2.5 Admins
192 episodes - English - Latest episode: 17 days ago -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.
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Episodes
2.5 Admins 190: twitterz
April 11, 2024 21:20 - 30 minutes - 24.6 MBA backdoor has been found in xz-utils, OpenZFS improves ZVOL performance on Linux, Twitter devs fail at regex, and adding SATA ports to a home NAS. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Hybrid Cloud Show is a new show that’s part of the Late Night […]
2.5 Admins 189: Too Much Glass
April 04, 2024 16:56 - 32 minutes - 26.3 MBGlassdoor seemingly doesn’t understand its raison d’etre, Telegram wants to cheap out on sending verification codes, law enforcement makes YouTube give them details of everyone who watched certain videos, and tuning a low end VPS to host a blog. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes […]
2.5 Admins 188: Farewell to Core
March 28, 2024 20:52 - 28 minutes - 23.3 MBThe FreeBSD version of TrueNAS is going away, a major Apple antitrust case begins, encrypted LLM chat responses are relatively easy to read, and scaling a fleet of FreeBSD hosts with jails. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News TrueNAS CORE 13 is the […]
2.5 Admins 187: MDK
March 21, 2024 17:56 - 31 minutes - 25.3 MBPrison officials took away inmate student laptops for no good reason, Warner Bros. ruined gamers’ experiences, Google’s terrible office WiFi, and managing gold images. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion An engineer bought a prison laptop on eBay. Then 1,200 incarcerated students lost […]
2.5 Admins 186: Jim Defends the CFAA
March 14, 2024 21:57 - 29 minutes - 24.3 MBRoku stops its users watching TV until they accept a new ToS, the line between journalism and computer fraud and abuse, and when using jumbo frames on a network makes sense. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News Roku disables players and TVs with […]
2.5 Admins 185: 2.5 Gigabits
March 07, 2024 17:56 - 28 minutes - 23.4 MBThe boss of Nvidia says kids don’t need to code because they can just use AI, companies sell their users’ data to train models, and why 2.5Gbps networking probably isn’t worth bothering with. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Jensen Huang says kids […]
2.5 Admins 184: Avast, mateys
February 29, 2024 22:14 - 32 minutes - 26.1 MBMore cameras leak footage, Avast is fined for selling user data, a vending machine quietly scans students’ faces, using a small NVMe drive with ZFS, and taking snapshots of VMs. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News “So violated”: Wyze cameras leak footage to […]
2.5 Admins 183: Unbootable Quantum Toothbrushes
February 22, 2024 17:56 - 31 minutes - 25.4 MBWhy it’s not a great idea to install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, quantum computing hype has been replaced by AI, toothbrushes can’t be part of a botnet, Google has killed cached search results, and testing your backups. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes […]
2.5 Admins 182: All the Small Things
February 15, 2024 21:35 - 29 minutes - 24.1 MBNginx is forked, Broadcom/VMware kills ESXi, dedup is finally fixed in ZFS, using multiple network interfaces on a NAS, and more. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News announcing freenginx.org Broadcom-owned VMware kills the free version of ESXi virtualization software OpenZFS Native Encryption Use […]
2.5 Admins 181: Triangle Fraud
February 08, 2024 17:56 - 29 minutes - 23.6 MBTrying to report a security issue lands a consultant in trouble, a new take on the drop shipping scam, setting up your first NAS – including the benefits of RAID, picking a distro, choosing the right disk size, and more. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes […]
2.5 Admins 180: Email 777
February 01, 2024 21:31 - 33 minutes - 27 MBMicrosoft’s rudimentary error that allowed an attacker access to its executives’ emails, Pixel phones have another serious storage bug, hidden malware payload found at Ars Technica, and when to upgrade your hardware for Windows 11. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes BSDCan 2024 – Call […]
2.5 Admins 179: Y2K NotOK
January 25, 2024 17:56 - 32 minutes - 26.3 MBY2K was a pretty serious problem and 2038 is coming soon, work on Arm servers is improving the experience on the desktop, and what to do with an old unsupported Synology NAS. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes OpenZFS Best Practices: Part 2: File Serving […]
2.5 Admins 178: LOTS of Storage
January 18, 2024 22:36 - 30 minutes - 24.8 MBHard drives are pretty much an enterprise product now, GitHub’s malware problem, and spreading services across different machines and VMs to keep downtime to a minimum. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes OpenZFS Storage Best Practices and Use Cases Part 1: Snapshots and Backups […]
