Understanding ZFS block sizes
ZFS is about the most complex filesystem for single-node storage servers. Coming with its sophistication is its equally confusing “block size”, which is normally self-evident on common filesystems ...
Debugging Proxmox VE Firewall Dropping TCP Reset Packets
A few days back when I was setting up a new VM to host some extra websites, I noticed an unexpected Nginx error page. As I don’t administer the new websites, I just added reverse proxy rules on the...
Running a dual-protocol OpenVPN/WireGuard VPN server on one port
Public Wi-Fi and some campus network typically block traffic from unauthenticated clients, but more often allow traffic targeting UDP port 53 to pass through, which is normally used for DNS queries...
Prolonging eMMC Life Span with Proxmox VE
Since my blog on installing Proxmox VE on eMMC, there’s been a lot of discussion over the Internet on this. I suspect that Proxmox decided not to include eMMCs in their hardware options by design, ...
LVM metadata exceeds maximum metadata size, now what next?
An LVM volume group (VG) on our Proxmox VE cluster has failed to create new logical volumes, reporting that its metadata was full. At first this appears to be easy, “fine I’ll just add more space f...
Centralized Linux authentication with OpenLDAP
LDAP, the #1 way to get your graduation delayed (as has always been the meme around Tsinghua University), is every SysAdmin’s dream tool for their servers. As mighty as its rumors fly, LDAP takes t...
Install Proxmox VE on eMMC
Recently I bought a mini PC looking forward to setting up a home router. It started quite well except the specs were higher than I anticipated. 8 GB RAM plus 128 GB eMMC - too much waste for “just ...
New Pandora’s box: Install Linux and Windows onto the same NTFS partition
Linux 5.15 is shipped with a brand new driver for Microsoft’s classic NTFS filesystem, NTFS3. Unlike the decades-old open-source NTFS-3G project, which is based on FUSE and have always received cri...