vifino's ramblings - attempt #34
Hey! I'm vifino. § This is my (current) blog where I post everything that I consider worthy of sharing. I have a tendency to forget about it even existing. Mostly filled with random guides or experiences doing things I'm not supposed to be doing. Interests § LED Matrices, Showlasers, DMX/sACN/ArtNet.. Blinken dot Life, hello!? Networking and Notworking. BGP, IS-IS, MPLS, 100G…
SSD firmware is still firmware § Like all firmware, NVMe SSD firmware also has a big chance to contain bugs, missed optimisations and other quirky behaviour. Many vendors just let you download new firmware for non-OEM devices - Intel, Samsung and Kioxia are in that group. Bootable ISOs! Crucial also lets you update the firmware, but some drives only get newer firmware via a Windows-only utility…
A Tale of Two Webcams § Ah, webcams. Plug 'em in, show your face. As if it wasn't bad enough that we still have to pay absurd sums of money for webcams that barely manage to output 1080p30, using sensors even a no-name smartphone manufacturer wouldn't dare to put in their device, even if you actually pay the premium and get a 4K webcam, you're still getting fucked over. In…
Oh Junos, oh Junos! Show me your poems! § Much like many other bored programmers slaving away at their keyboards, Juniper Developers that work on Junos decided to add a few easter eggs. One of which is rather commonly known, but one I believe to have found that isn't widely known, if known at all. show version and haiku § This one is the well known one. Just log on to any Junos device and and…
Serial Ports § Ah, yes, the network admin's best friend. A Serial Port. While serial ports come in many varieties, the most common standard is RS-232 (or rather the modern variant of it). It describes communication between a DTE (Data Terminal Equipment) and DCE (Data Communication Equipment). The distinction is important as the wiring for the DB-25M or DE-9M differed for each end. However,…
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) § sigh Every major (Internet) Company has something with "Cloud" in its portfolio nowadays. Oracle is - of course - no exception. I've never heard of their OCI until recently and only because they offer FREE STUFF!! Their [Free Tier] includes quite a bit of resources, of the current offering, the most relevant to me are the following: Two AMD Compute VMs…
Foreword § This is probably going to be a series of regularly updated posts trying to pass some knowledge about how to do your best at being a member of the Internet. These posts are also explicitly talking about eBGP with other networks instead of internal routing, though some information might still be applicable. As I learn more about that myself, I'll update this post with some general…
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. § Time is important. Debugging between machines will become a pain if the timestamps are incorrect. With OpenBSD , a serial port and a Meinberg clock module, like the DCF600HS (or older COM52HS ), you can create your own stratum 1 time server, receiving the DCF77 longwave time signal! If you do not have a good serial port, a USB FTDI adapter will do as well. Not sure if…