2.5 Admins 177: Don’t Pay the Dane
January 11, 2024 17:56 - 29 minutes - 23.8 MBWhy the problems with open source licenses aren’t quite as easy to fix as some people think, the reasons you should never pay ransomware gangs, and running a Nagios distro on a Raspberry Pi. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion What comes after […]
2.5 Admins 176: Sudo Cognito
January 04, 2024 20:23 - 30 minutes - 24.7 MBWhat does “incognito mode” in Chrome actually mean and whether documenting browser standards in code is a good idea, the serious implications of a fun story about messing with a ChatGPT instance, and maximizing performance when using mixed disk types on ZFS mirrored vdevs. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS […]
2.5 Admins 175: Guess Who’s Listening
December 28, 2023 17:56 - 29 minutes - 23.6 MBTwitch pulls out of Korea thanks to the opposite of Net Neutrality, it’s not clear to what extent smart devices are listening to your conversations, more on water usage in data centers, and our thoughts on mandatory access controls. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes […]
2.5 Admins 174: Guess Who’s Watching
December 21, 2023 17:55 - 31 minutes - 25.6 MBWhat you need to know about the recent SSH vulnerability, yet another privacy issue with cloud-connected security cameras, why it’s difficult to get to the bottom of an obscure ZFS encryption bug, and more. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News SSH protects the […]
2.5 Admins 173: Ghost Files
December 14, 2023 17:56 - 29 minutes - 23.8 MBGoogle Drive client users lost months of files, a feature of UEFI that has left millions of computers potentially vulnerable to persistent malware, and why you probably shouldn’t buy cheap resold volume Windows licenses. Plugs Support us on patreon to get ad-free episodes that are sometimes a day or so early. News/discussion Google […]
2.5 Admins 172: HOLEy ZFS
December 07, 2023 20:25 - 31 minutes - 25.6 MBJim and Allan break down the details of the recent ZFS data corruption bug, and give their tips for managing a fleet of 40+ servers. Plug Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News Two new versions of OpenZFS fix long-hidden corruption bug Free Consulting […]
2.5 Admins 171: RSA PSA
November 30, 2023 17:56 - 30 minutes - 24.6 MBWhy a small island nation’s top level domain ended up with such a terrible reputation, an ssh vulnerability that’s not as scary as it sounds, whether software can be “finished”, and using powerline or WiFi for security cameras. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes […]
2.5 Admins 170: Uninterruptible WiFi
November 23, 2023 17:56 - 29 minutes - 23.9 MBWhy and how Allan installed a set of new Power over Ethernet wireless access points, and our hardware recommendations for a media server and NAS in one. Allan’s new WiFi setup Access points Controller Free Consulting We were asked for hardware recommendations for a media server and NAS in one. […]
2.5 Admins 169: SDCoF
November 16, 2023 17:56 - 31 minutes - 25.3 MBA Cloudflare outage shines a light on sloppy data center practices, and why you shouldn’t run a mail server at home. Plus followup on the Android multi-user bug, package managers on Windows, and Toshiba hard drives. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes News/discussion Cloudflare […]
2.5 Admins 168: Do The Right Thing
November 09, 2023 21:54 - 30 minutes - 24.6 MBOkta seems to not be taking its security seriously enough, crashing iPhones is far easier than it should be, Jim’s report from the Ubuntu Summit, and what to do when you find a company’s sensitive data on the Internet. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes […]
2.5 Admins 167: Delayed Flush
November 02, 2023 17:56 - 31 minutes - 25.8 MBThe large water consumption of AI and data centers in general, China’s big push towards IPv6, why we don’t talk about Toshiba hard drives very often, and the implications of poor Bluetooth security on an e-bike. Plugs Support us on patreon Unlocking Infrastructure Sovereignty: Harnessing the Power of Open Source Solutions for Business Flexibility […]
2.5 Admins 166: 20 Second Cheque
October 26, 2023 20:21 - 30 minutes - 24.9 MBWhat Google should do to prevent malware sites in their ads, why you might want to avoid using multiple profiles on Android devices, a speculative execution vulnerability in Apple Silicon, and the pros and cons of TP-Link Omada and Ubiquiti Unifi. Plugs Support us on patreon News Clever malvertising attack uses Punycode to […]
2.5 Admins 165: Big AI
October 19, 2023 16:56 - 30 minutes - 24.5 MBThe nuances of copyrighting AI-generated art, getting the best speeds with Samba, and building an SSD-only NAS. News/discussion Opinion: The Copyright Office is making a mistake on AI-generated art Free Consulting We were asked about building an SSD-only NAS. Kolide Kolide ensures that if a device isn’t secure, it […]
