2.5 Admins 317: Need Less

Supermarkets found out why their fridges shouldn’t be on the Internet and Samsung smart fridges broke after a firmware update, why we don’t recommend MoCA, some tips for running ethernet cables in your house, and why it’s fine to use a short TTL with your domains.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes Biggest ZFS Misconfigurations and How to Fix Them: Part 2   News/discussion Hackers heat French supermarket fridges, sparking fires and spoiling food The username is admin and the password changes every day automatically to.. the current date Freeze the Controller, Defrost the Food: Uncovering Vulnerabilities in Danfoss Refrigeration Controllers Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges   Free consulting Example coax cable tester             See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

Why batteries in homes could benefit everyone involved, why we didn’t bring up wake-on-LAN when someone asked about keeping a NAS powered on as little as possible, building a router vs buying one, and ways to manage ssh connections.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes Biggest ZFS Misconfigurations and How to Fix Them: Part 1   News/discussion How I kept cool with NYC’s free battery program for window AC units               See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

Google offers a few pennies to web publishers to make up for stealing their content and not sending them any traffic, the tech we’d try to use after the apocalypse, why Jim doesn’t virtualise his clients’ desktops, and setting up Volume Shadow Copy so your users can restore their own files.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes FreeBSD: The Hidden Cost of Upgrading in Production   News/discussion Google’s early attempt to pay websites for AI answers is struggling                 See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

The challenges of funding open source software projects, how Netflix uses FreeBSD in a positive way, why you shouldn’t try to complicate your monitoring, and running servers in a small residence.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes Why Is Everyone Stuck on FreeBSD 13?   Discussion Netflix Case Study               See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

Microsoft really wants you to update your Exchange server, our thoughts on immutable distros, more on Jim’s approach to internet access for his kids, restricting access to servers on a corporate network, and cloning and backing up operating systems with ZFS.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes OpenZFS User and Developer Summit 2026: October 27-30   News Microsoft to bounce mail from outdated Exchange servers                 See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

Some of the ways you can mitigate the ridiculous hardware prices, and designing a small business LAN.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes FreeBSD’s Release Cycle: What It Means for Your Upgrade Schedule   Free consulting We were asked about designing a small business LAN.                 See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

A BGP hijack involved some basic errors, Microsoft teaches people to ignore warnings in Windows, Zoom appears to be reading the clipboard on X11, why a non-US open certificate authority is feasible in theory, and keeping a NAS powered on as little as possible.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes Send us an email   News/discussion BGP hijack infecting networks caused by a comedy of errors that’s not funny at all Windows bug incorrectly tells users that Microsoft Defender Antivirus is turned off I noticed today that an update to the #Linux #Zoom client has made it start proactively reading _everything_ written to the X11 clipboard   Free consulting We were asked about keeping a NAS powered on as little as possible.                 See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

What to read into a study of long-term Backblaze hard drive failure data, why the difference between TB and TiB matters, and what to do about an overheating host bus adapter.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes ZFS vs Ceph: Choosing the Right Storage Architecture   News/discussion Peer-reviewed study of 443,000 Backblaze hard drives ranks HGST most reliable and Toshiba the least — Analysis of 1.66 million drive-years finds Seagate and Toshiba HDDs fail at roughly twice the rate of WD and HGST Changing Language for Storage Capacity   Free consulting We were asked about an overheating host bus adapter.                 See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

A TV station struggles to retrieve its data from the data centre company that a defunct intermediary used, why we don’t want AI to manage our networks (even if Microsoft thinks we should), and understanding vdevs, and datasets in ZFS.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes OpenZFS User and Developer Summit 2026 CfP is open until September 11 FreeBSD Security in Production: Vulnerability Response and Operational Best Practices   News/discussion Nine PBS sues Iron Mountain over blocked access to archival data Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data The patch window is collapsing: Why security needs a new control plane   Free consulting We were asked about pools, vdevs, and datasets in ZFS.                 See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

Microsoft claims that Windows 11 will work well with 8GB of RAM, some of the innovations coming to high end SSDs, the arguments for TP-Link Omada over Ubiquiti UniFi.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes FreeBSD Support: Greatest Hits   Discussion Microsoft says 8 GB of RAM should be enough for anyone running Windows 11 Windows quality: an update on the commitment we made in March   Free consulting We were asked about the arguments for TP-Link Omada over Ubiquiti UniFi.                 See our contact page for ways to get in touch.