Shows / 2.5 Admins
2.5 Admins
2.5 Admins is a podcast featuring two sysadmins called Allan Jude and Jim Salter, and a producer/editor who can just about configure a Samba share called Joe Ressington. Every week we get together, talk about recent tech news, and answer some of your admin-related questions.
Episodes
- 2.5 Admins
2.5 Admins 203: Yet more free consulting
We didn’t get to all of your questions for our Episode 200 free consulting special so here is another full episode of your questions and our answers. Our…
- 2.5 Admins
2.5 Admins 202: Microsoft’s Underwater Again
Why we didn’t mention pocket fluff when we talked about USB-C charging issues, Microsoft abandons its promising underwater data center experiment and…
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2.5 Admins 201: CVEs everywhere
Vulnerabilities in Asus hardware make us think there should be some regulations about what can be sold as a router, a VPN feature that we hadn’t heard of…
- 2.5 Admins
2.5 Admins 200: Even more free consulting
It’s our episode 200 free consulting special. Jim and Allan answer your questions about hard drive availability, USB-C robustness, ZFS performance on a…
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2.5 Admins 199: Rest In Parity
How to prepare for your loved ones to have the access they need if the worst unexpectedly happens, Joe’s weird issues with wireless access points, and…
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2.5 Admins 198: SMB Pulse
Microsoft is tightening up SMB security in Windows which might break access to your old NAS, a Cogent root-server mysteriously goes out of sync without them…
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2.5 Admins 197: Exchange Money
Linux kernel developers were infected with malware for 2 years, another nail in the coffin of proper federated email as Exchange Server moves to a subscription…
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2.5 Admins 196: Won’tel
Microsoft’s new Copilot+ feature will record everything you are doing on your computer for some reason, but it will only work on new Arm hardware for…
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2.5 Admins 195: Execute Option 121
Why Windows 10 might be gaining users at Windows 11’s expense, an old DHCP option is a potential risk for VPN users, we should probably say…
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2.5 Admins 194: Thundering Mastodon
Mastodon’s link previews are causing downtime for web servers without properly configured caching, locking down DNS inside Windows networks, why using…
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2.5 Admins 193: TV DoS
How a smart TV broke a Windows machine on the same network by pretending to be hundreds of different TVs, Jim’s alarming theory about AI malware, and…
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2.5 Admins 192: ZFS Week
ZFS on root is back in the Ubuntu installer but there’s a better way to do it, next-generation hard drives are proving to be reliable but prices are…
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2.5 Admins 191: Mechanical Turk
Why updating iPhones in their sealed boxes might have some downsides, Amazon’s “AI” turned out to just be people, LLMs hallucinating…
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2.5 Admins 190: twitterz
A backdoor has been found in xz-utils, OpenZFS improves ZVOL performance on Linux, Twitter devs fail at regex, and adding SATA ports to a home NAS. Plug…
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2.5 Admins 189: Too Much Glass
Glassdoor seemingly doesn’t understand its raison d’etre, Telegram wants to cheap out on sending verification codes, law enforcement makes YouTube…
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2.5 Admins 188: Farewell to Core
The FreeBSD version of TrueNAS is going away, a major Apple antitrust case begins, encrypted LLM chat responses are relatively easy to read, and scaling a…
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2.5 Admins 187: MDK
Prison officials took away inmate student laptops for no good reason, Warner Bros. ruined gamers’ experiences, Google’s terrible office WiFi, and…
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2.5 Admins 186: Jim Defends the CFAA
Roku stops its users watching TV until they accept a new ToS, the line between journalism and computer fraud and abuse, and when using jumbo frames on a…
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2.5 Admins 185: 2.5 Gigabits
The boss of Nvidia says kids don’t need to code because they can just use AI, companies sell their users’ data to train models, and why 2.5Gbps…
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2.5 Admins 184: Avast, mateys
More cameras leak footage, Avast is fined for selling user data, a vending machine quietly scans students’ faces, using a small NVMe drive with ZFS, and…
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2.5 Admins 183: Unbootable Quantum Toothbrushes
Why it’s not a great idea to install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, quantum computing hype has been replaced by AI, toothbrushes can’t be part…
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2.5 Admins 182: All the Small Things
Nginx is forked, Broadcom/VMware kills ESXi, dedup is finally fixed in ZFS, using multiple network interfaces on a NAS, and more. Plugs Support us on patreon…
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2.5 Admins 181: Triangle Fraud
Trying to report a security issue lands a consultant in trouble, a new take on the drop shipping scam, setting up your first NAS – including the benefits…
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2.5 Admins 180: Email 777
Microsoft’s rudimentary error that allowed an attacker access to its executives’ emails, Pixel phones have another serious storage bug, hidden…
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2.5 Admins 179: Y2K NotOK
Y2K was a pretty serious problem and 2038 is coming soon, work on Arm servers is improving the experience on the desktop, and what to do with an old…
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2.5 Admins 178: LOTS of Storage
Hard drives are pretty much an enterprise product now, GitHub’s malware problem, and spreading services across different machines and VMs to keep…
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2.5 Admins 177: Don’t Pay the Dane
Why the problems with open source licenses aren’t quite as easy to fix as some people think, the reasons you should never pay ransomware gangs, and…
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2.5 Admins 176: Sudo Cognito
What does “incognito mode” in Chrome actually mean and whether documenting browser standards in code is a good idea, the serious implications of a…
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2.5 Admins 175: Guess Who’s Listening
Twitch pulls out of Korea thanks to the opposite of Net Neutrality, it’s not clear to what extent smart devices are listening to your conversations, more…
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2.5 Admins 174: Guess Who’s Watching
