrra.pl. It's a Perl script which allows you to add RRAs to an RRD file. The old version failed when the RRD file contained the source RRA more than once.
AugTV 0.0.0.6 now takes into account if a schedule is enabled and, if not, allows you to create another schedule at the same time

[2014-07-20] openvpn.ovpn is an OpenVPN connection profile template and may be of help if you run OpenVPN on your mobile phone or tablet

[2014-07-12] ftp6proxy is an IPv6 (and IPv4) ftp proxy for FreeBSD based firewalls. In contrast to ftp-proxy and libalias/natd/ppp, it doesn't support NAT or rewrite packets. It just temporarily opens the firewall to pass through the data channel.

[2014-07-02] Released version 0.2 of tcpoptd which you can use to modify tcp header options. It now supports IPv6.

[2014-06-28] How to delete an ipfw rule on FreeBSD using Perl, e.g. firewall rule #2342:

use Socket qw(:all);

my $IP_FW_DEL = 51;
my $rule_num = 2342;

socket(my $ipfw_sock, AF_INET, SOCK_RAW, IPPROTO_RAW) or die $!;
setsockopt($ipfw_sock, IPPROTO_IP, $IP_FW_DEL, $rule_num) or die $!;

[2014-05-31] TightVNC moans "Rect too large"? Replace it by TigerVNC and launch vncviewer with parameter "-AutoSelect=0"!

[2014-05-29] How to update OTRS on FreeBSD

[2014-05-04]

You might use backup_cfg to backup the running configuration of your NanoBSD system. It just saves the difference between /conf/base/etc (read-only base config) and /etc (running config) to /cfg (Hint: /etc is initialized from /conf/base/etc and /cfg (in that order!) during system boot). Don't forget to add backup_cfg_enable="YES" to your /etc/rc.conf. Also, you might want to save your configuration periodically. So, for example create /usr/local/etc/periodic/weekly/200.backup-cfg:
```
#!/bin/sh

echo ""
echo "Backing up configuration:"

exec /usr/local/etc/rc.d/backup_cfg stop
```
Adding devices and graph using Cacti's command-line interface

[2014-04-29] NanoBSD for Raspberry PI

[2014-03-24] How I unbricked my WRT610N with OpenWRT

[2014-02-19] If you use GD with Perl, but getting an error like libgd 2.0.33 or higher required for copyRotated support, then apply patch-Makefile.PL to Makefile.PL and recompile GD. See also my post on the freebsd-perl mailing list.

[2014-02-15] VMware Tools on FreeBSD 10

[2014-02-09] You might want to use vmrun.sh in order to start Gentoo Linux virtual machines on a recent FreeBSD with bhyve installed. This is a slightly modified version of the shell script normally found in /usr/share/examples/bhyve. See also this related post.

[2014-01-19] Added a wlan card and two antennas to my NanoBSD router, uploaded some pictures and new config files

[2014-01-12] kvmlib is a shell script I use to start and stop KVM based virtual machines

[2014-01-02] If avahi-daemon sporadically exits with an error like "poll(): Invalid argument", then put patch-avahi-common_simple-watch.c into /usr/ports/net/avahi-app/files on your FreeBSD box and reinstall avahi. See also

[2013-12-22] Building a FreeBSD backup server for Time Machine and Linux boxes

[2013-12-14] Printing on Gentoo is a short howto that features all the good stuff: avahi, dbus, cups, and a Mac :-)

[2013-12-07]

pomavold 0.5 is a code cleanup release
new version of finitrd is primarily a code cleanup, ext4 filesystem inside ramdisk has no journal to gain some space

[2013-12-03]

Added Python 2.7.3 and pstree 2.33 to my FreeBSD package repository for Raspberry Pi
vmtar.pl converts a vtar file (as found on VMware's ESXi hypervisor) to a common tar archive
addrra.pl adds RRAs to an RRD file

[2013-12-02] graypold 0.4 writes a syslog entry for every mail so that Fail2ban can ban an IP address for sending too many mails

[2013-11-27] released version 0.3 of my graylisting daemon graypold which now can count mails and recipients

[2013-11-09] Updated How to install FreeBSD on a Raspberry Pi (bcm2835-rpi-b.dts and thus bcm2835-rpi-b.dtb were renamed to rpi.dts and rpi.dtb, respectively, added DB_FROM_SRC=1 to make distribution; thanks Derek!)

