2025-06-12-freebsd & stylesheet changes

content/tech/_index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
++++
+title = "Tech"
+sort_by = "date"
+template = "blog.html"
+page_template = "post.html"
++++
+
+Here you can see some useful tips and tricks that I encountered that helped me use \*NIX operating systems more effectively.

content/tech/freebsd.md

@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
++++
+title = "FreeBSD Tips and Tricks"
+date = 2025-06-12
+slug = "freebsd"
++++
+
+# GPU Drivers
+
+On June 10, 2025, the new FreeBSD 14.3 was released and I decided to try it out. After installing the OS from a USB stick on my bare-metal box (very smooth installation process by the way) I was greeted with the TTY login prompt. Using the built-in `pkg` package manager, I installed my favorite window manager, sway, which unfortunately failed to launch with a cryptic error message "No displays found". After looking in the very helpful [FreeBSD Handbook](https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/x11/), it turned out that the GPU drivers weren't preinstalled in the OS, so I had to install them manually and add the respective kernel module to automatically load during boot.
+
+```
+pkg install drm-kmods
+sysrc kld_list+=i915kms # replace by amdgpu if using an AMD GPU
+```
+
+Unfortunately this was not enough, the system still wasn't able to start the graphics. After looking at the logs for some time, I found out that the version of the kernel modules responsible for the GPU drivers wasn't updated for the latest kernel revision yet. Fortunately, FreeBSD developers have a separate repository called `FreeBSD-kmods` with updated drivers so that I didn't need to compile the ports (BSD lingo for source-based packages) manually. However, this repository wasn't enabled by default, so I had to force the package manager to update from it.
+
+```
+pkg upgrade -r FreeBSD-kmods
+```
+
+This was enough to make sway launch (by using `seatd-launch sway`, as the post-install message from the `seatd` package mentioned) and fully use it to the best of its abilities.
+
+# (Wired) 802.1x authentication
+
+My university uses an `802.1x` authenticated network (both wired and wireless) on campus, in order to connect to it, I had to use `wpa_supplicant` with the following configuration (`/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf`)
+
+```
+network={
+        key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
+        eap=PEAP
+        phase1="peaplabel=0"
+        phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
+        identity="user@school.edu"
+        password="password"
+}
+```
+
+After that it was enough to make sure that the wired interface (in my case `em0`) used the supplicant (`/etc/rc.conf`) and restart the network configuration service `netif`:
+
+```
+sysrc ifconfig_em0="WPA SYNCDHCP" # replace em0 by your interface name
+service netif restart
+```
+
+TODO: In the current state of things, certificates aren't checked during the connection process. It is a good idea 
+
+# `i3status` not using colors
+
+This was merely a quality-of-life issue that for some reason `i3status` fails to detect that it should format its output for `swaybar` to parse it, therefore I had to force it in the config (`~/.config/i3status/config`)
+
+```
+general {
+    colors = true
+    interval = 5
+    output_format = "i3bar"
+}
+```
+
+# Wireguard
+
+Since FreeBSD 14, FreeBSD has excellent support for Wireguard VPNs. I just had to install the `wireguard-tools` package (`pkg install wireguard-tools`), copy my config to `/usr/local/etc/wireguard/` and add the following two lines to `/etc/rc.conf` to automatically configure the connection at boot:
+
+```
+wireguard_enable="YES"
+wireguard_interfaces="wg0"
+```

static/style.css

@@ -141,7 +141,6 @@ h4 {
 	object-fit: cover;
 }
 
-
 .left {
 	float: left;
 	margin: 0;
@@ -183,3 +182,12 @@ h4 {
 		filter: invert(1);
 	}
 }
+
+@font-face {
+  font-family: firacode;
+  src: url(firacode.ttf);
+}
+
+code {
+	font-family: firacode;
+}

templates/base.html

@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@
  <a href="https://git.brloh.is">git/</a>
  <a href="/lang">lang/</a>
  <a href="/math">math/</a>
+ <a href="/tech">tech/</a>
  <a href="/travel">travel/</a>
  <span class="right">
   Bear's den 🐻

templates/blog.html

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 
 {% block nav %}
 <ul>
-  <li><a href="{{ section.permalink | safe }}">{{ section.title | lower }}/</a></li>
+  <li><a href="{{ section.permalink | safe }}">./</a></li>
   {% for page in section.pages %}
   <li><a href="{{ page.permalink | safe }}">{{ page.slug }}/</a></li>
   {% endfor %}

templates/post.html

@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
   <!-- If you are using pagination, section.pages will be empty.
        You need to use the paginator object -->  
   {% set section = get_section(path=page.ancestors | last) %}
-  <li><a href="{{ section.permalink | safe }}">{{ section.title | lower }}/</a></li>
+  <li><a href="{{ section.permalink | safe }}">../</a></li>
   {% for p in section.pages %}
   <li><a href="{{ p.permalink | safe }}">{{ p.slug }}/</a></li>
   {% endfor %}