I recently installed NetBSD for the first time, on a remote VPS. All was fine, I installed pkgin, got some packages installed, installed openssh-portable, got my firewall rules set and so on. Having used FreeBSD and OpenBSD before it was a little different, but not too different.
Then one day, or rather late at night I found I needed to install some X11 sets and fired up sysinst. It being late, I did not read everything very carefully, but quickly found "re-install sets", "custom installtion", and then the X11 sets at the bottom of the menu. I selected them and started the installation.
It took a little longer than expected, and I noticed it was reinstalling base for some reason. No worries I thought, I hadn't touched that in the few days the system had been running, so it shouldn't be a problem.
Then when everything was finished, I noticed things were not working as expected. I think I managed to kill the sshd listening daemon and couldn't start it again. Then I noticed /etc/rc.conf was blank, so I had no network configuration, no sshd startup, no nothing. It seems /etc had also been replaced with defaults.
So by my lonesome, I had quite quickly managed to make quite a mess of things. Fortunately I did not reboot as was my first intuition when I found things weren't working. Sshd from packages required another script which had been replaced, the original sshd I had set to listen on another port which wasn't allowed through current firewall rules and so on.
Sorry for the boring ending, but it was all fully recoverable from my one ssh connection that fortunately didn't drop. Got network configured again, got firewall set up and started, got correct sshd started and so on. Then reboot, and all was good. Thanks to good documentation and easy configuration.
And that is why I #RUNBSD Even being completely new to #NetBSD it was easy to recover.
I've re-tried sysinst after the fact, and now see base, /etc and so on will be re-installed by default if you don't uncheck them, so now I know.
As 2024 comes to an end, it’s time to reflect on what we’ve built together during the first full year of life for BSD Cafe. Launched on 20 July 2023, this project has grown far beyond what I could have imagined. While I haven’t tracked full uptime data, I can confidently say that the downtime was less than 30 minutes overall - even though the main VM hosting our services moved multiple times (including a switch from a Proxmox hypervisor to bhyve on FreeBSD, for the sake of alignment with our mission). In a world filled with over-engineered HA systems, we’ve outperformed many “big-name” cloud providers. Not bad for a community project, right?
For me, this has been an incredible journey. The users here are not just participants - they’re collaborators, and their positivity has been inspiring. The content shared and created at BSD Cafe has been valuable not only to the BSD community but beyond. What truly sets BSD Cafe apart is the openness for dialogue and exchange. Whether it’s social media posts, Matrix discussions, repositories in our brew, or RSS feeds, people seem to genuinely appreciate what we create and the conversations we foster.
BSD Cafe is a journey - one that grows, evolves, and continues. Our goal isn’t endless growth (we’re a community, not a business) but rather to maintain a welcoming, inclusive space where everyone feels a sense of positivity and belonging. For me, opening any service with “bsd.cafe” in the domain brings joy and pride. That’s the spirit I’ve tried to convey, and I hope it resonates with all of you, whether you’re active BSD Cafe users or friends of the community.
Promoting self-hosting and #OwnYourData has, as a side effect, inspired some users to “go solo” with their own setups. But even then, they remain part of BSD Cafe - in spirit, in purpose, and in connection.
Here’s a look at what we’ve achieved together this year:
- mastodon.bsd.cafe: 370 total users Active in the past month: 207 Active in the past six months: 286 - snac.bsd.cafe: 14 total users Active in the past month: 7 - blendit.bsd.cafe: 61 registered users - matrix.bsd.cafe: 23 users - brew.bsd.cafe: 29 users - 80 repositories - freshrss.bsd.cafe: 25 users - miniflux.bsd.cafe: 11 users - press.bsd.cafe: 9 users - myip.bsd.cafe: Constantly used by various users - wiki.bsd.cafe: Could use a bit more love and content, but it fulfills its role as a functional homepage. - tube.bsd.cafe: Still in testing - Peertube 7.0 update is on the way.
For detailed stats from our reverse proxy and general router (excluding media services, which generate most traffic but are handled via caching reverse proxies), you can check here - updated hourly: netstats.bsd.cafe
The journey of BSD Cafe continues, and I look forward to seeing where 2025 will take us. Together, we’ve built something special - something driven by passion, shared purpose, and a little bit of the BSD magic that makes all of this possible.
Here’s to a new year full of joy, serenity, and connection. Thank you for being part of this adventure.
Wishing you all a fantastic 2025 - and THANK YOU! Stefano
Interesting 🤔 how #CVE are leveraged as resume items, putting #programmers #developers & project leads under pressure by #bogus CVE reports or unnecessary high CVE ratings.
Brought an old Atom-PC running #netbsd back online, upgraded to 9.3, and compiling @libreoffice. It may take a few more days to build this puppy. Yes, I could use precompiled pkgsrc packages but I wanted to watch this paint drying.
