Niels K.

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 11:37:37 +0200

That vacation in Japan that is coming up will cross off a lot of things from my bucket list 🤩

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 07:46:16 +0200

Ich habe jetzt die Domain rpg-nielsk.de (die ML meiner Rollenspielgruppe, die jetzt seit fast 30 Jahre besteht, wurde irgendwann mal rp-nielsk getauft…aber das “g” fand ich in der Domain besser).

Was mach ich jetzt damit? #ttrpg

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 07:41:16 +0200

I am reading “Apple: The first 50 years”. I knew that they innovated a lot, but not that much. I hope they move a bit in another direction though with their new CEO.

Even though Steve Jobs was against open systems.

NFS-problems I didn’t expect at all

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 22:19:36 +0200

Stories from the engine room: I have a big configuration file which is part of a mail-setup and it is read on each mail delivery (MTA is exim and it is the file that contains all the domains the servers are responsible for). It lives in NFS and several servers use it.

Two days ago I migrated that part of the NFS to a new NFS-setup that works differently than the old one. And because it is already in production I cannot change a lot in terms of NFS-server configuration. The rest works now fine for months.

When I mounted the two small exports via the new storage I had problems with certain scripts because they use flock. Those scripts just hang. The big storage that runs for months now is using nolockd, so that part never came up. Since I couldn’t really configure the stuff for locks correctly because it would need a restart of the nfs-server, I switched to NFSv4.2 (the old one uses v3; the big storage part as well) because file locking works there differently. The scripts worked and everything was great.

Yesterday suddenly the problem came up that the mail platform misbehaved. Huge numbers of newsletters and spam came in and everything went down to a crawl. I tried around and after implementing greylisting especially for mails from googleusercontent, things recovered.

Today the problem came back and even harder. When I hit ctrl+t (FreeBSD - sends SIGINFO) on a hanging mail delivery I saw that it hang with [nfs]. But the NFS-servers were fine, no saturation, no massive IOPs, they were basically bored. So I attached truss to a hanging process and it hang when it ran the big configuration file from the beginning. I changed it now that configuration file is locally on each server and gets copied over via a cronjob if it changes. And suddenly all the problems went away.

I have been rarely so happy to solve a problem. That thing was a beast and it had such a massive production impact. I have no idea how I should have figured that out before.

Especially since I was focused only on the big storage parts and not the small ones which are barely noticeable. That was probably the last hurdle to bring the project to the finish line.

I already had to migrate an LDAP as part of that project which didn’t perform in the new setup and the problem were too restrictive file limits in the new Linux-setup in contrast to the old FreeBSD-setup.

Now I just have to migrate a couple of Terabyte of mailboxes (around three quarters are already migrated) and then I can clear servers which take up roughly 24 rack units (spread over several racks) and some ancient cabling. This project took ages…

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 13:35:54 +0200

Ich kann mit dem Großteil deutscher Comdey irgendwie nichts anfangen. Mir wurde am Wochenende die Show von Carolin Kebekus (Shesus) wärmstens empfohlen. Und ich muss Augen, dass ich die zu sehr großen Teilen einfach unlustig finde. 😕

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 11:00:36 +0200

Ich hab hier ein Zimmer in dem ist es schön kühl - laut Thermometer sind es trotzdem 27 Grad…

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 18:17:53 +0200

Ich habe es geschafft. Normalerweise brauche ich für die Strecke 30 Minuten. Heute waren es 2 Stunden 12 Minuten. Danke Deutsche Bahn und S-Bahn Berlin. I❤️U

Die letzte S-Bahn hatte keine Klimaanlage und man wurde ein wenig gekocht.

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 17:11:07 +0200

Eine Station mit der S-Bahn: alle aussteigen. Eine weitere Station und am Bahnhof. RE hat 30 Minuten Verspätung. Fährt eine Station: alle aussteigen.

Ich habe noch eine Station RE und 3 Stationen S-Bahn vor mir. Ich bin gespannt…

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 16:36:17 +0200

Die Deutsche Bahn warnt davor, dass man wegen des Extremwetters nur absolut notwendige Fahrten mit den öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln oder den Regios machen soll…

Es ist alles einfach nur spät und kaputt. Gnah. 😩

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 18:47:32 +0200

Today I will try Syrinscape in my monthly DnD-session. I wonder how it works out. #ttrpg

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 19:37:17 +0200

Im Laufladen und bei Decathlon finde ich keine Ciele GOCaps. Aber bei Globetrotter???

Wie auch immer, ich hab jetzt endlich eine zweite 🤩 #running

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 14:04:36 +0200

Und jetzt die #jugendhackt-Abschluss Präsentation ansehen (jugendhackt.org/live )

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 08:39:03 +0200

Why should I identify myself to a social network with my id card? And I bet if it would be interesting enough we would see bots/sock puppets/fake accounts with right propaganda anyways. One of the CEOs is a Web3-dude. Another one has „NATO & military systems expertise“. Yeah…right… #wsocial

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 23:38:16 +0200

There should be a second season of #Cyberpunk Edgerunners that plays in the age of Red and is based around a group of nomads. That would be neat.

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 23:34:16 +0200

I am finally watching #Cyberpunk Edgerunners. The series is excellent. Now I want to play Cyberpunk Red and 2077. But no time for it and as long as the kids are awake I cannot play 2077. usually my kids stay longer up than I do these days 😩

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 16:11:23 +0200

Migrated #OpenLDAP 2.4 running on #FreeBSD to OpenLDAP 2.6 with lloadd on #Linux (Debian 13). So many problems since then. Today I identified an open file limit issue. Fixing that will hopefully finally solve those problems 😞

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 05:45:01 +0200

Ich mag nicht aufstehen…aber irgendwer muss ja den Kaffee kochen…

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 21:37:36 +0200

According to “Apple: The first 50 years” by David Pogue, Big Brother in the 1984 ad didn’t mean IBM but represented the control of technology by the few. How ironic looking at Apple’s role today.

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 08:56:23 +0200

So many things in #Japan need a reservation. We found now something which had open spots but for the reservation we had to enter a working phone number. The number of allowed digits is too short for international phone numbers though 🤦‍♂️

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 16:53:02 +0200

Why isn’t there a Chocobo feather item in Final Fantasy-games that gives you Haste for a short while? #ff #jrpg

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 15:51:21 +0200

I trained now 7 weeks for a new PB in 10k. And now the weather forecast tells me that on race day in a week it will be more than 30°C. So…that PB got now far more unrealistic 😞

Maybe I do the Great 10k in October after all #berlin #running

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:30:15 +0200

Ich bin so müde…schon wieder weniger als 6 Stunden, diesmal sogar weniger als 5 Stunden, Schlaf gehabt.

Heute muss ich echt aufpassen was ich anfasse.

Und endlich mal früh ins Bett gehen (da gab es in den letzten Tagen nicht steuerbare Gründe für)…

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 04:36:16 +0200

I tried to get tickets for the Ghibli museum. Woke up at 2:50am (ticket sale started at 3am my time); had 10k people in queue before me and had to wait for more than an hour to be able to reserve tickets. None of the open slots worked to get 4 tickets. That just plain sucks.

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 06:58:07 +0200

I am close to finish the final season of #Supernatural

There is I’ve thing I still wonder about: dead humans go to Heaven or Hell, monsters to Purgatory, angels and demons to the Empty. But in Purgatory monsters can get killed - where do they go? Do they cease to exist?

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:09:17 +0200

Cats in their natural environment #catsofmastodon