VLANs with Linux, NFTables and Ubiquiti Unifi

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

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

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

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

ZFS backups in Proxmox

I’ve been experimenting with using ZFS snapshots for on- and off-site backups of my Proxmox virtualization environment. For now I’m leaning towards using pve-zsync for backing up my bigger but non-critical machines, and then using syncoid to achieve incremental pull backups off-site. After the initial seed – which I perform over a LAN link –… Continue reading ZFS backups in Proxmox

Head: Meet Wall.

I spent way more time than I’m comfortable disclosing, troubleshooting an issue with an AD-attached Oracle Linux server that wouldn’t accept ssh logons by domain users. We use the recommended sssd and realmd to ensure AD membership. Everything looked good, and I could log on using an account that’s a member of the Domain Admins… Continue reading Head: Meet Wall.