Problem

After upgrading to FreeBSD 15.1-BETA3 and getting DRM 6.12 working see:freebsd-15.1-drm-i915-runbook.md, Plasma Wayland would not start through SDDM. Logging in via SDDM’s greeter bounced back to the login screen with no error output. wayland-session.log was empty. XFCE (X11) worked fine through SDDM.

Root Cause

Session activation failed in this configuration. ck-list-sessions showed:

$ ck-list-sessions | grep active
        active = FALSE

When a session is not marked active, kwin_wayland cannot acquire DRM device access : /dev/dri/* access fails, libseat/seatd integration may not work, and the Wayland compositor exits immediately, often with no log output. This matches the symptom exactly.

Summary

On 2026-04-06 at approximately 09:38 EDT, the Kea DHCP service on pfSense (26.03-RELEASE) stopped serving leases on all interfaces. The root cause was a corruption of the <dhcpd> block in /cf/conf/config.xml, which caused pfSense to generate an empty Kea interfaces list. Service was restored by activating a previous ZFS boot environment.

Timeline

Root Cause

A pfSense package operation (pfBlockerNG or Suricata reload/apply) triggered a config write at 08:54 that silently cleared the entire <dhcpd> section from /cf/conf/config.xml. This is a pfSense 26.x bug: package-initiated config saves can clobber unrelated service configuration blocks.

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: