FreeBSD
FreeBSD troubleshooting, storage, networking, virtualization, ports, and operations notes.
FreeBSD Articles
Technical notes and guides tagged under FreeBSD.
Using tcpdump and Wireshark: Linux and FreeBSD Network Capture and Analysis Guide
Capture network traffic on a headless Linux or FreeBSD server with tcpdump, save it as a pcap file, and review the results locally in Wireshark.
- Linux
- FreeBSD
- Networking
- Troubleshooting
- Security
Understanding NginX’s sendfile Parameter and Its Implications with NFS
In the world of web servers, NginX has emerged as a robust, high-performance option, powering some of the most trafficked sites on the internet. It’s...
- FreeBSD
- Linux
- NFS
- NginX
- Performance
- sendfile
- Web Server
ZFS failed to read pad2 area of primary vdev
There are number of issues that can lead to this error when trying to boot a FreeBSD server with ZFS as root / zroot: ZFS failed to read pad2 area of...
- FreeBSD
- partitioning
- systems administration
- ZFS
- ZFS Boot
- zroot
FreeBSD OS Update Mirroring (freebsd-update)
Currently there is unfortunately no official way to mirror the OS updates that the freebsd-update downloads, however we have just open sourced our tool...
- FreeBSD
- freebsd-update
- maintenance
- systems administration
FreeBSD vs OpenBSD: Which is Right for You?
FreeBSD vs OpenBSD: Which is Right for You? FreeBSD vs OpenBSD. Which is more secure? Which is faster? Which is generally superior? Both have their...
- FreeBSD
- OpenBSD
- Performance
- UNIX
FreeBSD vs Linux: Which Open Source OS is Superior?
FreeBSD vs Linux: Which Open Source OS is Superior? FreeBSD vs Linux, which is superior? The answer isn’t so simple. Both have their strengths and...
- FreeBSD
- Linux
- Performance
- systems administration
SOLVED: linker_load_file: /boot/modules/openzfs.ko – unsupported file type
While trying to recover and upgrade a FreeBSD install we ran into an issue where the kernel loader would hang when loading openzfs.ko: linker_load_file...
- FreeBSD
- ZFS
SOLVED: FreeBSD nfsv4 client/server protocol prob err=10026
While working with high-load and high-lock contention NFSv4 with FreeBSD as the NFS client you may see this error and have the NFS mount hang: nfsv4...
- FreeBSD
- NFS
SOLVED: FreeBSD 12.2 ZFS: can only boot from disk, mirror, raidz1, raidz2, and raidz3 vdevs
After upgrading a file server to FreeBSD 12.2 this last week we ran into an interesting issue where the boot loader immediately errored with the following...
- booting
- error
- FreeBSD
- GPT
- ZFS
SSH Pipe Speed 48 KB/sec FreeBSD 12 PF
We recently ran into an issue after upgrading a server from FreeBSD 11.2 to 12.1 where throughput via SSH pipes would crash to 48 KB/sec almost instantly...
- FreeBSD
- networking
- Performance
- PF
- SSH
FreeBSD Jenkins ERROR: Failed to parse POMs
We recently ran into an issue where the version of Maven under FreeBSD wasn’t updated enough (ports/pkg was behind) for the version of Jenkins in...
- FreeBSD
- Java
- Jenkins
- Maven
Expand ZFS To Use Larger Disks / Free Space
One of the great features of ZFS is to be able to expand it using new, larger disks — even while it is online. To do this you’ll replace each disk...
- FreeBSD
- ZFS
Debian 8 Under Bhyve Networking Problem: Packets Over 230 Bytes Truncated
We’re a big fan of FreeBSD’s Bhyve hypervisor, including writing an open source lightweight management interface for it called BMT. While setting up a...
- Bhyve
- Debian
- Debian 8
- FreeBSD
- networking
- VirtIO
HOW TO: Windows 10 Under Bhyve /w FreeBSD 11
Windows 10 installing on a FreeBSD 11.0 Bhyve VM With FreeBSD 11 comes a new version of Bhyve with a feature that makes installing Windows 10 a snap: a...
- Bhyve
- FreeBSD
- Windows
- ZFS
SOLVED: FreeBSD + pip + virtualenv = file not found
We love python virtual environments, but under FreeBSD we occasionally see issues where pip is not correctly using the /usr/local/include and...
- FreeBSD
- Python
- systems administration
NginX “service nginx upgrade” / kill SIGUSR2 results in shutdown() failed (54: Connection reset by peer)
Huge thanks to Ganbold Tsagaankhuu who finally got to the bottom of this issue. NginX is a great web server, and is built from the ground up for high...
- FreeBSD
- NginX
- OpenSSL
ZTE Falcon Z-917 via USB with pfSense and FreeBSD
One of the things on our list has been to setup a proper dedicated cellular backup system setup here at the office. This was harder than it seemed due to...
