Category Archives: GNU/Linux utils

Various GNU/Linux utilities and their usage examples

FreeBSD: Home NAS, part 11 – extended monitoring with additional exporters
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10 February 2026

In the previous post FreeBSD: Home NAS, part 10 – monitoring with VictoriaMetrics and Grafana, we configured VictoriaMetrics, node_exporter, Grafana and created a basic dashboard and basic alerts. Now, I want to add a bit more monitoring – to see process CPU/RAM data, SMART information, and ZFS details. Everything written here has been added to… Read More »

FreeBSD: Home NAS, part 9 – data backup to AWS S3 and Google Drive with rclone
5 (1)

22 January 2026

In the previous post of the Home NAS on FreeBSD setup series, we got acquainted with restic – a utility for working with backups that supports encryption, snapshots, and change history; see FreeBSD: Home NAS, part 8 – backup of NFS and Samba data with restic. However, in addition to archival data in S3, I… Read More »

Arch Linux: “mysterious” DNS timeouts and “in search of the Ethernet truth”
5 (1)

20 January 2026

For a couple of months now, my work laptop, a Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 running Arch Linux, has been having trouble opening new websites – for the first 10-15 seconds, the site loads in “pieces”, for example: But then it “wakes up”, and everything starts working perfectly: Finally, when I started setting up a… Read More »

FreeBSD: Home NAS, part 7 – NFSv4 and use with Linux clients
5 (2)

5 January 2026

The next step in the process of setting up a home NAS on FreeBSD is to add an NFS share. We set up Samba in the previous part – now we let’s add NFS shares to it. My idea is for the Samba share to be used for various media resources requiring access from phones… Read More »

FreeBSD: Home NAS, part 5 – ZFS pool, datasets, snapshots, and ZFS monitoring
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27 December 2025

Continuing the “for fun and profit” journey of setting up my home server with FreeBSD on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M720s SFF. And today, finally, we will do the main part – set up a ZFS pool on real disks, look at working with datasets, encryption, snapshots, and monitoring. All posts in this blog series: FreeBSD:… Read More »

FreeBSD: Home NAS, part 2 – introduction to Packet Filter (PF) firewall
3.7 (6)

24 December 2025

I’m continuing to gradually set up my home NAS on FreeBSD, and the first thing I want to dive into is FreeBSD firewalls. I used to work with IPFW back in the day – FreeBSD: initial setup of IPFW, from 2012. Currently, there are three “built-in” firewalls in the system – Packet Filter (PF), IP… Read More »

Linux: saving laptop’s battery energy
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19 November 2022

This time it became interesting to me – is it possible to somehow save the charge of the laptop battery? Not to say that it discharges quickly, it is enough for 5-6 hours of work, but it will not be too much, especially with the current power outages in Ukraine. Found several utilities, and will… Read More »

Kubernetes: Krew plugins manager, and useful kubectl plugins list
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1 October 2021

One of the most valuable features of the kubectl utility is its plugins. Of course, there are things like Lens, widely used by developers who don’t like working in the terminal, or tools like k9s, but kubectl‘s plugins worth for a dedicated post. So, in this post, we will install Krew – kubectl‘s plugins manager,… Read More »

Linux: create Gif or record video from the screen
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29 September 2021

There are a lot of utilities to create a Git animation for Linux, but I like the peek. Besides the Gif, also can create files in the MP4, WebM, APNG formats. On the Arch Linux can be installed from the AUR: [simterm] $ sudo pacman -S peek [/simterm] Run it: [simterm] $ peek [/simterm] The… Read More »

Linux: LEMP set up – NGINX, PHP, MySQL, SSL, monitoring, logs, and a WordPress blog migration
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6 November 2020

Finally got time to migrate the RTFM.CO.UA blog to a new server with Debian 10. This time manually, without any automation will set up a LEMP stack Wrote a similar at 2016 – Debian: установка LEMP — NGINX + PHP-FPM + MariaDB (Rus), but in time the post is more complete of the process and… Read More »