BSD Cafe Wiki

rudi

rudi (rudi@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-04-03T17:37:58+00:00

Hi!

I am an Autistic Mainframer with experience in z/OS, Unix, Linux, z/VM, and vintage IBM Operating Systems. Typically I am interested in topics relating to security and hardware efficiency with a fascination for computer history and why computers are specialized as they have become.

In 2019 I graduated from SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica, NY with my Bachelor of Science in Computer and Information Science. For a few years I was contracted by SUNY PI to redesign the services offered by the Computer Science Department. In lieu of a traditional capstone project, the Department itself became my capstone. We offered services for students and professors to use for classes and projects including: web hosting, in-house VPS hosting and management, responsive firewall protection, advanced email capabilities, hosted databases, VPN access, shared (NFS) storage, in-house standard distro, bulk lab management, a common development environment (SSH) and hardware purchasing. I still maintain a homelab based on the project but now integrated with IBM Mainframes and other modernization efforts.

Previously I've worked in the private sector for Lolay, Inc and contracted with the Federal Government at AFRL in Rome, NY. Currently I work for NYS Office of IT Services as an IT Specialist 3 working with IBM Z Systems and Db2 Administration. In my role I have the privilege to advocate for accessibility and data transparency. Check out Open Data for more!

In my free time I enjoy working on S370 related projects like PUBVM and HFVMVS. I also run z/VM and z/OS at home from IBM's Student Software Catalog on Raspberry Pi via Hercules. When not writing HTML and CSS using XEDIT on PUBVM, I enjoy building utilities for finance, automation, and data entry in COBOL or Go. My GitHub has some projects, but because of some vintage systems not all of my source is available in Git.

marios

marios (marios@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-04-02T18:44:29+00:00

Welcome!

Introduction

I'm Marios Efstathiou, and I am passionate about my work and profession, bringing industry-wide experience in systems administration, network engineering and cybersecurity.

Unix Enthusiast { #FreeBSD, #NetBSD, #OpenBSD, #GNU/Linux, #Debian }

I am also an open-source advocate

To contact me, please send me an e-mail to marios-efstathiou [at] outlook [dot] com or, better yet:

Follow me on the Fediverse (Mastodon)

More will be revealed ...

start

stefano (stefano@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-04-02T15:50:18+00:00

Welcome to the BSD Cafe!

We’re excited to serve you the best flavors of BSD, including FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonflyBSD.

But if you prefer Linux, you’re welcome here too!

Our Services

Here are a few services we're working on recently:

Fediverse, Social and Communication Services

https://mastodon.bsd.cafe - up & running
https://snac.bsd.cafe - up & running, sign up and more instructions here
https://blendit.bsd.cafe - up & running - the service will be terminated on 1st May 2026
https://billboard.bsd.cafe - up & running
https://matrix.bsd.cafe - up & running, sign up and more instructions here

Documentation, Information, and RSS Services

https://journal.bsd.cafe - The BSD Cafe Journal - Multi-author news, articles, tutorials, and insights about the BSD and open source world.
https://wiki.bsd.cafe - working on it - running
https://miniflux.bsd.cafe - RSS Reader - up & running, sign up and more instructions here
https://freshrss.bsd.cafe - RSS Reader - up & running, sign up and more instructions here
https://press.bsd.cafe - Wallabag, save your web articles and allows you to read them later - up & running

Coding

https://brew.bsd.cafe - Git server, powered by Forgejo - up & running

myip.bsd.cafe - check your own ip (v4 and v6) via http, https, ssh or telnet - up & running
ntfy.bsd.cafe - ntfy server

Future ideas

Service Requests - you can request a service and keep track of the other users' requests
More to come…

More details and technical details about how we create and manages services can be found here

Our Contents

The BSD Cafe is more than just a community; it's a repository of knowledge and experience shared by BSD enthusiasts. Dive into our namespaces to discover, learn, and contribute.

