blackdot.be

illumos NVMe hotplug

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 17:29:15 +0200

Last year I replaced a failed Samsung SSD 980 PRO 1TB with a Corsair CT1000P3SSD8, this was all I had budget for at the time and not a great NVMe drive overall. Last week it started throwing the occasional error.

Time to replace it with a Samsung SSD 9100 PRO 1TB, but on hard mode! No powering down the system just to figure out which bay it’s in and then replace it!

GPS Tracking for Photography

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 10:43:23 +0200

In preparation for a longer-than-usual upcoming trip, I swapped my Canon EOS 5D Mark IV for a Canon R6 Mark II. I feel RF has sufficiently matured for me to make the swap. I also took this opportunity to refine my selection of lenses based on my usage in past trips, resulting in a lighter total kit. There has been only one annoying downside: unless using the bulky external Canon GP-E2¹, there is no way to geotag the photographs in-camera. I do use this a lot to figure out where a shot was taken afterward when editing.

Intel Arc PCI Passthru using bhyve on illumos

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 14:25:59 +0100

A while ago I bought a second hand NVIDIA Quadro P1000 on eBay, it being a Low-Profile card, means it fits well in my 2U servers in my home lab.

This card has been used in my Plex Media Server VM for a while, although it is working well, it is a few generations old and does not support newer codecs like h265 and AV1.

Intel recently launched the Intel Arc A310¹ which does support all the newer codecs, additionally one can avoid the horrible mess that is NVIDIA drivers on Linux! The i915 driver in kernel supports Arc, assuming one is running a recent enough version.

Moving to hugo

Sun, 04 Dec 2022 17:38:59 +0000

It’s been nearly a year since my last blog post, oops!

Some good news though, I’m dropping WordPress in favor of hugo using the m10c theme. I have been using hugo + geekdocs with great success in my homelab for my little internal documentation site, so it seemed like a logical choice.

As you probably have not noticed, I did move everything from a SmartOS node hosted at So-You-Start to two OmniOS VM over at linode¹.

contact

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

If you’ve made it here, I guess you want to get in touch with me?

You can reach me in a few ways:

Look for me on the Libera network, my handle there is sjorge
Alternatively you can reach me via e-mail, info@<domain name from address bar>

Using VRRP inside a lipkg zone on OmniOS

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 21:13:59 +0000

I’m running a HA ldap setup however I keep hitting illumos issue #13326, hoping to mitigate this a tiny bit by using a VIP instead of multiple A records behind a ldap.example.org host name. (Sadly that doesn’t help as the connection state itself ends up in the bad state, but it did send me down the VRRP on illumos rabbit hole.)

Solaris 10 and therefore also the illumos decedents support VRRP for both IPv4 and IPv6, documentation on this is a bit sparse so hopefully this note dump is useful to someone, most likely myself in a few years. On OmniOS it’s pretty easy to get the required utilities.

FreeBSD, UART and Raspberry Pi 3 B+

Sat, 18 Aug 2018 18:55:19 +0000

If you are reading this because you, like me were lost and frustrated… I feel your pain. But let me try and help!

A few weeks ago I added a POE HAT to a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and installed FreeBSD to so I could build a remote access server. I also bough another Raspberry Pi 3B+ to replace by OrangePi Zero + USB uBlox 5 NTP server.

Unlike Raspbian it is surprisingly hard to stop FreeBSD’s kernel from grabbing uart0 for it’s console. Lets start with why you are probably here… how do I stop the kernel from doing this?

Remote Access Console using Raspberry Pi 3b+ and FreeBSD

Sat, 04 Aug 2018 16:49:51 +0000

Introduction

I have a small homelab and I was looking into some sort of KVM console to be able to access them both locally and remotely instead of moving around VGA cables/serial cables.

Those are rather expensive so I opted to build my own remote access system. Since all my servers and switch(es) have a serial console that should not be to hard.

I ended up using:

Raspberry Pi 3+
NavoLabs micro POE Hat
FT4232H based USB-to-RS232 (4x) adapter
Official Raspberry Pi case (optional)
Heat-sink kit (optional)
USB-to-TTL adaptor (optional)
Sandisk 16Gb microSD

For the software I ended up using conserver. Below is a very brief tutorial on how to set everything up. I assume you have basic unix skills.

SmartOS, would you like some Salt with that?

Thu, 26 May 2016 16:47:20 +0000

I was in the market for a configuration management and remote execution tool. After looking around I didn’t really find any I liked and also supported SmartOS (and illumos).

It quickly became clear that I would need to do some legwork. I’m by no means a great programmer and my language selection is mostly limited to Turbo Pascal, C#, and Java supplemented with shell script (~bash really), perl (long ago), and Python.

