Overview

This is the build-and-break log for bringing a previously unstable TrueNAS/FreeBSD box back to a usable state after months of ugly crash behavior under VM load.

The short version:

• Salvaged hardware repurposed as a NAS
• A Fedora VM running Plex-related work could trigger a reboot loop
• Early on, the machine was already rebooting itself in a loop — even before the NVMe path failure showed up clearly in logs
• Hard evidence eventually pointed at one NVMe path (nvme2 / nda2) timing out and detaching under load
• Reseating the suspect SN770 and replacing its heatsink brought the mirror back online
• Current best hypothesis: physical seating, thermal contact, or mechanical instability — not a software bug

(Mac Pro 2013 / Non-Secure Enclave Macs)

⚠️ Scope

This guide applies only to pre-T2 Macs (e.g., Mac Pro Late 2013).

These machines:

• Do NOT have a T2 chip
• Do NOT enforce hardware Activation Lock
• Store iCloud / Find My bindings in macOS user & system databases

This will remove the local iCloud association without deleting the Apple ID account itself.

🧠 Understanding the Architecture

On pre-T2 Macs:

• iCloud login state is stored locally in user databases
• Find My relies on account tokens
• There is no firmware-level enforcement

Removing the local databases clears the association from macOS.

ISSUE

Every good storage failure starts innocently.

Plug in a brand-new Samsung T7.
Select it in Time Machine.
Click “Use Disk.”
Allow macOS to format the drive automatically.
Let the backup run. It may even complete once — maybe even a few more times.
Then it fails with a generic error:
“An error occurred while preparing the backup.”

Time Machine consistently failed during the “Preparing backup” phase on macOS 26.3 (Tahoe).

Overview

This document is the exact build log for bringing up a production-grade Nextcloud instance inside a Bastille jail on TrashProBSD (FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE) using:

• nginx
• php-fpm (PHP 8.2)
• PostgreSQL 17
• Redis
• APCu

Sometimes you just need valid-looking MAC addresses for documentation, test data, configs, or mock environments — not for changing real hardware addresses or spoofing interfaces.

This method is platform-agnostic and works on macOS, FreeBSD, Linux, and most Unix-like systems with OpenSSL installed.

Generate with a one-liner in terminal

You can generate a properly formatted 48-bit MAC address using standard shell tools:

# Generate a random MAC address (locally-administered, unicast)
openssl rand -hex 6 | fold -w2 | paste -sd: -

Date: 2026-02-12
Host: macOS
Goal: Convert normal text into Unicode Mathematical Sans-Serif Italic (e.g. Everything → 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨)

This document shows how to create a small local script on macOS that converts normal text into Unicode Mathematical Sans‑Serif Italic. This is Unicode substitution (not font styling). It’s useful for headings or emphasis in posts and chats, but it’s not ideal for accessibility or searching.

What it looks like

Plain:

Everything looks cooler now

Converted:

This walkthrough documents the cleanest recovery path for Netgate appliances running pfSense CE or pfSense Plus using a MacBook and the serial console this way we may avoid config loss, performing a factory reset, or a whipe/reinstall.

This is written as a practical runbook you can keep around for the next time someone locks themselves out.

What This Fixes (and What It Doesn’t)

This procedure:

• Resets the admin webConfigurator password
• Preserves your full pfSense configuration
• Works even if the web UI is unreachable

This does not:

Date: 2026-02-11
Host: FreeBSD jail host
Component: RACCT/RCTL + node_exporter textfile collector
Outcome: Per-jail RAM/VMEM/SWAP metrics in Prometheus/Grafana

Making ZFS ARC Grafana Panels FreeBSD-Compatible

Steps taken to make an imported ZFS/Grafana dashboard work correctly on FreeBSD. Panels assumed Linux exporters and referenced metrics that do not exist on FreeBSD. The result was a dashboard full of empty panels. This walkthrough shows how the missing ARC kstats where identified, cleanly exported and refactored so that the panels reflect the real FreeBSD kernel state.

Host: clemente (10.10.0.1)
Stack: FreeBSD + node_exporter (textfile collector) + Prometheus + Grafana
Date: 2026-02-10

Overview (Context & Goal)