[2013-11-03] How to resize an UFS2 filesystem on FreeBSD

[2013-11-01] How to update a FreeBSD system (see also)

[2013-10-26] NanoBSD: config files and description of my DSL router

[2013-10-23] Slave root zone and forward zones with Bind might not work as expected

[2013-10-19] How to solve missing icons and symbols on Mac OS X

[2013-10-14] AugTV 0.0.0.5 fixes a small bug and exports playlists (*.m3u) for all your movies and music

[2013-10-05]

El-cheapo parallelism in the (Bash) shell, e.g. compress all iso files in a directory and run 4 compression tasks at a time:
```
for i in *.iso; do
  bzip2 "$i" &
  while [ `jobs | wc -l` -ge 4 ]; do
    sleep 10
  done
done
```
Replace a port by its latest version on FreeBSD, e.g. upgrade Perl from 5.8 to 5.16 (see also):
```
portupgrade -o lang/perl5.16 -f lang/perl5.8
portupgrade -fr perl
```

[2013-10-03] Uploaded some additional pictures

[2013-09-23] rmks.py proxies a vnc connection to the console of virtual machine running on a VMware ESXi 5.x host

[2013-08-24] How to create a key and a self-signed certificate in one step without being prompted for any questions using OpenSSL, e.g. for a host called host.domain.tld:

openssl req -new -x509 -batch -days 3650 -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -subj /CN=host.domain.tld -keyout host.domain.tld.key.pem -out host.domain.tld.cer.pem

[2013-08-13] Python with mod_wsgi

[2013-07-07]

Uploaded two Python scripts that have piled up over the last days:
- bgppeermon.py queries one or more Juniper routers via SNMP, and prints any BGP peers to which a connection hasn't been established
- complete.py uses ~/.ssh/known_hosts to complete ssh commands in the bash shell
How to run a program if your Mac OS X system's configuration changes

[2013-06-29] Set up two special purpose virtual hosts:

v6only.ogris.net which resolves to and is reachable only by an IPv6 address
purev6.ogris.net which resolves to and is reachable only by an IPv6 address, and whose authorative nameserver is reachable only by IPv6

[2013-05-31] Updated my FreeBSD WAN simulator howto

[2013-05-19] How to setup Tagged VLANs on Mac OS X

[2013-05-18]

Updated my FreeBSD WAN simulator howto
How to setup Tagged VLANs on FreeBSD

[2013-05-08] On FreeBSD, the man page of ipfw isn't very specific about the syntax of a dummynet pipe when it comes to the mask and src-ip/src-ip6/dst-ip/dst-ip6 parameters. As long as you stick to IPv4, you have two equivalent options:

pipe 1 config mask src-ip 0xffffff00 bw 23KBit/s ...

and

pipe 1 config mask src-ip /24 bw 23KBit/s ...

If you're limiting IPv6 traffic, you should use the latter variant only:

pipe 2 config mask dst-ip6 /64 bw 42KBit/s ...

Internally, the variable which holds the value of src-ip/src-ip6/dst-ip/dst-ip6 is an unsigned 32 bits integer, which overflows and yields an error if given anything larger than 0xffffffff.

[2013-05-05] Added PostgreSQL to my FreeBSD package repository for Raspberry Pi

[2013-04-27] How to build a simple FreeBSD WAN simulator

[2013-04-06] tcpoptd modifies TCP header options

[2013-04-01] Seems as if VMware Fusion (when network is set to NAT/PAT mode aka "Share with my Mac") completely rewrites the TCP header. At least TCP header options and source port always get re-arranged and overwritten, while unknown header options are removed.