- cellular
- FreeBSD
- Internet
- pfSense
- T-Mobile
- UNIX
FreeBSD Hangs on “Trying to mount root from zfs:zroot”
There are many reasons this can happen, but this one I believe is unique in terms of searching the internet for the error. We’d see a newly imaged (or...
- booting
- FreeBSD
- ZFS
FreeBSD / pfSense on a Zotac ZBox: link state down and ‘re0: watchdog timeout’ errors
Recently we purchased a Zotac ZBOX-CI321NANO to replace our existing pfSense PC which was in a much larger case. There are a few variations but ours has...
- firewall
- FreeBSD
- networking
- pfSense
- systems administration
Poudriere “Error: Invalid port origin ‘/usr/local/sbin/pkg’ not found”
This was quite the random error I ran across this week and could not find anything similar or a solution. After years of faithfully building our FreeBSD...
- FreeBSD
- poudriere
Logentries (logentries.com) Under FreeBSD
Logentries is a SaaS service which lets you stream logs (and lots of other things) from multiple locations and servers for review and processing on their...
- FreeBSD
- Logentries
- logs
- monitoring
- rc.d
FreeBSD Hardware RAID vs. GMIRROR vs. ZFS
The ultimate storage shootout! With years of building and testing servers in various configurations we have always suspected hardware RAID was not all...
- FreeBSD
- gmirror
- Performance
- RAID
- SSD
- UFS
- UNIX
- ZFS
FreeBSD Compatible USB 3.0 PCIe Cards
While looking to add USB 3.0 ports to two servers which had no motherboard ports we tested out two different cards: Syba USB 3.0 PCIe x1 2.0 Card –...
- FreeBSD
- hardware
- USB 3.0
Review: Velocity Solo x2 PCIe 2.0 x2 SATA 6 Gbps
Add an SSD to your already full 1U rackmount server! Recently A-Team Systems deployed a number of 1U rackmount servers with four hot-swap SATA bays, all...
- FreeBSD
- rackmount
- SSD
SOLVED: _openpam_check_error_code(): pam_sm_acct_mgmt(): unexpected return value 4
While diagnosing a server that I couldn’t SSH into using my LDAP account I ran into the below errors. I had seen it before but couldn’t remember what...
- FreeBSD
- LDAP
- PAM
SOLVED: Performance Issues With FreeBSD ZFS Backed ESXi Storage Over NFS
Update November 14th, 2016: This is an old article but my recommendation to hack the NFS file still stand even given how inexpensive small SSDs are. An...
- ESXi
- FreeBSD
- NFS
- VMware
Using powerd(8) To Increase FreeBSD Performance By Over 10%
Modern Intel CPUs employ a technology called TurboBoost which works in conjunction with Intel’s SpeedStep technology to temporarily overclock specific...
- FreeBSD
- Performance
- SpeedStep
- TurboBoost
HOW TO: FreeBSD Partition Alignment for RAID, SSDs & 4k Disk Drives
Last Updated January 21st, 2017. This article is really popular, I’ll do my best to keep it up to date! I’ve added notes about enabling TRIM support...
- 4k drive
- FreeBSD
- GPT
- partitioning
- Performance
- RAID
- SSD
HOW TO: Installing FreeBSD with gmirror (software RAID 1) and the GPT partitioning scheme
Last Updated November 14th, 2016: Updated to include that this works under FreeBSD 11.0 as well. Really anything between FreeBSD 9 and 11 should work...
- FreeBSD
- gmirror
- GPT
- partitioning
- RAID
HOW TO: FreeBSD rc.d Script for Atlassian Confluence
Below is a simple but effective script to bring Atlassian Confluence under control of FreeBSD’s rc.d script system. This is designed for Confluence in...
- Atlassian Confluence
- FreeBSD
- rc.d
HOW TO: CPU, Disk, Network and Memory Usage Reporting via FreeBSD’s bsnmpd(1) and bsnmp-ucd(8)
Out of the box, FreeBSD’s default SNMP daemon bsnmpd(1) does not support the UCD-SNMP-MIBs which is where all the “good stuff” like CPU, disk...
- FreeBSD
- SNMP
SOLVED: FreeBSD vmware-guestd6 Port Fails To Start
I also to run across this error when working with certain FreeBSD VMs (FreeBSD 7 and 8.0, 8.1). I think the vmware-guestd6 port is missing a dependency...
- FreeBSD
- port
- VMware
SOLVED: FreeBSD vmware-guestd6 Port Install Error
I seem to run across this error when working with certain ESX based FreeBSD VMs (FreeBSD 7 and 8.0, 8.1). My suspicion is that the VMWare tools image that...
- FreeBSD
- port
- VMware