Docs

Read the docs that our users will produce or link, and learn more about the BSD-related world! → Explore Docs

Reviews

Discover in-depth reviews of BSD-related software and hardware, including detailed discussions on hardware compatibility. Our community shares their real-world experiences with various setups to help you understand what works best with BSD. Whether you're building a new system or optimizing an existing one, these insights can guide your decisions. → Explore Reviews

Tutorials

Whether you're new to BSD or a seasoned sysadmin, our 'Tutorials' namespace offers step-by-step guides to enhance your BSD mastery. From basic setup to advanced tweaks, there's something for everyone. → Start Learning

Users

The 'Users' namespace is the vibrant core of our BSD community. Each member has a public profile page to showcase their BSD journey and a private space for personal drafts and notes. It's a place where BSD users from around the globe can share profiles, experiences, and personal projects. Dive into the collaborative spirit and contribute to our shared knowledge in the public namespaces. → Learn About User Spaces

Our Meetings

Looking to unwind and chat with fellow BSD enthusiasts in a relaxed atmosphere? Look no further! Our weekly meet-up offers the perfect opportunity to kick back, grab a virtual pint, and dive into all things BSD. The BSD Pub is the late time version of the BSD Cafe where we can have a relaxing athmosphere in the evening - just like sitting in the pub and chatting to random people about anything.

Meet the Barista

Meet Stefano Marinelli, the Founder, System Administrator, and guiding spirit of BSD Cafe. Discover more about the 'Barista' of our community!

Offer a Coffee at BSD Cafe

By supporting BSD Cafe, you're not just contributing to a platform; you're nurturing a vibrant community. Your generosity helps us sustain and enhance our services, ensuring that BSD enthusiasts worldwide have a welcoming and supportive home.

You can use both Ko-fi or Liberapay: BSD Cafe Ko-fi page and BSD Cafe Liberapay page

Over the past few months, some people have asked whether it would be possible to donate something to BSD Cafe using crypto. As an experiment, we opened a Monero wallet to see how it goes. If anyone would like to make a donation in Monero, the address is: 82ZTWAe5njHMng5g4c1x3hDs1X552q9yobiJtsbo8R3mcUzx3gBfqxciqZ3kkjZ8reMnFEN9nRvw4467eoknsFmbFe9DJm7

Stay Informed with Our Service Status

To ensure you're always in the loop regarding our service availability and any ongoing issues, feel free to visit our Status Page.

Here, you'll find real-time updates and historical data regarding the uptime and performance of all our platforms and services.

We're committed to transparency and swift communication to ensure your experience with BSD Cafe remains seamless and reliable.

bsdcafe-technical-details

stefano (stefano@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-04-02T15:49:47+00:00

BSD Cafe - Technical Details

Currently, the infrastructure of BSD Cafe relies entirely on FreeBSD, with both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity.

The base setup is divided into jails:

A dedicated jail hosts Nginx, serving as a reverse proxy. It manages certificates and directs traffic. This is also serving the https://element.bsd.cafe Matrix web client
Another jail contains a small ~~OpenSMTPD~~ Postfix server, handling email dispatch internally to avoid external service reliance.

The https://mastodon.bsd.cafe instance is structured as follows:

A jail holds Valkey, essential for communication among Mastodon services - the nervous system of BSD Cafe.
Another jail runs Valkey for the Mastodon cache
Another jail runs PostgreSQL, serving as the database - the memory of BSD Cafe.
There's a separate jail designated for media storage, acting as the 'multimedia memory' of BSD Cafe. This jail resides on an external server with rotating disks ~~behind Cloudflare~~. There are reverse proxies located in various parts of the world that receive and cache requests, serving them from the nearest server. The goal is to use georeplicated caching of multimedia data to reduce bandwidth consumption. The selection of reverse proxies is handled at the DNS level through a PowerDNS LUA script. More details have been documented here: Building a Self-Hosted CDN for BSD Cafe Media
Two jails host the Mastodon application itself, including sidekiq, puma, and streaming components. This is where all processing and connection management occur. They're running in different hosts and are both providing some sidekiq queues and one of the two is set as a backup puma and streaming server when the first one (more powerful) is down. This is useful when updating, to avoid downtime.

