Anyone here has experience doing a "Wi-Fi box" in NetBSD? I wonder how big is the overhead. Both in user effort and computer resources.

When I was younger I used to run a *very slow* virtual machine with Windows XP while daily-driving Linux. So I could interact with government webpages, banks, University software, etc. Anything that I couldn't do in Linux was done in this winXP VM.

Now I'm getting close to do something similar. A light VM with linux to do anything that I can't in NetBSD.

I still don't truly daily-drive NetBSD: I'm writing this tooth from my Linux Mint laptop, for example. To use the Wi-Fi from this machine, I still need a Linux driver, but I'm starting to pet the idea of a small VM + PCI passthrough to setup Wi-Fi, and use that VM as a router.

Something tells me that battery life will be even shorter than it is now. But it would be better to hear that from people who have actually done something like that.

#wifi #wifibox #NetBSD #runbsd

Noticed this morning that #OpenBSD has moved out of beta into preparation for the upcoming 7.9 release soon. ​​

⚠️ NOTE: This isn't the official release! ⚠️

#RunBSD #BSD

https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20260414052048

I've been running two degraded ZFS arrays for the last few weeks (Debian host).

Yeah, I know. Whatevs.

One of the pools was basically "scratch" backup space and one of the spindles died (breaking the utility of the mirror). Pulled the drive, wiped the remaining, put back in service with minimum fuss as a single drive. I'll throw another spindle at it when drive prices drop again.

The other array had the SSD cache die and it's been chugging along fine ever since. Not a big deal, but from a "experience" point of view it "feels slow" like a working md array.

New SSD arrived in the mail so that'll get sorted sometime today/tomorrow.

So, what's this post about?

Linux peeps, if you are thinking about md arrays, just stop, take the time, and throw 'yer leg over the zfs horse. It's worth it.

#Linux #RunBSD #zfs #md #mdadm #raid #homelab #SelfHosted #SelfHosting

Updated post!

For my NetBSD install I wanted to include disk encryption to protect personal data in case the device is lost or stolen. Its not really enough to simply encrypt home directories. Passphrases and sensitive data can linger and be extracted from locations such as system logs and swap memory. There is a trade-off to be made between how much to encrypt, the convenience of operating the system, and the ability for the system to boot.

https://www.dwarmstrong.org/netbsd-encrypt-install/

#NetBSD #RunBSD

In anticipation of the upcoming release of NetBSD 11.0, I've installed 11.0_RC3 on my Thinkpad T480s. Onward to the Guide!

https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/

#NetBSD #RunBSD #Thinkpad

Show off your *BSD desktop!

https://billboard.bsd.cafe/topic/72/show-off-your-bsd-desktop

#RunBSD #OpenBSD #FreeBSD #DragonflyBSD #NetBSD #Illumos #Screenshot #Desktop #picture #bsdcafe #billboard