[2013-03-24] mdnsproxy forwards multicast DNS requests to unicast DNS servers

[2013-02-28] How to build a BGP looking glass with OpenBSD

[2013-02-04] Uploaded some FreeBSD packages for a Raspberry Pi which I compiled from a fresh ports' checkout on FreeBSD 10.0-CURRENT

[2013-02-01] Updated How to install FreeBSD on a Raspberry Pi once again (enabled procfs, vlan, and ipfw)

[2013-01-31] Updated How to install FreeBSD on a Raspberry Pi (enabled devd in /etc/rc.conf, corrected pathes in steps 26 and 27, added /etc/localtime)

[2013-01-27] pomavold 0.4 let you specify a timeout it waits for before accessing devices.

[2013-01-25] How to install FreeBSD on a Raspberry Pi

[2013-01-06] How to netboot and install NetBSD/sparc, a spin-off of a short discussion on G+

[2012-12-19] How to build NVidia drivers 304.64 for Linux 3.7.x on a 64-bit Gentoo box:

mkdir -p /etc/portage/patches/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-304.64
download http://www.lwfinger.com/nvidia_patches/patch_nvidia_304_60.run_for_3.7
rename patch_nvidia_304_60.run_for_3.7 to patch_nvidia_304_60.run_for_3.7.patch
move patch_nvidia_304_60.run_for_3.7.patch into /etc/portage/patches/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-304.64
emerge nvidia-drivers

[2012-12-18] David Doll found a typo in my VMware Tools on FreeBSD 9 howto

[2012-11-23]

howto build DRBD on CentOS
howto resize DRBD without LVM

[2012-10-29] What a productive weekend - publicating all the stuff that has piled up over the past few weeks: clucp is a copy tool for Corosync clusters

[2012-10-28]

suexec helper replacement for shared Apache webservers with support for virtual users
FreeBSD, ps, and processes with a long argument list or: Why does ps ax just show [mysqld] instead of its full pathname and arguments

[2012-10-27] howto build Percona on FreeBSD

[2012-10-24] pomavold 0.3 doesn't dim the light if you just mute the left (=mono) channel

[2012-10-20] pomavold 0.2 doesn't die if a mixer hasn't a mute button and takes into account that light intensity of a PowerMate isn't linear

[2012-10-08] fproxy 0.6 doesn't die if

socket() returns EMFILE, ENFILE, ENOBUFS, or ENOMEM
accept() returns EMFILE, ENFILE, ENOBUFS, ENOMEM, or ECONNABORTED

[2012-09-05] Updated Block allocation strategies of various filesystems as I did some tests on NTFS, too.

[2012-09-04] Block allocation strategies of various filesystems

[2012-09-02]

new version of finitrd which now unmounts /dev inside the ramdisk properly, has /dev/sda2 - sdd4, and tries to execute /sbin/init at first
how to ssh into a VMware ESXi box using ssh keys instead of a password

[2012-09-01] Fun with sparse files

[2012-08-13] pomavold lets you control the volume of your soundcard with a Griffin PowerMate

[2012-08-05] VMware Tools on FreeBSD 9 (updated the howto, not the patches)

[2012-07-15]

El cheapo hierarchical storage management on Linux
Resizing an UFS2 filesystem on FreeBSD (an old posting on G+)
Adding a new hard disk on FreeBSD (ditto)
fproxy 0.51: no new features, but I think there was an packaging issue with 0.5

[2012-06-26] fproxy 0.5: new commandline option -d, 2-clause BSD license applied

[2012-05-20] VMware Tools on FreeBSD 9

[2012-05-11] How to read the Windows eventlog (warning, source code included)

[2012-02-19] Updated finitrd, my ramdisk for Linux systems that have their root partition inside an LVM volume. The ramdisk uses ext4 by default now.

[2012-02-18] Updated after 4 years: graypold (part of my Postfix policy daemons) is now IPv6 ready. Added an improved rc script for FreeBSD, too.