https://wiki.bsd.cafe is confined within a single jail and runs the nginx, php and (of course) the DokuWiki CMS.

https://journal.bsd.cafe is a FreeBSD jail running MariaDB, Apache, php - for Wordpress

https://miniflux.bsd.cafe is structured similarly, contained within a single jail, housing both the Miniflux software and PostgreSQL. In this case, we utilize a local installation.

https://freshrss.bsd.cafe is a single jail service, housing both the FreshRSS stack (Apache and PHP) and PostgreSQL.

https://matrix.bsd.cafe is structured similarly, contained within a single jail, housing both the Synapse software, PostgreSQL and the Whatsapp bridge. In this case, we utilize a local installation.

https://billboard.bsd.cafe is composed of three FreeBSD jails: one for Redis, one for PostgreSQL and one for NodeBB

https://blendit.bsd.cafe is composed of two FreeBSD jails: one for PostgreSQL, and the other contains the rest (the frontend in Node and the backend in Rust).

https://press.bsd.cafe is a FreeBSD jail running all the stack for Wallabag: nginx, php, postgresql, valkey.

https://brew.bsd.cafe is a FreeBSD jail running PostgreSQL, KeyDB and Forgejo.

https://snac.bsd.cafe is a FreeBSD jail running Snac2. Only a few strict Snac2 dependencies have been installed.

https://ntfy.bsd.cafe is a FreeBSD jail running ntfy, compiled for FreeBSD

https://status.bsd.cafe is a FreeBSD jail running Uptime Kuma. This will monitor the other services' reachability and lives in an external VPS.

All communication takes place through a Wireguard routed setup. More details here: https://it-notes.dragas.net/2024/08/01/evolving-bsd-cafe-from-bridging-to-routing/

Some network statistics are available at https://netstats.bsd.cafe

Backups are systematically generated via ZFS snapshots and externally replicated across two distinct machines located in separate data centers, different from the production VPS data center.

g0o53 - Automatic creation by User Homepage plugin

g0o53 (g0o53@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-03-13T04:20:26+00:00

Matthew (g0o53) - Public Page

This public page user:g0o53.txt, as stated by it's name, can be read by anyone but only you can edit it (or a superuser)…

You can introduce yourself, add links to your contributions in this wiki, tell a story or present your other works
Think about netiquette

Limitations:

You shouldn't create any other page in that namespace user:g0o53
Only a superuser can add a picture

Feel free to remove this paragraph (beside the title)…
Now, write something!

grahamperrin - Removed my FreeBSD committer history.

grahamperrin (grahamperrin@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-03-01T16:55:46+00:00

Graham Perrin (grahamperrin)

Until recently, I had two cats – Bill and Pickle. Bill was maybe nineteen years old when I said goodbye to him on 31st December 2024. My first two cats were named Cat, one of them lived happily until the age of twenty-one.

Crushingly dull obligatory tech history follows. Former Mac user (1992–2014; AppleSeed programme member 2009–2014). The GUI of OS X 10.10 Yosemite drove me away from Apple. I gradually switched from OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks to PC-BSD. Then TrueOS, then FreeBSD-CURRENT. In the midst of all that, something with FreeBSD in September 2012 … probably toying with 9.0 on a PowerPC iMac with failing graphics hardware. Not because I was a glutton for punishment (like, the horror of a command-line loader, and the certainty that hardware was failing) – because there was nothing good to be done with the Mac, and I was curious about non-Apple alternatives to Microsoft Windows.

Essentially:

KDE Plasma on FreeBSD-CURRENT since around 2015
Kubuntu since mid-2025.

I try to take a conscientious approach to security issues. CVD, responsible disclosure, and all that. CVE-2009-0014 et cetera.

