JP Mens

jpmens@mastodon.social

Small-scale fiddler, enjoys doing & teaching. Wrote a thick book on FLOSS DNS servers. Dreamed up @OwnTracks over MQTT. Ansible with NOCOWS=1, but this profile is not managed with Ansible. Loves plain text. I (re-)toot in several languages. <a href="https://jpmens.net" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no">https://jpmens.net</a>

Posts

Post #4444172
They (swissbit) didn't dare write this bullshit in the English version of their manual (or maybe they've just not updated it yet) edit: English 55 pages, German 102 pages. Go figure.
Post #4443197
I've been in IT for 45 years, which doesn't mean much, except that my mind boggles when I think how normal mortals (i.e. sane people) go about understanding something like this: "However, for keys prior to Release3, our FIDO2 Type-C to Lightning adapter supports FIDO protocols only, not OTP. If you wish to use OTP functionality with an older key, you will need to use NFC instead. Additionally, when using the HOTP feature of your FIDO2 key, be aware that it functions via keyboard em...
Post #4436224
It's quite amazing how enshitified even NOTEPAD.EXE can be.
Post #4395366
Happy 503 Day, if you celebrate
Post #4234111
Curiosity killed the cat. The post Achieving 100% Observability with BIND and Zabbix has nothing to do with DNS. :-D https://blog.zabbix.com/achieving-100-observability-with-bind-and-zabbix/33358/
Post #4191560
"How do you fit a 250kB dictionary in 64kB of RAM and still perform fast lookups? For reference, even with modern compression techniques like gzip -9, you can't compress this file below 85kB." How Unix spell ran in 64kB RAM https://blog.codingconfessions.com/p/how-unix-spell-ran-in-64kb-ram
Post #4168410
Great that you placed a date stamp on your blog and thank you very much for that, indeed! However, 1970-01-01 doesn't sound quite accurate to me, but maybe my RSS feed reader is broken
Post #4166260
I asked the waitress for a quickie & she slapped me. The old woman next to me said, “It’s pronounced quiche, dear.”
Post #4139424
Is there a waiting list for male cast to another sequel to “Grumpy Old Men”?
Post #4084021
TIL `apt install extrepo' for Debian Thanks, @ingo_wichmann@digitalcourage.social
Post #4042500
"Networking gear maker Juniper Networks has asked for its .juniper gTLD to be deleted. No specific reason was given." Other than wasting a shitload of cash, of course. When the TLD is removed, I will report TLD JUNIPER 💀 💸 conceived 9 years ago in 2016, wasted €455_000
Post #4034115
How a stranger used one text message to steal their entire digital life https://tech.yahoo.com/cybersecurity/articles/how-a-stranger-used-one-text-message-to-steal-my-entire-digital-life-140003797.html
Post #4016725
Yet another case of why the hell did you do that for this medical device?! #stopFrivolousUpdates
Post #3991280
It's been seven (7) years already since I had the honour of being master of ceremonies (oh, sorry, that should be primary of ceremonies, I think) for the "DNS Privacy Panel" at the FOSDEM DNS Devroom. I got to interview the wonderful @bert_hubert@eupolicy.social, @bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr, and @bagder@mastodon.social (from left to right). One of the only rooms I actually GOT IN TO, even though it was FULL -- @Habbie@floss.social reserved standing room for me! :-D https://w...
Post #3987597
Yet Another Fine Kernel Upgrade #linux #debian
Post #3797824
Do I know somebody who'd be willing to make available the result of an #ansible -m setup (gathered facts) from an AIX node? Help appreciated!
Post #3782528
I saw XKCD 1168 again just now, and you'd be safe with me -- the bomb wouldn't detonate. However, you better not ask me whether it's useradd or adduser -- 50% chance we all end up in smithereens. https://xkcd.com/1168/
Post #3760486
In October 2025 I submitted one of my infamous jumbo PRs to a project. (Attached here) I was notified by Github yesterday, that they've asked Copilot for help in resolving merge conflicts. I don't even know whether I can begin to believe this
Post #3757460
reaction -- a daemon that scans program outputs for repeated patterns, and takes action. Designed for ease of configuration and hackability. A common usage is to scan SSH and webserver logs, and to ban hosts that cause multiple authentication errors. https://reaction.ppom.me https://framagit.org/ppom/reaction (/via https://mastodon.social/@Viss/116903581258194138 )
Post #3714554
TIL I can retrieve pages from the Ansible documentation in Markdown format by including an "Accept: text/markdown" header in the request. This seems to be a CloudFlare thing. https://tekunabe.hatenablog.jp/entry/2026/07/10/ansible_doc_by_markdown
Post #3651984
...AND WE WANT TO PLAY WITH FIFTEEN PLAYERS... AND FOR OUR GOAL TO BE SMALLER AND THE U.S. TEAM CAN ALL USE THEIR HANDS.
Post #3535430
Being a European is great until it isn't. Sister is trying to get her Dutch passport renewed. All consulates which did that in Germany have been shut down except Berlin who have no slots left THIS YEAR. (Duesseldorf, Frankfurt, Muenchen closed). Dutch border municipalities, of which there are 15, are totally overwhelmed "Take extra long waiting times into account". One possibility would have been Bern (CH) which is overwhelmed, so it's now Vienna (AT) with a first slot in Sep...
Post #2469662
Can I haz @forgejo stock?
Post #2469307
RE: https://fosstodon.org/@PowerDNS/116561621224776648 It doesn&#39;t get much easier than this, folks! Now for some/more gTLDs and ccTLDs to support this automated bootstrapping, please!!
Post #2245615
DENIC: “Analysis of the DNS outage on 5 May 2026” English: https://blog.denic.de/en/analysis-of-the-dns-outage-on-5-may-2026/ German: https://blog.denic.de/analyse-des-dns-ausfalls-vom-5-mai-2026/ #dnssec
Post #2236146
The things I learn, even at my age, simply by reading documentation are WILD! Today: #SQLite3 &quot;In addition to reading and writing SQLite database files, the sqlite3 program will also read and write ZIP archives.&quot; https://sqlite.org/cli.html
Post #2150497
A program which after years remains very high up on my list of favorite software is @syncthing https://syncthing.net
Post #2147172
I might have written "I ALWAYS use a 24h clock; none of this AM/PM bullshit".
Post #2146644
Quad1 and Quad9 appear to have added an NTA (negative trust anchor) for .DE which means validators will no longer validate domains below *.DE; the situation will thus resolve (pun not really intended) itself soon’ish if temporarily until the root cause is fixed and the NTAs are removed. Quad8 is still validating .DE #dnssec Here is Quad9’s NTA: https://quad9.net/api/ntas.txt
Post #2123900
DENIC: &quot;The outage is linked to a routine, scheduled key rollover. During this process, non-validatable signatures were generated and distributed. As a precautionary measure, future rollovers have been suspended until the exact technical causes have been identified.&quot; This was today at (probably, since $TZ not mentioned) 12:30 UTC. (I use a 24h clock.) https://blog.denic.de/en/technical-issue-with-de-domains-resolved/ German text: https://blog.denic.de/technische-storung-bei-...