[2012-01-15] fproxy 0.41 - just a code cleanup

[2011-12-28] Simple DVD authoring on Linux

[2011-11-29] Removed ipv6.ogris.de and its 6to4 address. Published a real IPv6 address for www.ogris.de and ogris.de

[2011-11-06]

Amp Control 0.2 is here
PCI passthrough on XenServer - passing PCI devices to paravirtualized guests on machines without an IOMMU

[2011-08-14] xmlrpc.pl el-cheapo XML-RPC with Perl and xinetd - don't try this in a hostile environment

[2011-08-05] How to join Unix-like systems to an Active Directory

[2011-08-01] Some thoughts about splice() on Linux

[2011-07-31] Updated after 4 years: fproxy 0.4 comes with a bugfix and an enhanced log format

[2011-07-07] Uploaded a CORBA howto which shows my experience with several ORBs

[2011-03-21] Got some strange error like input must be 8 bytes long at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.1/mach/Crypt/DES.pm line 59 with Perl's Net::SSH::Perl? Try my patch for DES.pm. It inserts a utf8::downgrade($data); in encrypt() and decrypt() along with a use utf8;.

[2011-03-21] I wrote a small server in C# that creates a thread for each connection. It looks like this:

TcpClient client = tcpListener.AcceptTcpClient();
MyHandler handler = new MyHandler(client);
Thread thread = new Thread(handler.Run);
thread.IsBackground = true;
thread.Start();

After it served some clients, I noticed in the Task Manager that it consumes several hundreds of RAM, holds thousands of handles, but only runs 15 threads. The Process Explorer revealed that these handles are thread handles. Turns out that you have to call thread.Abort() explicitly to get rid of those handles. So I added the following:

foreach (Thread t in allThreads) {
  if (!t.IsAlive) {
    t.Abort();
  }
}

This is different from Java where a threads terminates as soon as its run() method returns. Of course I could use System.Threading.ThreadPool. But then I don't know which threads are currently running unless I track each instance of MyHandler. For that I would have to extend the MyHandler class:

class MyHandler {
  private bool _running = true;

  public void Run() {
    try {
      ...
    } finally {
      _running = false;
    }
  }

  public bool Running { get { return _running; } }
}

I don't like both of these approaches.

[2011-01-30] On my workstation at home I sometimes use qemu-kvm to start a virtualized Windows XP. For my personal reference I uploaded my qemu-wxp.sh and tun.sh shell scripts. Put the later one in /usr/local/libexec.

[2011-01-06] updated my short howto on IPv6, added a section called Impact on home networks

[2011-01-02] short howto on IPv6

[2011-01-01] IPv6 is here! See http://ipv6.ogris.de. Same stuff, different protocol. Magic!

[2010-11-28] With FreeBSD 8.1 running in VirtualBox, Jonsen Yang discovered that my patch for CARP IP loadbalancing panics the kernel. So I setup a VirtualBox on my Mac Mini, recompiled the kernel with options WITNESS, and encountered some non-sleepable locks being held. Here is an adjusted patch.

[2010-11-11] smtppipe version 0.21 fixes an embarrassing bug

[2010-11-01] uploaded two patches against Libidn 1.16 to support the German ligature ß (sharp s, unicode codepoint 0x00df) as part of IDNA2008 or IDNA-bis.
Put both files into /usr/ports/dns/libidn/files on your FreeBSD box and do a portupgrade -f libidn

[2010-10-30]

xattr on Mac OS X has no option not to follow symlinks. You might use my simple fxattr (compiled from fxattr.c) to show and copy extended attributes.
released a new version of AugTV (discovered that TV-Browser is threadsafe, so the new AugTV uses asynchronous calls which make it several times faster)
updated my patch for carp ip loadbalancing to build on FreeBSD 8.1

[2010-09-20] Note to self:

always use a homebrew qemu without kvm to install FreeDOS to a USB stick

fix c:\fdconfig.sys to enable option #4 and make it the default:

...
MENUDEFAULT=4,2
...
1234?SHELLHIGH=C:\FDOS\bin\command.com ...
...