2.5 Admins 164: Filthy Internet
October 12, 2023 16:56 - 30 minutes - 24.9 MBWhy enabling password autofill isn’t a great idea, Jim’s adventures in network repair, and setting up a home router/WiFi hotspot. Feedback Don’t use autofill on your password manager Story Time Adventures in network repair Free Consulting We were asked about hardware for a home router/Wi-Fi hotspot. HelloFresh With […]
2.5 Admins 163: Two Factors One SPOF
October 05, 2023 16:56 - 28 minutes - 23.2 MBA network breach teaches us all a valuable lesson about threat models, Allan and Jim’s TV setups, and picking the right external storage solution. Plugs Support us on patreon News/discussion How Google Authenticator made one company’s network breach much, much worse Amolith’s wiki page about passwords Feedback Allan’s TV remote control […]
2.5 Admins 162: Irresponsible Disclosure
September 28, 2023 20:34 - 29 minutes - 24 MBGoogle and Apple do a bad job of disclosing a pretty serious vulnerability, why hard drives aren’t physically bigger, and setting up a distributed backup system with a group of friends. Plugs Support us on patreon News Submit your ideas or articles – OpenSource.net Incomplete disclosures by Apple and Google create “huge blindspot” […]
2.5 Admins 161: 5PiB Coffee Mug
September 21, 2023 16:56 - 26 minutes - 21.4 MBThe future of archive storage using lasers and ceramics, self-hosting an Internet archive, more on Windows 11 Home, and setting up storage inside VMs. Plugs Support us on patreon Jim and Allan host Klara’s latest Webinar: OpenZFS Data Replication News/discussion Cerabyte roadmaps ceramic nano-memory storage Feedback Archivy ArchiveBox Free Consulting We […]
2.5 Admins 160: Diss Unity
September 14, 2023 22:04 - 31 minutes - 25.7 MBUnity causes a stink with its new pricing model, running out of disk space causes a very expensive problem, how one-off promotional domains can come back to bite you, and picking the hardware and software for a router. News Unity has changed its pricing model, and game developers are pissed off Unity rushes to […]
2.5 Admins 159: Dirty Install
September 07, 2023 16:56 - 30 minutes - 24.8 MBThe user experience on fresh installations of Windows and Edge is terrible and we get to the bottom of why. Unfortunately the reason isn’t exclusive to Microsoft’s offerings – it’s a pattern that we’ve seen from numerous companies, even Mozilla. Plus why it’s a bad idea to power your server on and off regularly. […]
2.5 Admins 158: It Doesn’t Go to 10
August 31, 2023 19:34 - 28 minutes - 23.5 MBDropbox once again proves that there is no such thing as “unlimited” anything, Intel isn’t going to support WiFi 7 on Windows 10 (but it doesn’t really matter), managing ssh keys, setting up data storage for containers, and more on IPMI for Raspberry Pis. Plugs Support us on patreon News Dropbox limits ‘all […]
2.5 Admins 157: Lincoln’s HDD
August 24, 2023 16:56 - 26 minutes - 21.8 MBCNET’s SEO attempts once again show that nothing lasts forever, why the reports of the death of the mechanical hard drive are greatly exaggerated, and home-made IPMI on the cheap. Plugs Support us on Patreon News/discussion The Internet is not forever after all: CNET deletes old articles to game Google Coughlin: SSDs will […]
2.5 Admins 156: SanDisk Extreme Fail
August 17, 2023 18:39 - 25 minutes - 20.5 MBWhy fully remote work is on the wane as Zoom drags employees back to the office and Bluejeans is shut down, the Sandisk SSDs that keep failing, and how and why you should use ECC RAM in your home server if you can. Plugs Support us on Patreon News Zoom has “Zoom fatigue,” […]
2.5 Admins 155: Dialup Memories
August 10, 2023 16:56 - 28 minutes - 22.8 MBAllan and Jim reminisce about the early days of connecting to the Internet, and what inspired them to become sysadmins in the first place. Plus recovering old versions of files, and an exciting announcement about the show. Plugs 2.5 Admins is now part of the Late Night Linux Family. Support us on Patreon […]
2.5 Admins 154: 8.8.8.8.8.8
August 03, 2023 20:13 - 29 minutes - 23.8 MBWhy the increasing trend of charging for public IPv4 addresses won’t change much, Google trials restricting its employees’ Internet access, and operating systems uploading firmware to devices at boot. Plugs Support us on patreon Klara 2023 Recommended Summer Reads – FreeBSD and Linux News New – AWS Public IPv4 Address Charge + Public […]
2.5 Admins 153: Robots.nope
July 27, 2023 16:56 - 32 minutes - 26.3 MBUpdating the robots.txt standard for the AI era, the US government implements an IoT certification and labeling system, and the issues with fully encrypting a server. Plugs Support us on patreon 3 Advantages to Running FreeBSD as Your Server Operating System News/discussion Google suggests updating the robots.txt standard Robots.txt is not the answer: […]
