<p>On my Windows machine, I’ve mostly moved from using separate virtual machine products like Hyper-V or Virtualbox to have access to a Linux machine to using WSL. The PC is dual-boot with a separate Linux install anyway, but sometimes I just want to quickly fire up a Linux machine, take care of a couple of quick tasks and go back to Windows.</p>
<p><em>Update 2021-12-18: It looks like the rdiff-backup port has been removed from the FreeBSD ports tree, so installing it via the port is definitely not an option anymore. Also, the method described below works on FreeBSD 13.0 as well.</em></p>
<p>I’ve blogged about <a href="https://www.lonecpluspluscoder.com/2019/01/21/setting-up-my-own-vpn-server-on-vultr-with-centos-7-and-wireguard/">setting up a WireGuard VPN server</a> earlier this year. It’s been running well since, but I needed to take care of some overdue maintenance tasks. Trying to log into the server this morning and I am greeted with “no route to host”. Eh? A quick check on my Vultr UI showed that the VPS had trouble booting. The error suggests a…
<p>As an IT consultant, I travel a lot. I mean, <em>a lot</em>. Part of the pleasure is having to deal with day-to-day online life on open, potentially free-for-all hotel and conference WiFi. In other words, the type of networks you really want to do your online banking, ecommerce and other potentially sensitive operations on. After seeing one too many ads for VPN services on bad late night TV I finally decided I needed to do something about it. Ideally I intended to this on the cheap and learn…
<p>My adventures with Manjaro Linux continue and I’ve even moved my “craptop” - a somewhat ancient Lenovo X240 that I use as a semi-disposable travel laptop - from XUbuntu to Manjaro Linux. But that’s a subject for another blog post. Today, I wanted to write about package download performance issues I started encountering on my desktop recently and how I managed to fix them.</p>
<p>I’ve been a Xubuntu user for years after switching from OpenSuse. I liked its simplicity and the fact that it just worked out of the box, but I was getting more and more disappointed with Ubuntu packages being out of date, sorry, stable. Having to rebuild a bunch of packages on every install was getting a little old. Well, they did provide material for all those “build XXX on Ubuntu” posts. Recently I’ve been playing with <a href="https://manjaro.org/">Manjaro…
<p>I normally don’t play much with hardware, mainly because there isn’t/wasn’t much I want to do that tends to require hardware that’s not a regular PC or maybe a phone or tablet. This one is different, because no self-respecting geek would want the usual rotary control “programmable” timer to run their sprinkler system, would they?</p>