use fdisk /reboot to reboot that neat bios update helper

[2010-07-01] The beauty of FreeBSD. Today: Fibre Channel and Multipathing

QLogic based FC HBA is handled by isp(4)
echo ispfw_load=YES >> /boot/loader.conf and reboot if you use the HBA the very first time
setup your SAN ports and zoning, eg. I have 2 controllers and 2 fabrics, so for each volume FreeBSD will create 4 daX devices
camcontrol rescan all
either do dmesg or camcontrol devlist to see which devices appeared, eg. /dev/da1 thru 4
gmultipath label DATA /dev/da1 /dev/da2 /dev/da3 /dev/da4 (double check that you specify the correct devices!)
bsdlabel -w /dev/multipath/DATA
newfs -U /dev/multipath/DATAa
echo "/dev/multipath/DATAa /data ufs rw 2 2" >> /etc/fstab
mkdir /data; mount /data
echo geom_multipath_load=YES >> /boot/loader.conf

That's it. Works out of the box.

[2010-06-19] updated my patch for carp ip loadbalancing to build on FreeBSD 8.0

[2010-06-13] released AugTV, a plugin for TV-Browser to schedule recordings on EyeTV

[2010-06-12] released AmpControl, a small Java application to control your Onkyo receiver or amplifier

[2010-06-07] registered the domain ogr.is

[2010-05-16] wrote a howto about WANem hard disc install & bridge setup

[2010-04-11]

announced shutdown of tinyws.org, relocated project website to http://ogris.de/tinyws/
released TinyWS 2.4