Advanced SmartOS Management Daemon

Fri, 24 Jul 2015 22:52:45 +0000

I spent the last 3 days yak-shaving. I had the intent of looking into deploying SaltStack to monitor my zones at home. Instead I give you asmd AKA “Advanced SmartOS Management Daemon”. Yes I should really get better at naming things.

So what is this asmd you speak of, you may ask? It is my one ~~python~~ bash script to replace them all. SmartOS wise anyway. As you know I run a few SmartOS nodes at home, you may also know I really try to push IPv6 everywhere. SmartOS does not support this. After a few months I had collected a few hacks to make my life easier, each had their own smf service… You could see my learning progression in them as the quality improved as I got more familiar with the SmartOS internals.

pkg.blackdot.be live, omnios.blackdot.be deprecated

Sat, 23 May 2015 14:24:16 +0000

My new package repo is now live!

I’m only targeting the current base64-lts release.
Currently only SmartOS is supported, although it should be compatible with OmniOS using the pkgsrc bootstrap available at http://pkgsrc.joyent.com/ some recent changes (epoll) seem to have broke them as SmartOS supports it but OmniOS and Nexenta Community both seem to be lacking it.

As of now omnios.blackdot.be is deprecated and no further updates will happen. Somewhere later this year it will go offline, I have no date yet but it will probably happen the next time I need to do a big round of updates.

pkg.blackdot.be enters alpha stages

Wed, 20 May 2015 06:41:28 +0000

As previously mentioned I will be deprecating omnios.blackdot.be IPS package repository soonish.

Work has started on pkg.blackdot.be, the initial set of packages is up. But most are untested and they need some more love. Once the packages are where I want them to be. I will start rolling packages for omnios also.

Check it out if you want to poke it. Although stuff will change and change often!

OmniOS package repo eventual deprecation

Sat, 18 Apr 2015 17:53:08 +0000

Just a heads up, somewhere later this year I will turn down omnios.blackdot.be and will bring up pkg.blackdot.be. There I will host a smaller selection of packages for use in SmartOS zones or on OmniOS once the illumos flavor of pkgsrc is installed.

Not sure when this will happen because I am currently changing jobs. More info will follow.

Running an NTP server under SmartOS

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 21:25:49 +0000

I wrote a wiki page on how to run a ntp server on SmartOS. There is a local copy here for in case the SmartOS wiki goes down at some point.

GPS backed NTP server

Running a NTP server on SmartOS

Background Information

I recently migrated my gateway to run ontop of SmartOS (OpenBSD in KVM zone), I used to feed it my serial GPS to get a better fix. This won’t work with KVM.

SmartOS and updates

Sun, 22 Mar 2015 20:06:05 +0000

As it comes as no surprise I migrated my hosting from ESXi Free to SmartOS a year or so ago. However every major update I spend an hour or so building a new zone from scratch to then switch over.

This is tiresome so now I’m working on a bootstrap script that will rebuild the zone for me from the data on a delegated dataset. So far 2/4 zones are done and this is AMAZING, a simple vmadm reprovision and all is set.

Very interesting read to start of the years.

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 17:09:27 +0000

Bryan Cantrill has some interesting thoughts about the last year.

Very much worth your time to read his blog entry 2014 in review: Docker rising.

I also get a mention which came as a huge surprise and honer!

Happy 2015 everyone.

OmniOS and Serial Console

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 10:18:28 +0000

Hey Folks,

Sorry for not updating more often, but I do not have that much to say. The wiki actually sees more information with me updating that as I go along or discover some small neat things! So please do check out the wiki also!

I had page on the wiki about setting up a serial console on OmniOS and other Illumos based systems like OpenIndiana.

Some improvements were made. But it boils down to a simple patch of console-login service to add 2 (or more) vt’s on the serial ports.

Sophos UTM 9.x USB install

Thu, 16 Jan 2014 10:26:16 +0000

Today I had to reinstall my gateway/firewall but I no longer had blank CD’s.

I usually prefer to use a USB key but the asg-9.x.iso from Sophos has some issues with this.
I fixed it in a few minutes by comparing the mounts in a VM when booting from an ISO and the mounts when booting from USB.

The problem is that the installer only tries to mount the cd rom and not USB keys to /install.

qemu(-kvm) monitor and serial console over sockets with minicom

Mon, 22 Jul 2013 22:11:10 +0000

It’s been a while again! Today I will briefly talk about qemu(-kvm) and connecting to it using unix sockets with minicom.

