2.5 Admins

Hosted by The Late Night Linux Family

Technology

Website RSS feed X / Twitter YouTube

Episodes

322

Latest episode

Oct 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

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.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

October 22, 202629 min

2.5 Admins 322: Internet Defrigeration

Supermarkets found out why their fridges shouldn’t be on the Internet and Samsung smart fridges broke after a firmware update, why we don’t recommend MoCA, some tips for running ethernet cables in your house, and why it’s fine to use a short TTL with your domains. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes Biggest ZFS Misconfigurations and How to Fix Them: Part 2 News/discussion Hackers heat French supermarket fridges, sparking fires and spoiling food The username is admin and the password changes every day automatically to.. the current date Freeze the Controller, Defrost the Food: Uncovering Vulnerabilities in Danfoss Refrigeration Controllers Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges Free consulting Example coax cable tester See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

October 15, 202628 min

2.5 Admins 321: Backup Strategy

Why batteries in homes could benefit everyone involved, why we didn’t bring up wake-on-LAN when someone asked about keeping a NAS powered on as little as possible, building a router vs buying one, and ways to manage ssh connections. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes Biggest ZFS Misconfigurations and How to Fix Them: Part 1 News/discussion How I kept cool with NYC’s free battery program for window AC units See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

October 8, 202629 min

2.5 Admins 320: Dining on Goose

Google offers a few pennies to web publishers to make up for stealing their content and not sending them any traffic, the tech we’d try to use after the apocalypse, why Jim doesn’t virtualise his clients’ desktops, and setting up Volume Shadow Copy so your users can restore their own files. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes FreeBSD: The Hidden Cost of Upgrading in Production News/discussion Google’s early attempt to pay websites for AI answers is struggling See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

October 1, 202630 min

2.5 Admins 319: Funding Open Source

The challenges of funding open source software projects, how Netflix uses FreeBSD in a positive way, why you shouldn’t try to complicate your monitoring, and running servers in a small residence. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes Why Is Everyone Stuck on FreeBSD 13? Discussion Netflix Case Study See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

September 24, 202631 min

2.5 Admins 318: End of Exchange

Microsoft really wants you to update your Exchange server, our thoughts on immutable distros, more on Jim’s approach to internet access for his kids, restricting access to servers on a corporate network, and cloning and backing up operating systems with ZFS. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes OpenZFS User and Developer Summit 2026: October 27-30 News Microsoft to bounce mail from outdated Exchange servers See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

September 17, 202626 min

2.5 Admins 317: Need Less

Some of the ways you can mitigate the ridiculous hardware prices, and designing a small business LAN. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes FreeBSD’s Release Cycle: What It Means for Your Upgrade Schedule Free consulting We were asked about designing a small business LAN. See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

September 10, 202627 min

2.5 Admins 316: BGP Clipboard Hijack

A BGP hijack involved some basic errors, Microsoft teaches people to ignore warnings in Windows, Zoom appears to be reading the clipboard on X11, why a non-US open certificate authority is feasible in theory, and keeping a NAS powered on as little as possible. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes Send us an email News/discussion BGP hijack infecting networks caused by a comedy of errors that’s not funny at all Windows bug incorrectly tells users that Microsoft Defender Antivirus is turned off I noticed today that an update to the #Linux #Zoom client has made it start proactively reading _everything_ written to the X11 clipboard Free consulting We were asked about keeping a NAS powered on as little as possible. See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

September 3, 202627 min

2.5 Admins 315: Hot Bus Adapter

What to read into a study of long-term Backblaze hard drive failure data, why the difference between TB and TiB matters, and what to do about an overheating host bus adapter. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes ZFS vs Ceph: Choosing the Right Storage Architecture News/discussion Peer-reviewed study of 443,000 Backblaze hard drives ranks HGST most reliable and Toshiba the least — Analysis of 1.66 million drive-years finds Seagate and Toshiba HDDs fail at roughly twice the rate of WD and HGST Changing Language for Storage Capacity Free consulting We were asked about an overheating host bus adapter. See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

August 27, 202628 min

2.5 Admins 314: 50 PBS TBS

A TV station struggles to retrieve its data from the data centre company that a defunct intermediary used, why we don’t want AI to manage our networks (even if Microsoft thinks we should), and understanding vdevs, and datasets in ZFS. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes OpenZFS User and Developer Summit 2026 CfP is open until September 11 FreeBSD Security in Production: Vulnerability Response and Operational Best Practices News/discussion Nine PBS sues Iron Mountain over blocked access to archival data Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data The patch window is collapsing: Why security needs a new control plane Free consulting We were asked about pools, vdevs, and datasets in ZFS. See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

August 20, 202627 min

2.5 Admins 313: Cooking with NVMe

Microsoft claims that Windows 11 will work well with 8GB of RAM, some of the innovations coming to high end SSDs, the arguments for TP-Link Omada over Ubiquiti UniFi. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes FreeBSD Support: Greatest Hits Discussion Microsoft says 8 GB of RAM should be enough for anyone running Windows 11 Windows quality: an update on the commitment we made in March Free consulting We were asked about the arguments for TP-Link Omada over Ubiquiti UniFi. See our contact page for ways to get in touch.