About 7 months ago, I left Nginx and moved to Caddy. I've found it super easy, and have now experienced using it as a reverse proxy, a static site server (this one!), as well as a hosting a handy place for me to copy my favourite Kaomoji.

Update 2021-01-20: I had a bug! By default, Caddy serves this without a Content-Type header. However, the RFC specifies that the response should be explicitly Content-Type "text/plain". Thanks to klausenbusk for letting me know!

Note: the Caddyfile fragment to generate https://shrug …

TrueNAS, and FreeNAS before it, has supported UPS via the NUT software package since forever. But most people using it seem to be using USB-connected UPS devices. I don't have one of these. I'm dealing with an IPv4-based APC ups, specifically the Smart-UPS X 1500 (SMX1500RMI2UNC), with an AP9631 NMC2 card.

You're probably here because you're in the same boat: trying to set up a non-USB or Ethernet-based UPS under FreeNAS/TrueNAS, and you can't. You've noticed the TrueNAS console will not shut up about errors which read something like …

Inkbird were having a special in November, so I got a sous vide for Christmas! There are heaps of places with recipes for the best sous vide eggs, most notably the always-outstanding Serious Eats, but also an excellent write-up on Salt Pepper Skillet, and of course sous vide manufacturer Anova Culinary with a somewhat briefer post.

I submit to you that none of these are the best sous vide eggs. In my eyes, the best egg has a completely opaque white (not rubbery and not snot), with a semicooked gooey …

Logs of your client DNS queries can be a really good tool for incident response. I've finally got this implemented but it was much more of a struggle than I expected it to be, so here's my story!

We've got a pfSense firewall running as a DNS fowarder, and a Zentyal server running BIND9 as the authoritative local server. The firewall rules block all UDP/53, so all DNS queries go either directly to the firewall, or (more commonly) to the Zentyal server for resolution. This means we have two …

I've loved daal (or dal or dahl or dhal etc) since my trip to India in 2019... Ugh, that seems so interminably long ago now, in the final weeks of the long decade of 2020. Anyway.

So there's this recipe I've followed a handful of times. I like it, it's similar to what I enjoyed while travelling through Jaipur, but it doesn't really kick the same way that the food in India did, so I always find myself tweaking it. The base recipe came from https …

I really like iRedMail, and I also really like Lynis.

However, they don't exactly like each other... or, more accurately, some of Lynis' recommendations can cause a couple iRedMail components to fail. Today we're talking about SpamAsassin.

One of the suggestions from Lynis is to turn off the 'execute' bit on compilers for users who aren't either the owner or in the owner group (the 'other' execute bit). For example:

root@server:/# chmod o-x /usr/bin/as
root@server:/# chmod o-x /usr/bin/gcc

Easy peasy! But once you do …

If you've been running iRedMail for a while, eventually you'll probably start seeing 'user unknown' events in your daily logs:

* Backup all users' data under /var/vmail/backup/sogo/2020/11/01
<0x0x5574a64c36b0[SOGoCache]> Cache cleanup interval set every 300.000000 seconds
<0x0x5574a64c36b0[SOGoCache]> Using host(s) '127.0.0.1' as server(s)
2020-11-01 09:29:12.784 sogo-tool[29749:29749] user 'abdulm' unknown
2020-11-01 09:29:12.786 sogo-tool[29749:29749] user 'bent' unknown
2020-11-01 09:29:12.786 sogo-tool[29749:29749] user 'brettr' unknown
2020-11-01 09:29 …

A couple of months ago, the team at my day job asked me to write something for Mental Health Awareness Week, so today I'm sharing some of my personal experiences around depression. It's one of my longer articles, but the key message I want you to hear is: If you're struggling, speak with someone. Seriously, just lean over to your mate now and say "Hey, did you see that article from Eric today?" – that's all it takes to start a conversation, and believe me: sharing your feelings is a solid …

Previously I've been frustrated that the CSS in the Pelican Flex theme doesn't centre images. However, I'm only one user with one use-case, so I haven't raised a pull request.

Instead, I've finally gotten around to creating a quick-and-dirty sed string to fix the minified CSS file:

sed -i 's/}img{max-width:100%}/}img{max-width:100%;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;display:block}/' style.min.css

I also like my caption text to be italicised and centered, so I extended this a little:

sed -i 's/}img{max-width:100%}/}img{max-width …

Some friends and I have been working on our own version of Army Dreamers, by Kate Bush. The original version is replete with instruments, including a prominent Mandolin, some background violins, a synth of some sort, and even the sound of a rifle being racked. Since we're two guitarists, a bassist, and a singer, there's quite a bit of arranging to do to make it work.

Although there's plenty of tab around for the mandolin part, that's only a few notes, with the violin part kicking in immediately afterwards. I …