2.5 Admins - podcast cover

2.5 Admins

The Late Night Linux Family2.5admins.com
2.5 Admins is a podcast featuring two sysadmins called Allan Jude and Jim Salter, and a producer/editor who can just about configure a Samba share called Joe Ressington. Every week we get together, talk about recent tech news, and answer some of your admin-related questions.

Episodes

2.5 Admins 237: Kafkaesque

HP was forcing people to wait on hold for 15 minutes to get support, the DOGE site was embarrassingly insecure, setting up encrypted offsite backups, and mixing SATA and NVMe in a server. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Why FreeBSD is the Right Choice […]

Mar 06, 202532 min

2.5 Admins 236: Hybrid Admins Show

Arm is going to make its own server chips, WordPress is selling “100 year” domain registrations, geo-redundancy for VPSs, and backing up Windows to Backblaze B2. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Isolating Containers with ZFS and Linux Namespaces News Arm to launch its […]

Feb 27, 202534 min

2.5 Admins 235: XKCD221

Google found a way to run unofficial microcode on AMD CPUs, whether software should get a CVE when it goes end of life, LLMs changing Redditors’ minds and self-replicating, and managing SSH keys at scale. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes ZFS Orchestration Tools – […]

Feb 20, 202531 min

2.5 Admins 234: ChiaFraud

Used Seagate drives are being sold as “new”, another reminder not to hack Windows 11 onto unsupported hardware, about using ZFS on VPS block storage, picking hardware to run VMs, and delegating datasets to containers. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Controlling Your Core Infrastructure: […]

Feb 13, 202532 min

2.5 Admins 233: 2.005 Admins

We appreciate the elegance of subnets as well as the power of custom benchmarking, Xboxes will support large amounts of external storage, why it’s not looking great for bcachefs, malware and remote desktops, and our thoughts on Fortigate network gear. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes […]

Feb 06, 202531 min

2.5 Admins 232: S:

An embarrassing typo suggests that MasterCard’s monitoring isn’t as good as it should be, tricky offsite backups, why two-factor authentication over SMS is a bad idea, and keeping two Mac laptops in sync. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Klara Webinar, Feb 13th: RAID is […]

Jan 30, 202530 min

2.5 Admins 231: USB 3.2.2-ubuntu2

Microsoft didn’t control an important domain that it was using and end up red-faced, the dangers of using free VPN apps, a proof of concept exploit is out for last year’s SSH vulnerability, USB is getting slightly less confusing labels, and swapping the motherboard in a TrueNAS SCALE system. News Edgio bankruptcy results in […]

Jan 23, 202529 min

2.5 Admins 230: Pool of Theseus

A new version of ZFS is out and we go over the great new features. Plus recovering data after accidentally writing part of an ISO onto a USB drive, how to deal with abuse of your domain, and replacing all the drives in a ZFS pool while keeping the birth date. Plugs Support us […]

Jan 16, 202528 min

2.5 Admins 229: LiFePo4Life

Jim and Allan explain the benefits of a lithium iron phosphate “UPS”, whether it’s possible to delete every single copy of a file, and using Bluetooth in a Windows 11 VM. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Discussion Anker SOLIX C300 Anker SOLIX F3800 […]

Jan 09, 202529 min

2.5 Admins 228: Century-Scale Storage

What it would take to reliably store data for a hundred years including Institutional funding and organization, decade-proof redundancy, multiple hot and cold copies,hedging your bets against multiple media, and more. Plus backing up ZFS without normal snapshots. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes […]

Jan 02, 202530 min

2.5 Admins 227: Six Day Certs

Windows ssh is sending more telemetry than you might think, Let’s Encrypt will offer 6 days certificates, a PSA about domains that don’t send emails, and performance issues in a Synology NAS. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Winter 2024 Roundup: Storage and Network Diagnostics […]

Dec 26, 202429 min

2.5 Admins 226: Quantum Toddle

Chinese researchers are making progress with quantum computing but they haven’t broken modern RSA or AES encryption, Russian attackers compromised a business via a nearby building’s WiFi, a startup runs out of money and bricks a robot for kids, and hardening Linux systems. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed […]

Dec 19, 202435 min

2.5 Admins 225: Kinetic Response

The US government tells people to use encrypted messaging, mandated MFA in healthcare raises a scary geopolitical question, QNAP bungles a firmware update, and securing access to self hosted applications with mTLS. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Deploying pNFS file sharing with FreeBSD […]

Dec 12, 202430 min

2.5 Admins 224: ZipLocked

Intel’s CEO departs but replacing him won’t magically solve its serious problems, Zipcar wasn’t prepared for an outage and handled it really badly, moving to an email provider that supports DMARC, and picking a NAS distribution. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes ZFS Ask Me […]