[2010-04-03] some selected photos I took

[2010-03-06]
- lpdpipe 0.3 sets $TMPDIR for external filters
- smtppipe 0.20 fixes an include mismatch on FreeBSD
[2010-01-24] aliassync V0.2 supports LDAP paged results
[2010-01-18] aliassync syncs mail aliases into the LDAP directory on a CommuniGate Pro server
[2010-01-06] released Bandnudel V0.2 - now with team statistics
[2010-01-05] Bandnudel - Sauerbraten statistics and more
[2010-01-03] resetting the MySQL root password, on FreeBSD, the hard way
[2009-12-27] on Linux we have mylvmbackup, on FreeBSD you might use myufsbackup
[2009-08-15] uploaded 2 proposals I wrote in my free time to discuss mailserver and database cluster concepts with my colleagues
- Mailbox Cluster Konzepte shows basic mailserver scenarios mainly with Cyrus IMAP
- Datenbank Cluster Konzepte shows the usage of DRBD as replicating block device in MySQL- or PostgreSQL active/passive cluster
(yep, both are written in German)
[2009-02-22] small update on syswatch.pl
[2008-12-06] did several updates to TinyWS
[2008-08-31] released version 0.2 of lpdpipe
[2008-08-27] released smtppipe 0.19
[2008-08-06] uploaded all OTRS modules that I developed for my diploma thesis
[2008-07-27] launched a new project: TinyWS is a Java servlet which acts as a SOAP and WSDL server
[2008-04-27] added el-cheapo blackwhite list functionality for MySQL to my Postfix graylisting daemon, graypold
[2008-03-23] flushing my personal work queue:
- patch and howto about compiling MPlayer 0.93 on a recent Linux system
- published my diploma thesis about OTRS, which ran during fall 2007 and was finished in January 2008:
  - documentation
  - presentation
  - (source may follow)
- patch for CARP on FreeBSD to build an ip loadbalancing (active/active) cluster
- updated mailfetch (replaced getdomainname() by gethostbyname())
- uploaded a howto about booting from a LVM root disk
- uploaded a new project called finitrd which is a small ramdisk toolchain for booting from a LVM root disk
[26.11.07] released version 0.3 of leChunk (fixes progress bar bug with files >2GB, omits AES encryption if password is empty, fixes JFileChooser bug on Mac OS X 10.5)
[18.11.07] patch for pgpool-II 2.0-beta1 to drop (forever-)waiting clients
[20.10.07] CARP & VRRP in VMware Server
[23.09.07]
- smtppipe version 0.18 (fixed a newline bug)
- put patch-src::smtpd::smtpd.c into /usr/ports/mail/postfix/files/ on your FreeBSD box and recompile+reinstall postfix with this multiline greeting patch
- uploaded some tools for PostgreSQL
[30.07.07]
- uploaded some thoughts about a larger SIP scenario
- /etc/mail/Makefile for Gentoo's sendmail package (duh, spectacular!)
[15.07.07]
- version 0.31 of fproxy fixes an embarrassing bug
- version 0.2 of leChunk introduces AES encryption
[09.07.07] released version 0.3 of fproxy
[07.07.07] (triple-repdigit date! ;-))
- uploaded a new version of fproxy, my non-forking, epoll-based proxy for stream based connections (fixed a bug, added support for unix sockets, backends in fault are reenabled after a grace period)
- published two small tools for monitoring local traffic using libpcap and divert(4), respectively
- published my student research project about Asterisk, which ran during fall 2006 and was finished in January 2007:
  - documentation
  - presentation
- published my homework about OpenGL-plugins for XMMS for a lecture called graphical data processing, which I wrote in the summer break of 2006:
(duh, productive day)
[23.05.07] uploaded a new version of graypold.pl
[21.05.07] updated my page about policy daemons for Postfix, added a new standalone graylisting server called graypold.pl
[28.04.07] uploaded three policy daemons for Postfix which implement graylisting using PostgreSQL and MySQL, respectively, and a delay policy daemon, which calms down the SMTP dialog
[27.04.07] uploaded two patches for Cyrus IMAP and Cyrus SASL which provide support for a PostgreSQL database backend
[17.03.07] uploaded a new Java tool called leChunk, which saves large files as chunks into a local repository, eg. an external hard disk
[05.01.07] fixed 2 embarrassing bugs in mailtools
[17.12.06] released a new version of mailtools
[22.10.06]
- get rid of that annoying "Spam Mail" folder in your Exchange account by using my spamdelex.pl script
- sparse.c is a small C snipplet which creates sparse files (if your filesystem supports them)
- syswatch.pl gets its input piped from syslogd and sends a mail if a line matches a regex defined in /usr/local/etc/syswatch.conf
[24.06.06] smtppipe version 0.17
[14.06.06] smtppipe version 0.16
[23.06.06] fixed an error in lpdpipe
[12.06.06] try my linuxrc if you have trouble booting your Linux from a firewire root
[11.06.06] software I use occasionally (just in case I lose the links):
- Linux driver for a Logitech Quickcam Messenger USB Webcam
- Analog VUmeter plugin for XMMS
[04.04.06] released a new version of smtppipe, fixed an include mismatch on BSD
[11.03.06] released a new version of smtppipe, featuring basic authentication
[04.03.06] have a look at how it looks like if a colleague of mine and I spend a breakfast at our company due to our birthday (sorry for the bad quality, the picture was taken with the camera in my mobile)
[28.02.06]
