As some others unix-like operating systems FreeBSD has some particularities aside to the UNIX heritage, licensing and the like. The init system is the way a system starts up and the BSD has always been different. If you happen to be a UNIX admin I am sure you are aware of this and the folks […]
FreeBSD particularities

How to configure the PF firewall on FreeBSD
There are three firewall options on FreeBSD. The in-house built IPFW, the ‘old’ IPF (known as IP Filter) and PF ported from OpenBSD. PF is a very popular piece of software which was originally sparked from an issue on the IPF license that prevented making changes publicly available, which the OpenBSD did all the time. […]

How to update FreeBSD with freebsd-update
Anytime you set a clean fresh FreeBSD install or just any other operating system you must update it. This should be the first thing. If you are a bit security aware (read paranoid) you can first set up the firewall rules and then update the system to the latest release where you have all the […]

A brief introduction to Regular Expressions
A regular expression is a set of characters, a string of characters if you will, that specify a pattern. Ever used the grep command? It makes use of them. The ‘grep’ command is very handful when one needs to look for certain things inside a text file, or looking for some specific pattern from another […]

How to install the ELK stack on CentOS 8
The ELK stack stands for Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana. These three pieces of software are very useful since each brings a powerful capability that in combination is just great to use. Elasticsearch is a search and analytics engine. Logstash can process data from multiple sources. Kibana allows to visualize data in a graphic manner. These […]

How to use find in GNU/Linux and FreeBSD
How to use find is a very basic, but important, UNIX lesson. Find is a very useful command which can help us not just finding a particular file, but for examples files or directories matching certain criteria such as: size, permissions, type. The basic mode of operation for find is the following: find path criteria […]

How to manually update Letsencrypt certificates on FreeBSD
Update 05-2020: If anyone is interested on the automatic process you can read my tutorial on DigitalOcean about the topic. On this guide we will manually update our Letsencrypt certificate on FreeBSD for a single website. It is a simple operation that can be automated as a cron job, but seeing it is always informative […]

How to install ModSecurity 2 on FreeBSD
WARNING: A newer version of ModSecurity is available. The article to install ModSecurity 3 on FreeBSD can be found here. Will be published on March 1st, 2021. If you find the articles in Adminbyaccident.com useful to you, please consider making a donation. Use this link to get $200 credit at DigitalOcean and support Adminbyaccident.com costs. […]

100 articles mark at Adminbyaccident.com
This is the 100th post here at Adminbyaccident. Little I knew when I starting posting that I would reach the ‘impossible’ mark of the 100 articles. Sure, some of them are not very interesting, nor instructive. Three years ago I wasn’t the same and I hope in three years time I’m still here and kicking. […]

How to enable log rotation on FreeBSD
This is a very short simple entry but it may help you. As many others you may be running a web server, or any other service that creates some logging information. Enable log rotation on FreeBSD will keep those log files in a manageable size (at least more readable) and they won’t grow and expand […]
