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Gemlog
After the exceptional 2018, year 8 of my blogging activities fell just slightly short of the great year 2017. I wrote Articles about FreeBSD on ARM hardware, using FreeBSD ports with tools, a series on various operating systems on ULTRA SPARC hardware and my first series on programming (daemonization on FreeBSD with Python). Single posts include a rant against GPL supremacy, one more article about Ravenports and a return to OmniOSce among other things.
(Jan 2019) ZFS and GPL terror: How much freedom is there in Linux?
Linux is playing the bully against non-GPL free software - on purpose. What's going on here in the Open Source movement?
(Feb 2019) ARM'd and dangerous: FreeBSD on Cavium ThunderX (aarch64)
After finally getting my hands on server-class ARM hardware, I try out running FreeBSD on it. I encounter a lot of problems but at least get it working at all.
(Mar 2019) Rusted ravens: Ravenports march 2019 status update
Ravenports news: macOS platform on halt, new default compiler version, Rust finally being available, improved ravenadm, and multiple SSL libraries can be installed at the same time.
(Apr 2019) Thoughts on being a "power user" (1/3)
What is a power user and what are some of the basics to consider? This post is about some of the basics such as touch typing and optimized keyboard layouts, input devices and using a multi-monitor setup.
(May 2019) ARM'd and dangerous pt. 2: FreeBSD on the Pinebook (aarch64)
In this post I present my new ARM64-based PineBook laptop and discuss how well FreeBSD currently runs on it.
(Jun 2019) Testing OmniOSce on real hardware
OmniOS Community Edition is an illumos distribution. I've written about this little gem before, by testing it in a VM. Now it's time for an installation on real hardware.
(Jul 2019) Summer Sun and microsystems
This article is a summary of the hotter topics that I still have on my ever-growing list of things to blog about.
(Aug 2019) Using FreeBSD with Ports (1/2): Classic way with tools
Traditionally ports on FreeBSD were either built and updated manually or using tools like _portupdate_ or _portmaster_. This post is an introduction to installing ports using the latter.
(Sept 2019) Using FreeBSD with Ports (2/2): Tool-assisted updating
Portmaster can not only install ports, it can assist in keeping your software updated, too. There are a couple of sharp edges when updating from ports - and while portmaster will be of great help here, it's good to understand what's going on. Therefore this article explains a lot of the special cases that you might encounter.
(Sept 2019) A SPARC in the night - SunFire v100 exploration
The SunFire v100 is a piece of hardware from 2001. What makes it interesting is that it has a SPARC64 processor. This post takes a closer look at what the Sun platform looked like and what features it had.
(Oct 2019) OpenBSD on SPARC64 (6.0 to 6.5)
This post is about installing OpenBSD 6.0 on a SPARC64 server and updating it all the way to 6.5 while reflecting some noteworthy changes with OpenBSD over that time.
(Oct 2019) Running OpenBSD on SPARC64 (HTTPd, packages, patching, X11, ...)
After installing OpenBSD on SPARC64 it's time to explore it a bit. This post covers CGI with httpd and Perl from the base system, installing binary packages, errata patches, X11 and overall a few comparisons with AMD64.
(Oct 2019) illumos (v9os) on SPARC64 SunFire v100
In this article I give the illumos distribution v9os a try. It's made specifically for SPARC64 servers. After fighting with the installer and the (unknown to me) IPS packaging system, I get both working.
(Nov 2019) Writing a daemon using FreeBSD and Python pt.1
This mini-series is meant as a quick but gentle introduction to using Python to build a daemon on FreeBSD. The first part covers some Python fundamentals, signal handling, logging and daemonizing using FreeBSD’s daemon(8).
(Nov 2019) Writing a daemon using FreeBSD and Python pt.2
The second post of the mini-series covers doing daemonization of the program directly in Python, without external help. It also discusses a few Python concepts and fundamentals for newcomers to programming.
(Nov 2019) Writing a daemon using FreeBSD and Python pt.3
Part three of the mini-series introduces _named pipes_ as a means of inter-process communication (IPC). The daemon is modified to use a named pipe and a control script is created that can send data to it (unidirectional IPC).
(Dec 2019) A glimpse into 2020
This posts sums up some ideas on what to write about next year: FreeBSD on SPARC64 and ARM64, Configuration management with Salt, HardenedBSD, E-Mail, illumos, Ravenports – and more on FreeBSD vs. Linux.