Synoniem's notes from a system administrator

Dovecot following the enshittification handbook

Dovecot new version 2.4 is a breaking change from 2.3 and deliberately so. With version 2.4 the paid Pro version does have all functionality and some from 2.3. The new Community Edition is only usable for a single server without high availability or cluster functionality.

To make sure you break everything the config files from 2.3 and 2.4 are not (backward) compatible. And to make this move even more profitable you will not find a pricing scheme anywhere you have to ask a quotation for your specific configuration.

Time to fork the current 2.3 version.

Frigate met Openvino object recognition

Frigate does support Openvino object recognition on Intel hardware including internal GPU's. To use it you need the following in your frigate.yaml: detectors: ov_0: type: openvino device: GPU model: width: 300 height: 300 input_tensor: nhwc input_pixel_format: bgr path: /openvino-model/ssdlite_mobilenet_v2.xml

The model in use will of course be updated in the future so check Frigate's documentation for most recent information.

pfSense pfctl

Installing pfSense firewall remotely has it challenges. Especially when it is installed on Proxmox or ESXi. One trick is to disable packetfiltering to be able to set the first firewallrules:

`pfctl -d'

One caveat though, when you change something in the web UI you have to give this command again. Apparently changes in the web UI set packetfiltering back on.

Federation it sounds easy

Especially with Writefreely it sounds so simple. As long as you are aware that “verified site” on your Mastodon profile is something else than publishing your article on your Mastodont account.The easiest way is to connect your Writefreely handle on Mastodon first and the verify link second. And make a post on your Writefreely instance which hopely arrives at your Mastodon feed.

Change drive type after importing ESXI into Proxmox

When importing a Virtual machine from ESXI into Proxmox you will notice that drive type is SCSI instead of SATA. No big deal except such VM cannot find its boot drive because necessary SCSI drivers are not installed by default (especially Windows systems). The quick and dirty solution is from Proxmox commandline edit the “ID”.conf file in /etc/pve/nodes/pve/qemu-server where “ID” is the number of that VM by example 100.conf.

Look for:

scsi0: local-lvm:vm-100-disk-0,size=40996M

replace it with:

sata0: local-lvm:vm-100-disk-0,size=40996M

and look for:

boot: order=sata0;scsi0

to finish it off.

Revive Firefox scrollbar arrows on Ubuntu

If you are missing the scrollbar arrows/steppers in recent Firefox versions on Ubuntu/Mint the way to revive them is to edit or create a file in /home/user/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css and add:

scrollbar { -GtkScrollbar-has-backward-stepper: true; -GtkScrollbar-has-forward-stepper: true; }

Addition: Depending on your current settings you have to set in about:config

widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.allow-buttons = true

Error: The certificate of 'github.com' is not trusted

This error message mostly happen when you are building a docker container and you uses wget to get some release file from github.com or the like. The solution is simple when on a debian based distro:

user@host:~$ apt-get install ca-certificates -y

Remains the question why is ca-certificates not a dependency from wget? But don't ask me.

Windows Server 2025 Servermanager: Refresh failed

Error servername : Configuration refresh failed with the following error: The WS-Management service cannot process the request. The computed response packet size (514948) exceeds the maximum envelope size that is allowed (512000).

Another error that could have easily been avoided by choosing a better default value. The solution: Open Powershell as Administrator and type:

PS Set-WSManInstance -ResourceURI winrm/config -ValueSet @{MaxEnvelopeSizekb = "600"}

Microsoft error code 2147942408, tag 58tm2

Another cryptic error message from Microsoft where you must be lucky to find the solution. In case you are working on Microsoft server 2025, connect with RDP and you have to use Microsoft Windows App for some Azure based cloud service and do not have Microsoft 365 installed. The solution is to run Windows Update to download and install all security updates AND reboot the server.

Point is that you really do not want a Microsoft server to update automatically. Too many times a update causes problems which requires a restore. In these day and age Microsoft's customers are their QA/QC department. So if you get this error code and that happens quiet random, first make a backup or snapshot before you reboot. This of course also applies to Patch Tuesday updates and zeroday fixes, always backup before applying.