JDPFu.com 2025

Was watching a talk from EuroBSDCon from a few days ago by Michael Lucas on TLS in 2021. You can find it YT link
Anyway, there were a few slides that really caught my attention,

Installed a pi-hole on the network here a few weeks ago. It is running inside an LXD container using next to no resources. Also set it up as the primary DNS server for the LAN here. It is not internet facing.

Anyways, after about 3 weeks, thought I’d share some data about the DNS queries it has been blocking by the types of network devices.

The Big Numbers

In the last 24 hrs, about 24,000 DNS queries have hit the pi-hole. That’s local and remote queries.
Just under 40% of the queries were blocked due to being in a block list. Most of the time, about 55% of the queries are blocked, so today my use was nicer, I suppose.

Computing & IoT devices need to have a few things printed on the box:

• Support EoL date
• Patch schedule
• What works without internet connectivity
• What requires internet connectivity to work
• List of all {domains|IPs}:{ports} required for each network connection
• List of protocols used for each external connectivity
• 2FA standards supported
• How new firmware is updated – USB flashing, network load, something else

Think of those items as the Nutrition Label on boxed foods.

What is missing from the Label?

Since Canonical decided to start pushing snap packages, many old Unix commands have had their output screwed up by snap loop device output. That output is meaningless almost always, so we usually don’t want/need to see it.

Below are my attempts to remove the snap crap output from commonly used commands. I’ve been shamelessly stealing some of these command options from people around the internet. Most end up as aliases for my shell. Hopefully, they will be useful to someone else.

Thanks to the people who posted these elsewhere. Not all of them work in all environments or even on all my own systems. YMMV.

df output:
alias dft='df -hT -x squashfs -x tmpfs -x devtmpfs'
I don’t want to see pseudo-file systems. Only works for mounted storage.

lsblk output:
alias lsblkt='lsblk -e 7 -o name,size,type,fstype,mountpoint'
Blocks loop devices but still shows some useful information for all connected storage.

fdiisk output:
sudo fdisk -l | perl -lne 'print if /^Disk \/dev\/[fhnsv]/ ... /\n\n/'
this one actually needs to be killed on one of my systems, but works fine on all the others. I tried not to include any LVM2 LVs, but that has failed. If using LVM2, best to stay with the full output and use pvs, vgs, lvs commands to see more details.
It should get floppy disks, IDE HDDs, SATA HDDs/SSDs, NVMe SSDs, and virtual machine storage devices. In theory. Please manually verify that it works for your storage before trusting it.

Have improvements or fixes? Please comment. I’m fairly certain they can be improved.

If you like this, check out my Quick System Overview Recently updated. But inxi is still pretty awesome.

I haven’t been a fan of snaps since the beginning. Why? Because they include all the dependencies in the install packages, AND those package versions are only used by the single snap/flatpak/appimage, the amount of waste is huge.

Snaps also have restrictions for which storage can be accessed. Snaps usually allow access to HOME and stuff under /media/, but nowhere else.
No, you can’t access NFS storage or CIFS storage that is mounted elsewhere.
No, you can’t access /tmp/.
I’ve found no way to override the compiled-in limitations.

How much disk and RAM waste is involved? An example, is the vidcutter tool. Normally, I’d use mkvmerge —split parts: to accomplish simple cutting, but sometimes a GUI is handy. The cuts will be on GOP boundaries anyway, so it isn’t like this is frame-accurate.

There are times when not using a GUI is a smart option.

Not everyone has the desire to read a book and slowly learn Unix/Linux in the formal methods that have been proven. After all, we all learn best by scratching a personal itch. Learning bash, sh, ksh, tcsh, zsh, fish, or any of the multiple other Unix shells isn’t any different. All of them are base on the Bourne Shell, sh, so they are usually similar. Almost all Unix systems today default to bash, the Bourne-again shell .

People are always looking for the shortest way to become fluent in different topics, including Linux. There aren’t any shortcuts. It takes time and active learning. Our minds need time to consider what we learn every day. New connections from things learned last week, last month, and last year are made as we learn new things this month.

Review these three links, in order …. Should take about an hour to get the core information.

• Linux for Windows people
• Linux is not Windows
• Some directed, learning a quality linux book That is a free, no-hassle, PDF book link.

You can always google for the Ubuntu Desktop Guide and/or Ubuntu Server Guide – these are written for beginners. Sadly, they leave out the why and only provide 1, simple, method for the how. They also cover many things that almost nobody should be using anymore. Things like setting up an FTP server when use of plain FTP should have ended in the mid-1990s. Stop Using Plain FTP .

Amazon Prime Video has free (for prime members) Ubuntu beginning videos. There’s something about seeing someone else do something that is really helpful.
Youtube has lots and lots of videos of different quality. #1 thing to learn is how tab-completion works. If you are typing more than 2-3 characters at a time, then you are probably doing it wrong.

The Linux Foundation has free online classes. These can also be seen on EdX.org as well.

Effort is required to learn a new OS, just like effort is required to learn a new spoken/written language. If you want something simpler, but still Linux, get a chromebook or a tablet running Android. Ubuntu and similar Linux distros are extremely powerful operating systems. 90% of the power comes from non-GUI stuff. Imagine all the things you do with typical GUI-centric OSes – and multiply that 9x – that’s the power of a Unix OS that can be accessed without any GUI.

Knowing the WHY, is important since thinking the Unix-way is a fundamental mind shift from using GUI-centric operating systems. Making the connections between each newly learned skill will help with the why. It does become clearer, over time.

It is common for new-to-linux users to complain that everything in Linux isn’t easy. What can I say. With great power, comes great responsibility.

A much longer version of my Learning Linux post with many more details.

At Southeast LinuxFest 2016, there was a pretty great set of Container Security presentations. I took notes on most, but not all of them. Actually, the most important presentation, my notes only say to re-watch the video when it becomes available. Sadly, the SELF guys have been really busy and it is 7 months later – no videos posted.

What are we going to do about that? ….

Watch Live OTA TV from your home from anywhere in the world – big deal, right? Well, it could be. Let me explain.

• No extra service provider needed.
• 1-time costs for equipment that works at home AND remotely from anywhere
• Get around sports blackouts with a friend outside the blackout areas. THIS is the biggy.

I’d love higher quality videos at lower file sizes. Who wouldn’t?
But the answer isn’t really that easy. We have hardware that needs to play the newer codecs and that is the issue for many people.