- published a new project, fproxy, which is a fast, small, non-forking, IPv6-ready tcp (reverse) proxy using the epoll framework on Linux
- once upon a time I wrote my own small boot loader, called filo, for Linux based firewall appliances
[11.02.06] fixed a bug in lpdpipe
[28.01.06] found some older stuff:
- a patch against dcron which fixes a minor bug and makes compiling a little bit easier
- a perl script which finds duplicate files
- another perl script which tars files
- an awk script which rewrites urls (think of the squid proxy)
- a C code snipplet which acts as a CGI upload script
[15.09.05] duh, a minor update to mailtools
[14.09.05] published two new (maybe useless) tools:
- mailtools are a tiny replacement for fetchmail
- redir is a small cgi program which can do round-robin based loadbalancing
[19.03.05] all work and no play makes me a dull boy...
- RFC 31337 explains the Unified Backdoor Protocol :-)
- a more or less nicely formatted diagram about PostgreSQL 7.x table locks
- my computers at home are named after Roman gods so here is an overview (sorry, just in German)
[30.11.04] ever wanted to use the SRGP library under a recent version of X window to write programs in either C or C++? Just apply my srgp patch.
[24.10.04] updated my dyndns client
[20.09.04] Have you ever been annoyed by not having a small utility that reverses the order of lines you entered? Then checkout reverse.c and compile it with gcc -W -Wall -Os -s -o /bin/reverse reverse.c!
[18.09.04] released smtppipe version 0.13 (removed two bugs, fixed some typos); thought about IDN/UTF-8 processing, anyone using this stuff?
[19.07.04] updated my Samba and PostgreSQL howto since I have encountered some problems with upper- and lowercased hostnames
[09.07.04] bought and mounted a lcd panel
[08.07.04] new bugfix release of lpdpipe
[07.07.04]
- uploaded a new access patch for thttpd v2.25b because my old patch has some bugs (using lstat() instead of stat() now)!
- released a new version of inntools and updated my Inn & Suck howto (still in German, anyone willed to do a translation?)
[28.06.04] wrote a tun device helper for bochs in non-root environments and called it tunconfig
[24.06.04] updated my ftp.pl script
[16.05.04] wrote a very short howto about Samba and PostgreSQL
[08.05.04] updated my "casehack" page
[27.03.04] added a new feature (called remotequeue) to lpdpipe
[25.02.04] released smtppipe V0.12 which fixes a bug and comes with two new features
[24.02.04] Hooray! Nikola Vladov sent me some patches for smtppipe. Since the source code of smtppipe has always been somewhat messy, I took his patches, rewrote about 80% of smtppipe, added some new features and released version 0.11. For a short overview, have look at its version.h.
[15.02.04] wrote a patch against Webalizer 2.01-10 for reverse DNS lookups without that Berkeley DB stuff (so you should consider setting up a fast dns resolver...); compile with make CFLAGS+=-DUSE_DNS
[14.12.03] revised the layout and the structure
[02.12.03] added another bug to my djbdns howto
[10.11.03] updated my cache save patch for djbdns (should work on every architecture now)
[09.11.03] you can send a SIGALRM to dnscache to dump its cache and reload it on next startup if you apply my patch to djbdns (sorry, just for bigendian machines)
[25.10.03]
- wrote a small xinetd howto - how to use qmail and courier-imap with xinetd
- replaced the original fans of a Cisco switch by quieter ones made by Papst, compare the noise before and after the modification (MP3, VBR, 7 secs, about 300k per file)
[23.10.03] smtppipe performed very badly on large email, so I released a new version
[20.10.03] lpdpipe - a small lpd/lpr client
[17.10.03] just a small patch for XFce's diskperf plugin to work on Linux 2.6
[17.09.03] wrote a patch for thttpd to do ip based authorization
[09.09.03]
- wrote a patch for the netload plugin of XFce4
- wrote a patch for qmail to do remote authentication
[20.06.03]
- released a new version of smtppipe
[15.06.03]
- new version of my dyndns client (fixed the noisy output)
- added a new script called innmail.sh to inntools
- new version of diet-news.txt (added compile instructions for inn-2.4)
[15.05.03] wrote a dyndns client
[26.04.03]
- uploaded some pics of my modded computer case, some text will follow as soon as possible
- yet another new version of d2u
[25.04.03]
- new version of smtppipe which comes along with some bug fixes
- released a new software package called inntools which are basically some utilities for a newsserver running INN, suck and rpost
[20.04.03] new version of d2u: you can now do something like cat file.txt | d2u > file.txt
[19.04.03]
- new patches for several programs to link against dietlibc
- started a new howto about my newsserver based on the dietlibc
- once I played with some FAT32 code using documentation from Microsoft, here are my results
- try my strong cryptographic tool rot13 :-)
[22.03.03] wrote a new version of squid_redir which now has a GUI for configuration and uses PostgreSQL as database backend
[26.02.03]
- did a huge code review of ftp.pl
- wrote a small tool which parses the file containing assigned internet protocol numbers as provided by the IANA and outputs a valid /etc/protocols