Dec 05, 202430 min

2.5 Admins 223: Google Juice Abuse

Equinix is shutting down its bare metal service, D-Link advises people to dump old vulnerable routers, Google makes changes to how it ranks some affiliate-driven “reviews”, and data caps seem to be sticking around. Plus mixing different brands and types of disks, using other partitions on a ZFS drive, and scaling a fleet of FreeBSD […]

Nov 28, 202431 min

2.5 Admins 222: Surprise Upgrade

Windows server unexpectedly upgrades major versions, Microsoft reinvents the idea of a thin client, restricting a friend’s access to just their backups, and the importance of warranties when buying hardware. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes DKMS vs kmod: The Essential Guide for ZFS on […]

Nov 21, 202430 min

2.5 Admins 221: Two Firewalls

Jim and Allan discover modern charging tech and marvel at what’s possible in the USB-C era, more on IPv6 firewalls, using ZFS like Git, and running your own authoritative DNS server. Automox Check out the brand new Autonomous IT podcast. Listen in as a variety of experts in the IT […]

Nov 14, 202436 min

2.5 Admins 220: Get a Job

How using a copy-on-write filesystem like ZFS can get systems back online within seconds after ransomeware encrypts all your data, and even warn you more quickly that it’s happening. Plus Jim and Allan’s advice on getting a job as a sysadmin. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early […]

Nov 07, 202431 min

2.5 Admins 219: Spooky Stories

It’s Halloween so Jim and Allan share horrific and spooky stories from their sysadmin careers. Plus picking a UPS for a homelab. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Klara: NAS: Maintenance Best Practices See our contact […]

Oct 31, 202433 min

2.5 Admins 218: TLS TTL

SSL certificates are likely going to last less time, the latest Windows 11 update leaves a huge chunk of data behind and doesn’t play nicely with some SSDs, picking a modern dhcp server on a homebrew router, and storing encrypted backups on a friend’s NAS with ZFS. Plugs Support us on patreon and get […]

Oct 24, 202431 min

2.5 Admins 217: Drive Scavenging

The difference between monitoring and metrics analysis, the security pros and cons of cloud vs on-prem, why Jim and Allan don’t use Unraid, and cloud storage and email for a small company. Feedback Netdata Nagios ZFS and Unraid Free consulting We were asked about cloud storage and email for a small company. […]

Oct 17, 202432 min

2.5 Admins 216: Pa55w0rd%

NIST has finally proposed some sensible password standards, why server CPUs with high core counts make sense in a lot of deployments, the .io TLD is probably sticking around, and the best options for a Linux-based router. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Klara Halloween […]

Oct 10, 202430 min

2.5 Admins 215: Still no VLANs

Why cold storage is never as good as keeping your data warm and regularly tested, how the American air traffic control system became so outdated, and isolating your devices from a roommate’s shenanigans. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Music industry’s 1990s hard […]

Oct 03, 202430 min

2.5 Admins 214: No VLANs

A proposed solution to the WHOIS TLS verification problem gets a surprising amount of pushback. Plus isolating IoT devices, our thoughts on Ubiquiti gear, setting up WiFi in a new house, remote access with WireGuard, and our mini PC recommendations. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes […]

Sep 26, 202430 min

2.5 Admins 213: Photo Philosophy

The Malaysian government’s misguided plan to control its citizens’ DNS, the wrong way to deploy underwater servers, a philosophical question about how long a person’s photos will exist, and how we manage our SSH keys. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Malaysia’s plan […]

Sep 19, 202430 min

2.5 Admins 212: WHODIS

A surprising way to exploit the WHOIS system, Microsoft will force old versions of Windows 11 to update, and the simple way to set up TP-Link Omada gear. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News Rogue WHOIS server gives researcher superpowers no one should […]

Sep 12, 202429 min

2.5 Admins 211: Open Sourceless

Another example of the downsides of abstraction, whether AI can ever be truly “open source”, and the security benefits and drawbacks of different types of VPN. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Hackers infect ISPs with malware that steals customers’ credentials Debate over […]

Sep 05, 202430 min

2.5 Admins 210: Ryzen Up

AMD will patch some old Ryzens against SinkClose now, but their benchmarking methods for newer CPUs didn’t live up to everyday reality. Plus Bcachefs devs annoy Linus Torvalds, the US government sues a college over compliance issues, and Jim disappoints a patron. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with […]

Aug 29, 202431 min

2.5 Admins 209: Faulty Defaults

Insecure SSH implementations and a weak key that let a researcher control 200 MW of electrical capacity reignites the debate about versioned protocols vs pluggable protocols, follow-up on sharing files from your LAN with people on the Internet, and the pros and cons of encrypted backups. Plug Support us on patreon and get an […]

Aug 22, 202430 min

2.5 Admins 208: All CPUs suck

Forcing Windows to undo updates and a separate IPv6 vulnerability, hardware bugs in AMD and Intel CPUs, and using Samba on Linux with Active Directory. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News Your victim’s Windows PC fully patched? Just force undo its updates and […]

Aug 15, 202430 min