Why is this useful and cool? Well you can connect to a linux vm without running a shell and still get the full console experience! (BSD’s, Solaris,… all should work)

I won’t dig deep into qemu, I will assume you are at least somewhat familiar with it.
All you need to do is add the following flags to the command you use to start your VM.

Running OmniOS/OpenIndiana under ESXi hosted at OVH

Fri, 21 Jun 2013 20:49:44 +0000

It’s been a while since I posted but I only recently started tinkering with things again in my free time.
I travel a lot now for work so I spend some lonely nights in hotel rooms with no internet. I have time to play.

Anyway, I wanted to host a repository for OmniOS because I’m preparing to switch from OpenIndiana. I have some resources free on my ESXi server I have at OVH.

Moved, busy with work and Life

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 21:23:27 +0000

I’ve now moved to Mons. I still have some work to do in the apartment like hide my cabling mess. (Suggestions on where to find cable sleeves in Belgium are welcome.)

I’m pretty good and actually am more busy now in the weekends so I have less time to blog and play around than I like. But eventually I’ll go back to blogging.

Currently I have a few ideas as to what to write about. I will do them in whatever order I feel like but I would be open to do one first if there is demand for it.

Happy 2013

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:18:13 +0000

First of all I’d like to wish all my visitors a good 2013, may all your wishes come true.

I’m still very busy getting things in order for my move and start of my new Job on Monday! I also got a pretty nice Christmas card from CustomSLR! I was very surprised by that, even more so when I opened it! Not tried them yet but will on my next trip. These guys are seriously awesome!

I’m still around, but very busy…

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 21:05:32 +0000

A lot is happening right now, I hope to have my life stable again early next year.
Change is coming, but good change!

However due to this I’ll have to part with my dell T410, it is a pretty basic server. So no PERC raid controller. Just the case, CPU, memory and motherboard. No drives included.

I’m giving it away to anyone who wants to pick it up, I’m in the Antwerp area.

Still around but a lot I happening

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 15:29:39 +0000

I’m still around, but a lot is happening in my personal life at the moment.

I keep ending up with little time to spend on blog articles, it’s not that I don’t have ideas, I have a few actually. I just don’t have the time.

I’ve updated some bits here and there on the wiki. So also check out stuff on there.

I’ve also received a message that someone can’t access my site using chrome on windows, any body else have this issue?
Works fine for me on linux, mac and windows vista/7 with chrome.

Solaris wiki, SmartOS T-Shirt

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:55:45 +0000

I’ve been busy lately with various things. Can’t give a detailed update about it for now.
I have been slowly working my way through parsing my notes from my NAS installation and pulling useful snippets out of it. This was made more difficult due to my servers being offline due to a faulty 3-port NIC.

If you hit the solaris section of the wiki. You will see some new stuff, most are related to networking and one about changing your keymap.

Reverse Proxy and Hyperlinks

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 12:14:04 +0000

For work I was migrating an old undocumented reverse proxy configuration from 2.0 to 2.2. It contained some old perl scripts nobody understood and some strange bits here an there.

Long story short I started from scratch. I ran into the usual problems like redirects and hyperlinks being broken if they use full self referencing URL’s.

As it happened one of the perl scripts was there to fix those, it was ugly, unreadable and not very efficient.

Acer Aspire V5-571G

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 20:36:08 +0000

I bought myself an Acer Aspire V5-571G, to replace my aging netbook. I ended up going for Acer’s low-end ultrabook because it was only around 35 EUR more expensive than a AMD Fusion netbook, it comes with and i3 with IGP and an additional GPU. So bang for buck it was a clear winner.

I know when I got Acer the build quality is not that great, but for the price I payed and my intended abuse it was a bargain.

XMonad

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 15:37:38 +0000

I teased you all a while ago with my XMonad configuration. My Raspberry Pi and some other personal things have occupied my free time recently so I have not done any thing worth posting. So I finally took the time to wrap and tidy it up.

I decide to switch to XMonad because I recently revived my old netbook. It has a small screen resolution of 1024×600 so every pixel counts. I tried using XFCE, although I like it. I thought I could do better.

Tunneling over ICMP

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:00:40 +0000

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a bit. I usually VPN (to the gateway at home) for surfing when roaming. This also gives me access to my shellbox with my ssh key. You can usually connect to port 443 (https) on most networks, even those that force you to use a SOCKS or HTTP proxy.

However sometimes this is not possible. But if you are lucky you can still use ICMP. A simple check would be see if you can ping a server.

What desktop environment do I use?

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 18:53:18 +0000

Someone just asked what desktop environment I use. They didn’t like the new GNOME.
Those who know me well enough, will know I use a mac for my primary workstation. So I’m using aqua as my primary desktop environment.