What you need to know about the recent SSH vulnerability, yet another privacy issue with cloud-connected security cameras, why it’s difficult to get to…
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2.5 Admins 173: Ghost Files
Google Drive client users lost months of files, a feature of UEFI that has left millions of computers potentially vulnerable to persistent malware, and why you…
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2.5 Admins 172: HOLEy ZFS
Jim and Allan break down the details of the recent ZFS data corruption bug, and give their tips for managing a fleet of 40+ servers. Plug Support us on patreon…
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2.5 Admins 171: RSA PSA
Why a small island nation’s top level domain ended up with such a terrible reputation, an ssh vulnerability that’s not as scary as it sounds…
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2.5 Admins 170: Uninterruptible WiFi
Why and how Allan installed a set of new Power over Ethernet wireless access points, and our hardware recommendations for a media server and NAS in one…
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2.5 Admins 169: SDCoF
A Cloudflare outage shines a light on sloppy data center practices, and why you shouldn’t run a mail server at home. Plus followup on the Android…
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2.5 Admins 168: Do The Right Thing
Okta seems to not be taking its security seriously enough, crashing iPhones is far easier than it should be, Jim’s report from the Ubuntu Summit, and…
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2.5 Admins 167: Delayed Flush
The large water consumption of AI and data centers in general, China’s big push towards IPv6, why we don’t talk about Toshiba hard drives very…
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2.5 Admins 166: 20 Second Cheque
What Google should do to prevent malware sites in their ads, why you might want to avoid using multiple profiles on Android devices, a speculative execution…
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2.5 Admins 165: Big AI
The nuances of copyrighting AI-generated art, getting the best speeds with Samba, and building an SSD-only NAS. News/discussion Opinion: The Copyright Office…
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2.5 Admins 164: Filthy Internet
Why enabling password autofill isn’t a great idea, Jim’s adventures in network repair, and setting up a home router/WiFi hotspot. Feedback Don’t…
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2.5 Admins 163: Two Factors One SPOF
A network breach teaches us all a valuable lesson about threat models, Allan and Jim’s TV setups, and picking the right external storage solution. Plugs…
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2.5 Admins 162: Irresponsible Disclosure
Google and Apple do a bad job of disclosing a pretty serious vulnerability, why hard drives aren’t physically bigger, and setting up a distributed backup…
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2.5 Admins 161: 5PiB Coffee Mug
The future of archive storage using lasers and ceramics, self-hosting an Internet archive, more on Windows 11 Home, and setting up storage inside VMs. Plugs…
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2.5 Admins 160: Diss Unity
Unity causes a stink with its new pricing model, running out of disk space causes a very expensive problem, how one-off promotional domains can come back to…
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2.5 Admins 159: Dirty Install
The user experience on fresh installations of Windows and Edge is terrible and we get to the bottom of why. Unfortunately the reason isn’t exclusive to…
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2.5 Admins 158: It Doesn’t Go to 10
Dropbox once again proves that there is no such thing as “unlimited” anything, Intel isn’t going to support WiFi 7 on Windows 10 (but it…
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2.5 Admins 157: Lincoln’s HDD
CNET’s SEO attempts once again show that nothing lasts forever, why the reports of the death of the mechanical hard drive are greatly exaggerated, and…
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2.5 Admins 156: SanDisk Extreme Fail
Why fully remote work is on the wane as Zoom drags employees back to the office and Bluejeans is shut down, the Sandisk SSDs that keep failing, and how and why…
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2.5 Admins 155: Dialup Memories
Allan and Jim reminisce about the early days of connecting to the Internet, and what inspired them to become sysadmins in the first place. Plus recovering old…
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2.5 Admins 154: 8.8.8.8.8.8
Why the increasing trend of charging for public IPv4 addresses won’t change much, Google trials restricting its employees’ Internet access, and…
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2.5 Admins 153: Robots.nope
Updating the robots.txt standard for the AI era, the US government implements an IoT certification and labeling system, and the issues with fully encrypting a…
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2.5 Admins 152: AirTags Use CR2032 Batteries
Intel is giving up on NUCs and Asus is taking over the line, millions of classified US military emails are going to a Russian ally thanks to a common typo, and…
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2.5 Admins 151: Practical ZFS
Setting up a self-hosted alternative, what counts as a “removable” battery, and backing up a Windows machine to ZFS. News/discussion Practical ZFS…
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2.5 Admins 150: Red Hate
Red Hat wants to limit redistribution of RHEL source code. We discuss their history with CentOS and the likely knock-on effects of taking direct aim at its…
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2.5 Admins 149: Three Year Warning
WD disks “warning” that they have been running for 3 years, a modern replacement for IMAP that no one seems to be using, the potential issues that…
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2.5 Admins 148: API Ultra 7 Pro for Workstations
Reddit fails to see where its true value lies, Intel makes its consumer CPU lines confusing, and Microsoft’s “next generation” filesystem…
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2.5 Admins 147: EPYC Fail
Sloppy practises by Gigabyte reveal one of the problems with UEFI, why Slack refuses to implement end to end encryption, a familiar bug ruins people’s…
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2.5 Admins 146: VisionForge
We are unimpressed by Apple’s new headset, a particularly bountiful watering hole attack, misdirection from the AI industry, and connecting hard disks…
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2.5 Admins 145: Bad Standards
An unfixable bug shines a light on a fundamental issue with Windows, why M.2 is a terrible connector for SSDs, the pros and cons of 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi, and the state…
- 2.5 Admins
2.5 Admins 144: AMRadio.zip
Google’s new TLDs are silly but not as dangerous as some people think, whether we should cling on to AM radio, Microsoft scans password-protected zip files…