FreeBSD 13: Fixing the installer "Failed to configure bootloader" error with Manual Partitioning and UEFI

 Posted on November 29, 2020  |  1 minutes  |  135 words  |  Neel Chauhan

On my laptop (HP Spectre x360 2018), I decided to install a second FreeBSD install, this time on the Intel Optane drive. When I proceeded to install, I chose manual partitioning, and while it finished extraction, it proceeded me to this error: This happened to me on a recent 13-CURRENT. I don’t believe it happened on earlier snapshots or 12.x. I had this issue with both UFS and ZFS partitioning. [Read More]

Setting the IPv6 TTL/Hop Limit on FreeBSD

 Posted on September 4, 2020  |  1 minutes  |  202 words  |  Neel Chauhan

My current wireless service is T-Mobile and I use a unlocked (Google Store edition) Google Pixel 3 running LineageOS. I am a heavy user of tethering, and unlike Sprint (switched pre-merger), T-Mobile checks for the TTL to count for hotspot bandwidth if TTL<=64 (can be bypassed with TTL=65 on a laptop). My personal laptop happens to run FreeBSD, so I initially thought that setting net.inet.ip.ttl sets both the IPv4 and IPv6 TTL, since at the time I didn’t see a net. [Read More]

Fixing FreeBSD pkg errors when running "pkg update" on Microsoft Azure

 Posted on June 1, 2020  |  2 minutes  |  371 words  |  Neel Chauhan

I work at Microsoft, and with that, I get free Azure credits. Considering where I work, I have no use for FreeBSD at work, only Windows. However, I spent seven years of my life prior to getting $DAYJOB using FreeBSD, going back to high school and basically built my personal setup on it. I haven’t bothered to switch my personal desktop or home server to Windows (yet*), so I’ll create a FreeBSD VM in Azure and try to update it. [Read More]

Use dummynet in a VM? High latency? Set kern.hz to 1000

 Posted on May 22, 2020  |  1 minutes  |  173 words  |  Neel Chauhan

As a hobby, I play with software routers in virtual machines (always FreeBSD). One recent project of mine was to emulate DSL bandwidth and latency in a VM, from varying bandwidths of 1.5 Mbps (ADSL) to 50 Mbps (VDSL2). By default, when using FreeBSD on a hypervisor, the kern.hz tunable is set to 100. This is to prevent additional CPU use from idling. But dummynet recommends kern.hz=1000 which is also the default on physical hardware. [Read More]

Using Office 365 Mail on Android With 2FA Without Outlook or InTune

 Posted on January 12, 2020  |  2 minutes  |  334 words  |  Neel Chauhan

I’m a recent Microsoft hire. That being said, it’s obvious that they’re using Office 365’s Hosted Exchange for their email, which is a departure from G Suite at NYU and CacheCash, and my personal FreeBSD/Postfix/Dovecot setup. Like many big companies, Microsoft requires 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) for logging in to company resources. Well, okay, I done this before. But then, to use corporate email “officially”, I have to use not only Outlook, but also the InTune App, which “manages” my device. [Read More]

A Simple IPFW In-Kernel NAT Setup on FreeBSD

 Posted on December 25, 2019  |  3 minutes  |  451 words  |  Neel Chauhan

After graduating college, I am moving from Brooklyn, NY to Redmond, WA (guess where I got a job). I always wanted to re-do my OPNsense firewall (currently a HP T730) with stock FreeBSD and IPFW’s in-kernel NAT. Why IPFW? Benchmarks have shown IPFW to be faster which is especially good for my Tor relay, and because I can! However, one downside of IPFW is less documentation vs PF, even less without natd (which we’re not using), and this took me time to figure this out. [Read More]

OPNsense/pfSense on the HP T730: Use Broadcom NICs, not Intel

 Posted on November 21, 2019  |  2 minutes  |  348 words  |  Neel Chauhan

I recently picked up an HP T730 as my OPNsense firewall, mainly to repurpose my previous HP ProDesk as a desktop. With that, I also initially tried an Intel NIC primarily because the de-facto NIC choice for OPNsense/pfSense is in fact Intel. To my surprise, the T730 froze with the Intel-based NICs I tried, both igb and em based cards. Many people have reported on pfSense’s subreddit that certain Intel-based NICs actually do freeze on the T730. [Read More]

Installing GENI Tools/Omni on FreeBSD

 Posted on September 4, 2019  |  2 minutes  |  272 words  |  Neel Chauhan

I have been asked to use GENI to test some software I have written at CacheCash/NYU. To communicate with GENI, you usually use a tool called Omni. FreeBSD has been my choice of desktop operating system since 2012, and since I am using my personal machine, my work is being done on FreeBSD. However, Omni only supports Python 2 while FreeBSD’s default version of Python is Python 3. Not that a default of Python 3 is a bad thing (I think it’s a blessing), but some additional steps are needed to install run Omni in this case. [Read More]

Fixing the "Segmentation Fault" error when installing OPNsense on the HP T620 Plus

 Posted on July 5, 2019  |  2 minutes  |  242 words  |  Neel Chauhan

I have gotten a HP T620 Plus as a firewall box, replacing a Chinese “Mini PC” which barely handles my 300/300 Verizon FiOS. The T620 Plus is a very popular choice in the pfSense world, however I wanted to go with OPNsense. One issue with the T620 Plus with OPNsense is that when you attempt to install, you get a segmentation fault in the installer. From forum posts, many other people have had this issue with HP and non-HP hardware. [Read More]

FreeBSD (or Linux) doesn't boot on a HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen10 when using "Smart Array SW RAID Support" in UEFI mode

 Posted on June 10, 2019  |  2 minutes  |  325 words  |  Neel Chauhan

Note: I am using FreeBSD as the operating system in the article, but the information should be generic to Linux or any non-Microsoft operating system. This should also apply to most other current HPE ProLiant servers (as of 2019) other than the MicroServer (UPDATE: Don’t own one, but this article should apply to the new MicroServer Gen10 Plus as well). I recently got a Xeon 4108 HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen10 to replace my MicroServer as a home server along with two 1TB hard drives to run in ZFS RAID. [Read More]