I do run a lot of linux but none have xorg installed with the exception of my netbook. On my netbook I have a dual setup wit XFCE, because it reminds me of the good old days of GNOME. And an xmonad setup.

M-Plate Pro by CustomSLR

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 20:03:14 +0000

Last year I switched from a Lowepro Voyager C strap to a BlackRapid RS-Sport. I like this combo a lot, especially if I’m only carrying my Camera and not much else. However I recently Purchased a Crumpler Messenger Boy Stripes 8000 as my new smaller camera bag to take with me on my trips.

I had my RS-Sport hooked to a Manfrotto RC2-Plate using there conversion kit (FastenR-T1) this works well when carrying just the camera. However when using the Messenger Boy it became a hassle to always unhook my camera from the RS-Sport and store it. Storing it with the RS-Sport attached required just about as much effort.

Crumpler Messenger Boy 8000

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 19:12:31 +0000

While looking for a replacement for my Lowepro SlingShot (MBSTR8000-004 is no longer available). I was unable to find something that I liked and would work for me in their selection. My local camera store recommended the Crumpler Messenger Boy 8000, after a long search I finally found a place where I could order it. I found the color selection to be a bit lacking. However the brown with green one isn’t too bad.

Which Illumos distribution do I use?

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 15:37:12 +0000

While on Linux you sometimes have to pick between apples and pears (Oranges being just a bit too different). Picking an illumos distribution is more like picking dark or brown chocolate.

I’m currently using OpenIndiana and I’m overall very happy with it. However I have some issues with OI, being that KVM is more or less broken for me. (I did not experience this in OmniOS when testing.)

Updating a IPKG Zone

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 08:55:38 +0000

Here is a quick post on how to update a IPKG based zone on OpenIndiana and other illumos based distributions.
You cannot do this from withing the zone itself but this has to be done form the global zone.

zoneadm -z zonename halt 
zoneadm -z zonename detach 
zoneadm -z zonename attach -u

When the zone is re-attached it will be update. So the zone will be down for a few minutes.
This also made it to the wiki because I wasted a few hours trying to do this from withing the zone.

Z shell

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 03:05:57 +0000

I’ve been on the lookout for a bash replacement for a while. After seeing a small discussion about ksh and the closed and open implementation in #illumos, my interest got reinvigorated.

After playing with both csh, ksh and zsh for a while, zsh clearly won.
I won’t bore you with the details of how this selection went, but I will share with you my .zshrc.

Most of you probably don’t know but I have a wiki for my personal documentation, some of it is public like the article on z shell.

Solaris Antispoof / Link Protection

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 16:12:46 +0000

I’ve seen anti-spoofing mentioned on #illumos and #openindiana a few times but googling it turns up little information. Although I didn’t check it out until rmustacc’s adviced me to do so regarding a KVM IPv6 issue I’m facing.

After asking around about it and and some further research it also seems to go by the name of Link Protection in the Oracle Solaris documentation.

I only found this out by actually figuring out what I had to set using dladm and then googling the parameter.

Quick lookup of SMF log file

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:27:26 +0000

As mentioned in my previous Solaris related post, I’ve recently started using Solaris.

What I didn’t mention is that I briefly use Oracle Solaris 11 11/11, but quickly went to OpenIndiana. I personally did not like the way Oracle is doing things. Plus the added benefit of KVM and some extra goodies here and there.

I will now show you one of the neat things that will probably never make it into Oracle Solaris.

multi stage authentication using Apache HTTPd 2.4

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 19:28:40 +0000

Here is a short tutorial on how to setup a multi stage authentication with an Apache HTTPd 2.4 server.

The first stage will do a 2-way SSL encryption, so both server and client will need to present a certificate.
The second stage will be password authentication, the username has to match the username in the CN of the client certificate.

This is similar to the Belgian eID, instead of needing a PIN to unlock the certificate.
We require a certificate and a password. Although this is not 100% the same, the security it offers is comparable for most purposes.

Apache HTTPd 2.4 on RPM based distributions

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 06:48:19 +0000

I previously mentioned rpmbuild. I wanted to write a little post on what it does and how useful it is. But I though it would be easier to just show you.

So what is rpmbuild? It is a tool for building rpm packages based on a spec file. The resulting rpm should be close to the rpm provided by your distribution. I’ve used rpmbuild on both Fedora and CentOS to create Apache HTTPd 2.4 binaries that works as a drop in replacement for the system ones.

Corsair Vengeance 1500 Dolby 7.1 USB

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 10:31:19 +0000

I was looking for a new headphones/microphone combo. I’ve got a game PC again, so I play at night from time to time and keep my mother awake due to not having a headset.