Bill and Pickle were largely responsible for discovery of a security issue that involved a comedy of errors, and eventual discovery of an old “fixed” bug that's not truly fixed for many users of FreeBSD. Whilst I can't draw attention to the public comedy (it's not entirely amusing), here's a two-point overview:

https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/111377465852217006
https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/111421799789564704 explaining the cats' role in discovery.

Sidestep away from the cats. To me, and where I hang out:

I'm dyslexic, reportedly. It probably doesn't show in my writing. Long story.

Avatar in places such as Codeberg: from the cover of the 1970 edition of The Worlds of Frank Herbert (credit: Jan Parker). If you're vaguely disconcerted by detached heads and shoulders in a serene alien landscape, you should tremble in fear at the detached head sometimes encountered by people like me on planet Earth.

Mugshot in places such as GitLab: from a 2018 holiday in Greece.

Avatar in places such as GitHub and BSD Cafe: a bunny rabbit. Partly because it's less confusing than a 1970 vision of a faraway planet, but more because:

bunny rabbits.

Think about them. Think: bunny rabbits. Feel better? I do.

Footnote: bunny rabbits tried valiantly, ultimately failed, to spread happiness at the Forums.

I joined in 2012, quit in June 2022, rejoined in October 2023. All profiles, including mine, are hidden from the public. The May 2024 transformation – from Graham Perrin to Cath O'Deray – was:

largely for giggles (avatar: a cathode ray tube) whilst continuing to provide technical support – with screenshots, as one might expect from a CRT TV screen
harmonious with whims of the intolerant, narrow-minded ignoramus clique that insists upon “The Power To Serve” without the modernity of serving links to a twenty-first century Internet that exists beyond The FreeBSD Forums.

Readers with a sense of humour might note that Cath's primary occupation was Tube. Her secondary occupation, not divulged during her time there: Statistical Analyst – a five-month contract, which involved removal of a few hundred links to the Internet. (She didn't pay attention to all 8,000+ comments, only the subset that was found through normal web browsing.) Conclusion:

links to the FreeBSD subreddit – one of the clique's irrational obsessions – formed less than 0.005% of what's now gone.

Analyses complete, I quit, for the second time, in October 2024 – https://forums.freebsd.org/tags/absence/. I suppose that mean-minded bloodsuckers will continue to infect the place – I'm thankful that those emotionally ugly suckers are so miniscule a part of the community, but more thankful that I quit before they bled me dry.

passthejoe - Automatic creation by User Homepage plugin

passthejoe (passthejoe@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-02-04T17:54:32+00:00

Steven Rosenberg (passthejoe) - Public Page

This public page user:passthejoe.txt, as stated by it's name, can be read by anyone but only you can edit it (or a superuser)…

You can introduce yourself, add links to your contributions in this wiki, tell a story or present your other works
Think about netiquette

Limitations:

You shouldn't create any other page in that namespace user:passthejoe
Only a superuser can add a picture

Feel free to remove this paragraph (beside the title)…
Now, write something!

idigitemb - Automatic creation by User Homepage plugin

idigitemb (idigitemb@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-01-19T09:44:55+00:00

DigitEMB Inc (idigitemb) - Public Page

This public page user:idigitemb.txt, as stated by it's name, can be read by anyone but only you can edit it (or a superuser)…

You can introduce yourself, add links to your contributions in this wiki, tell a story or present your other works
Think about netiquette

Limitations:

You shouldn't create any other page in that namespace user:idigitemb
Only a superuser can add a picture

Feel free to remove this paragraph (beside the title)…
Now, write something!

bsdcafe_logo.png - created

stefano (stefano@undisclosed.example.com) — 2024-05-12T10:35:28+00:00

favicon.ico - created

stefano (stefano@undisclosed.example.com) — 2023-11-06T19:58:16+00:00

bsdcafe_banner_avg.jpeg - created

stefano (stefano@undisclosed.example.com) — 2023-11-06T09:44:23+00:00

logo.png - created

stefano (stefano@undisclosed.example.com) — 2023-11-06T09:31:01+00:00

logo.png - created

stefano (stefano@undisclosed.example.com) — 2023-11-06T09:29:03+00:00