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if your usual apple -> system settings -> general -> software update doesn’t want to show that there’s update available, and you absolutely, positively know there is one, you can “push” MacOS to refresh list of available updates. to do so, go to terminal and execute: user@MAC ~ % softwareupdate -l Software Update Tool Finding available software Software Update found the following new or updated software: * Label: macOS Sequoia 15.0.1-24A348 Title: macOS Sequoia 15.0.1, Version: 15.0.1, Size: 1389974KiB, Recommended: YES, Action: restart, as you can see, there’s 15.0.1 update available. at this point, the GUI window should “wake up” and actually show that there’s indeed update that’s available, just like in the window below: ...

I’m not using any wonderful scripts on my website, that would measure your “responsiveness” or encourage you to subscribe to newsletters. I only refer to font files and that’s basically it. what I am checking every month is from where, how and on which device you’re browsing my pages using goaccess package. thanks to this, I am not tempted to profile you in any way or serve you some customized content and similar “things”. ...

I’m not a fan of such ‘solutions’ because they hardly qualify as genuine fixes. however, if you find yourself working in MacOS-heavy environment that’s plagued by radio frequency interference, you’ve probably experienced the erratic behavior of Bluetooth-connected accessories. on my mega-desk, I have numerous devices scattered about, not to mention the abundance of Macs themselves. as a result, I encounter this issue quite frequently—almost on a daily basis. some might suggest employing various ‘voodoo’ tricks like “quickly disabling and enabling the mouse, which worked for me” or “updating firmware, shutting down awdl0, and then reading a fairy tale to your children.” ...

quick note for those spending weekends on labbing - if you want to log info (from Syslog for example), and the management interface is in separate VRF (very good idea), you need to configure VRF in two, or even three (if you count VRF definition itself) different places. if you forget one, it won’t work. so, first of all, create management VRF definition: ! vrf definition MGMNT rd 444:444 ! optional, but just to keep the numbering across VRFs ! address-family ipv4 exit-address-family ! address-family ipv6 exit-address-family ! ..then properly assign management interface to VRF: ...

ever since the initial tuning of the FreeBSD TCP/IP stack around version 4.x, I’ve found myself occasionally tinkering with the contents of /etc/sysctl.conf just to fine-tune things, you know over time, numerous changes have been made to the FreeBSD TCP/IP stack, including the introduction of modularity. however, MacOS X, being based on FreeBSD, is more conservative and lacks certain options. therefore, on my MacOS systems, I make use of the following /etc/sysctl.conf configuration: ...

as I’m installing FreeBSD boxes and VMs left and right, I typically do some initial setup before doing anything else. while some use cases call for additional ports to be installed (like bird or routinator), there’s pretty standard “intro”. first, make sure the packages themselves are up to date: sed -i '' s/quarterly/latest/g /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf pkg upgrade this will trigger initial pkg install. then, it’s my personal minimum set of packages: pkg install htop bmon mtr-nox11 screen wget doas git-lite as ZFS is only filesystem you should be using ( ;) ) and this is not some NAS system, I typically disable access time marking to speed up VM filesystem operations a bit: ...

if you have to pack a lot of things, using sheer power of modern multi-core/multi-threaded CPUs may come handy. unless… the tools you’re using are not enabling that by default, and you suffer running everything on one core/thread. as I spend most of my time recently with FreeBSD and MacOS the tools I typically use are command line. therefore, for every gzip - consider using pigz. and for bzip2 - consider using pbzip2. ...

nice addition to recent IOS-XE images is the info in BGP view when the peak number of prefixes was received: rtr-edge#sh bgp ipv4 unicast summary [...] 6807 received paths for inbound soft reconfiguration BGP activity 1126906/107856 prefixes, 1337822/171863 paths, scan interval 60 secs 878960 networks peaked at 15:02:09 Jan 29 2022 CET (22:53:01.065 ago) [...] rtr-edge#sh bgp ipv6 unicast summary [...] BGP using 102467162 total bytes of memory BGP activity 1126898/107856 prefixes, 1337806/171843 paths, scan interval 60 secs 140720 networks peaked at 05:46:19 Jan 29 2022 CET (1d08h ago) [...] while logged in over CLI you may glance at this info without needing to check your monitoring systems (you have them, right?). ...

one of the very old tricks, that’s even documented is how to simulate ctrl-break on newer PCs to break into ROMMON during router/switch boot. instead of fighting with SecureCRT on MacOS, I just used it recently. basically, you: disconnect terminal from the device turn device off set terminal to 1200 (yes, you read this right), 8N1 and no flow control turn device on press SPACE for 10-15 seconds (basically, until your terminal drops out some unreadable characters) reconfig terminal to 9600 8N1 and you should be in ROMMON yes, I’m old. ...