I also needed something for Skype. For my Game PC I could use the on-board analog plugs. But things like watching movies and anime, listening to music,… I do from my MacBook Pro.

SSL Client certificate injection using reverse and forward proxies

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 21:12:21 +0000

Here is a little trick to connect to a server that requires a SSL Client certificate when your client does not support it.

To make it work your client must be able to use a proxy. We will use this proxy to rewrite certain servers to a reverse proxy that injects the client certificate.

Lets get to the good stuff!¹

Lets start with the forward proxy, this is what will be configured in your browser, webapp…

Welcome to Solaris, have a beer.

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 22:07:04 +0000

I’ve recently moved away from Linux to Solaris (OpenIndiana more specificly) for my NAS.

Although I like the Linux community, the Solaris one is totally different.¹

It’s not a huge community, to me this is part of the appeal. You see a fair amount of the same people in the channels of the respective open source projects and efforts. This is very pleasant.

Overall I find them all to be very helpful!

Fedora 17 Minimal

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 19:03:31 +0000

I have one Arch server left at home, it is behaving badly. It has some fairly new stuff on it so I can’t replace it with CentOS.

I should be able to replace it with a new Fedora. So I hunted for a minimal install image… nothing! Netinstall? Ofcourse not!

Fedora is a desktop OS, the idea that you don’t want a GUI seems alien to them 🙁

Oh well, nothing to do about it. Let’s give them what they want… then clean house. Hey it’s MY os!

Linux and I

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 22:55:01 +0000

As you have guessed, I’m a linux geek. I used to be of the bearded kind even.

So here is a bit of my history with linux for those who are interested.

It all started back in the day with my old Compaq laptop somewhere around 1999, ’t was the eve before Win2k. A Mandrake disk came with a computer magazine, my laptop was broken so I though I’d give it a try. Most things worked, aside from X11. Due to it being a laptop, it had bad support back in the day.

IPv6, Are you ready?

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 02:34:21 +0000

Some of you may have noticed, but most probably haven’t. All my important public facing services are now IPv6 ready!

DNS¹
HTTP(s)²
SSH
SSL VPN
IMAP
SMTP³

Congratulations, your mail system is IPv6 enabled!

Below comes info about the email that triggered this reply.

Your email was received at: Mon Jun 25 17:57:43 EDT 2012

But are you ready? You can check using test-ipv6.com.

Unfortunately the 2 biggest ISP’s in Belgium don’t offer native IPv6. You can however get a tunnel and a routed /64 subnet for free from many tunnel brokers. I’m a very happy user of SixXS, check them out if you need a tunnel!

451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 17:07:11 +0000

I recently came upon a IETF draft that was published a few weeks ago.

451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons

This status code indicates that the server is subject to legal
restrictions which prevent it servicing the request.

Since such restrictions typically apply to all operators in a legal
jurisdiction, the server in question may or may not be an origin
server. The restrictions typically most directly affect the
operations of ISPs and search engines.

Encoding and Reverse Proxy with Zimbra

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:51:01 +0000

I found myself facing a strange issue while moving from my simple all-in-one VPS server to a more roomy Kimsufi 16G running ESXi 5.0.

I only have one IPv4 address so I am using Sophos UTM 9’s Web Application Firewall to spread out some sites to different backend servers.
This is working fine, I did have to switch to basic protection for Zimbra Webmail but that’s really a non-issue.

However during the IPv6 push I made yesterday, Zimbra Webmail went FUBAR in Firefox. Worked fine in Chrome and Safari.
After about 3 hours of troubleshooting were I went over all the possibilities (Maybe Firefox mixed IPv4 and IPv6 requests, …).
I tried disabling IPv6 on my local UTM. Firefox worked again :S disabling IPv4 and forcing IPv6 was broken.

We are back!

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:22:08 +0000

We are back!

Sort of, I’m still migration from a single VPS to a set of VM’s.
This brings with it a new set of problems related to proxying and things breaking because of this.
Going full out IPv6 has not made it easy, there are a lot of strange things with IPv6 and Zimbra.

So here is some good and some bad news.

I will be updating the site more often.
It will still mainly focus on IT related things (Linux,Solaris,Apache,…).
Most of the old content won’t return.
I will not be releasing newer version of Apache x64 binaries for the 2.2 or 2.4 branches.

What exactly this will now evolve into, I can’t say for 100% as of now.
As you have noticed I switched to WordPress, my old own software was way out of date and I can’t invest the effort in updating it.
You will also have noticed I’m use one of the available themes. I like this one. But I will create my own after all other things are fixed and migration.
For now this will do.