While setting up my new Ubiquiti Unifi WiFi access points, I spent more time than I’d like to admit troubleshooting my new guest network before I got it to work, so that topic is the basis for this post. The problem I encountered turned out to be completely trivial and I’ll spend a paragraph further… Continue reading VLANs with Linux, NFTables and Ubiquiti Unifi
Category: Linux
Deploying a Ubiquiti Unifi appliance with Ansible
I finally got tired of my old 802.11n Apple Airport Express(!) that has been serving the kitchen part of our house with an Internet connection for many years. Effectively it tops out at ~100Mbps speeds and has pretty poor range. It is being replaced by a Ubiquiti Unifi6 Lite access point. In preparation for this,… Continue reading Deploying a Ubiquiti Unifi appliance with Ansible
DNS, DDNS, and DHCP on a Linux router – Part 2
(Update 2022-07-15: I have set up a Git repository containing the example files used in this post to simplify understanding of the file and directory structures.) In a previous post I described how to set up a simple and efficient router and perimeter firewall on just about any computer. What I kind of glossed over… Continue reading DNS, DDNS, and DHCP on a Linux router – Part 2
Reordering systemd services
Use case As I still only have one public IP address I run my private mail server behind an HAProxy instance. At the same time I use Postfix on my servers to provide me with system information (anything from information on system updates to hardware failures). Naturally the mail service listeners in HAProxy collide with… Continue reading Reordering systemd services
Build your own router with nftables – Part 1
Introduction A few years ago, Jim Salter wrote a number of articles for Ars Technica related to his “homebrew routers“. Much of what he wrote then still stands, but time marches on, and now that I rebuilt my home router, I figured the lessons should be translated to a modern Ubuntu installation and the more… Continue reading Build your own router with nftables – Part 1
Reflections on Proxmox VE
I’ve now been using Proxmox VE as a hypervisor in my home lab for a couple of years, and as I’ve reverted to plain Ubuntu Server + KVM, I figured I would try to summarize my thoughts on the product. Proxmox VE can be described as a low-cost and open-source alternative to VMware vSphere with… Continue reading Reflections on Proxmox VE
Email address tags in Postfix and Dovecot
What if you could tag the mail address you provide when registering for various services to simplify the management of the inevitable stream of unsolicited mail that follows? If you could register myname+theservicename@mydomain.tld it would make it very easy to recognize mail from that service – and it would make it easy to pinpoint common… Continue reading Email address tags in Postfix and Dovecot
IPv6 guests in KVM
I’ve been experimenting with IPv6 at home, and spent some time trying to get it working in my virtual machines. The first symptom I got was that VMs got a “Network unreachable” error when trying to ping6 anything but their own address. The cause was a complete brainfart on my side: We need a loopback interface… Continue reading IPv6 guests in KVM
Frustrations in Ubuntu 18.04
My first frustration with Ubuntu 18.04 came yesterday. I created a template VM with my basic toolkit that any machine in my network should have. I then deployed the VM and asked vSphere to set the hostname to the value of the VM name. Strangely, this didn’t happen: The new machine booted up alright, but… Continue reading Frustrations in Ubuntu 18.04
Transport security with Postfix
I had a “Face: Meet Palm” moment today, and as usual when that happens, I learned something new: What happened was that I noticed that mail from a Postfix server I use for sending mail from a couple of domains was marked with the red “no encryption” label rather than the expected grey “standard encryption”… Continue reading Transport security with Postfix