2.5 Admins 152: AirTags Use CR2032 Batteries
July 20, 2023 19:51 - 29 minutes - 23.4 MBIntel is giving up on NUCs and Asus is taking over the line, millions of classified US military emails are going to a Russian ally thanks to a common typo, and monitoring SSDs. Plugs Support us on patreon Linux and FreeBSD Firewalls – Part 2 News Intel is quitting on its adorable, powerful, […]
2.5 Admins 151: Practical ZFS
July 13, 2023 16:56 - 30 minutes - 24.6 MBSetting up a self-hosted alternative, what counts as a “removable” battery, and backing up a Windows machine to ZFS. News/discussion Practical ZFS Making sense of the EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries (Jim was wrong about AirTags and their batteries. He’ll correct the record next time. No need to email us.) Free Consulting […]
2.5 Admins 150: Red Hate
July 06, 2023 19:45 - 32 minutes - 26.5 MBRed Hat wants to limit redistribution of RHEL source code. We discuss their history with CentOS and the likely knock-on effects of taking direct aim at its customers’ GPL rights. Plus browsers doing port scans, and OpenWrt vs OPNsense. Plugs Support us on patreon Practical ZFS News Red Hat’s new source code policy […]
2.5 Admins 149: Three Year Warning
June 29, 2023 16:56 - 34 minutes - 27.7 MBWD disks “warning” that they have been running for 3 years, a modern replacement for IMAP that no one seems to be using, the potential issues that arise when PC games require an SSD to run, alternatives to VMware, and verifying your backups. News/discussion “Clearly predatory”: Western Digital sparks panic, anger for age-shaming HDDs […]
2.5 Admins 148: API Ultra 7 Pro for Workstations
June 22, 2023 16:56 - 32 minutes - 25.9 MBReddit fails to see where its true value lies, Intel makes its consumer CPU lines confusing, and Microsoft’s “next generation” filesystem. News What Reddit Got Wrong Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’ Intel has new labels for its next major CPU architecture Free Consulting We were asked about Microsoft’s “next […]
2.5 Admins 147: EPYC Fail
June 15, 2023 16:56 - 32 minutes - 26.4 MBSloppy practises by Gigabyte reveal one of the problems with UEFI, why Slack refuses to implement end to end encryption, a familiar bug ruins people’s uptime, and XFS vs ext4. Plugs Support us on patreon FreeBSD or Linux – A Choice Without OS Wars News/discussion Millions of Gigabyte Motherboards Were Sold With a […]
2.5 Admins 146: VisionForge
June 08, 2023 20:03 - 32 minutes - 25.7 MBWe are unimpressed by Apple’s new headset, a particularly bountiful watering hole attack, misdirection from the AI industry, and connecting hard disks via a PCIe card. Plugs Support us on patreon OpenZFS, Your Data and the Challenge of Ransomware News Apple Vision Pro Hololens dev Twitter thread (archived version) Some Curseforge accounts might […]
2.5 Admins 145: Bad Standards
June 01, 2023 16:56 - 32 minutes - 26.4 MBAn unfixable bug shines a light on a fundamental issue with Windows, why M.2 is a terrible connector for SSDs, the pros and cons of 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi, and the state of ZFS encryption. Plugs Support us on patreon OpenZFS For HPC Clusters News/discussion Windows 11 is so broken that even Microsoft can’t fix […]
2.5 Admins 144: AMRadio.zip
May 25, 2023 18:48 - 33 minutes - 26.8 MBGoogle’s new TLDs are silly but not as dangerous as some people think, whether we should cling on to AM radio, Microsoft scans password-protected zip files, and how to assess open source software for its trustworthiness. Plug Support us on patreon News Google pushes .zip and .mov domains onto the Internet, and the […]
2.5 Admins 143: Even Stars Die
May 18, 2023 16:56 - 31 minutes - 25.3 MBAdobe’s vague threats show why open source is often the pragmatic choice, Russians craft a poor man’s ransomware with WinRAR, Chrome drops the padlock icon, Amazon pulls a Google, and using a keyfile with a password manager. Plugs Support us on patreon Understanding ZFS vdev Types News/discussion Adobe Tells Users They Can Get […]
2.5 Admins 142: Intel Key Party
May 12, 2023 00:46 - 33 minutes - 27 MBGoogle’s attempt to replace passwords with keys, why Jim thinks IBM is dragging Red Hat in the wrong direction, Intel’s rudimentary error that breaks a security feature, and protecting your files from other users on your system. Plugs Support us on patreon What Makes OpenZFS the Ideal Storage Solution for University Environments News […]
2.5 Admins 141: Sysadmin Hunt
May 04, 2023 16:56 - 33 minutes - 27.2 MBWhat the challenge of building a web browser from scratch tells us about the state of the modern web, why some people are frying their AMD CPUs, more on basic password managers and regularly powercyling network gear, moving from Mercurial to Git, running old applications on modern Ubuntu, and more. Plugs Support us on […]