From 62f413585316b0b3e5a18d5d4e319507b618406c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: nathan <nathansmith@disroot.org>
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2025 03:58:20 -0600
Subject: Network diarrhea

---
 org/blog/articles.xml                  |  7 ++++
 org/blog/articles/network-diarrhea.xml | 58 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 65 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 org/blog/articles/network-diarrhea.xml

diff --git a/org/blog/articles.xml b/org/blog/articles.xml
index d63bb78..9ca1f71 100644
--- a/org/blog/articles.xml
+++ b/org/blog/articles.xml
@@ -1,4 +1,11 @@
 <channel>
+  <item>
+    <title>Network diarrhea</title>
+    <name>network-diarrhea</name>
+    <pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2025 09:57:20 GMT</pubDate>
+    <file>articles/network-diarrhea.xml</file>
+  </item>
+  
   <item>
     <title>The command line reactionary</title>
     <name>the-command-line-reactionary</name>
diff --git a/org/blog/articles/network-diarrhea.xml b/org/blog/articles/network-diarrhea.xml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53fa308
--- /dev/null
+++ b/org/blog/articles/network-diarrhea.xml
@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+<article>
+  <h2>The thing that happened</h2>
+  <p>
+    I have noticed really bad inbound latency on the VPS I host this site
+    on. Way slower than what <a href="https://skhron.eu">skhron</a> says it
+    should be on their site so clearly something was up. I noticed when pinging
+    <a href="https://example.com">example.com</a> the first ping took a while
+    but after that it was fine compared to pinging its IP address which was
+    pretty much instant so clearly the DNS server was shit. While doing this I
+    had the VPS dashboard open and saw DNS server settings which I assumed
+    (assuming things often lead to bad outcomes) would change something on the
+    DHCP server. After that I noticed the network on the VPS go completely
+    down. Only way I could get in was with VNC and from the server I couldn't
+    ping anything not even IP addresses. After changing back to the default DNS
+    the issue continued. Turned out there is no DHCP the VPS server just
+    configures everything statically with some scripts and it messed up. I use
+    freebsd which wasn't well tested by whoever made that system so it nuked
+    itself.
+    <br /><br />
+    Even after turning on manual mode and setting up the networking by
+    hand it was still fucked. The only thing I backed up was my git repos. All
+    the configs (some of them a pain in the ass to make) were stuck on there
+    without any way to get them off except painfully hand copy with the 80
+    column VNC display. Linux live environments don't support zfs and the
+    drivers to make that happen require rebooting which live environments reset
+    on boot. Uploading freebsd live images to the VPS would be painful due to
+    the stuppa way it handles them.
+    <br /><br />
+    Because I didn't want to go through any of those things I contacted tech
+    support (I hate contacting those types of places). Most places have an
+    under powered LLM running the show, people who have good writing/talking
+    skills but have computer skills limited to using word processors and web
+    browsers, over worked intern who has million other things on their
+    mind... Skhron turned out to be one of the rare gems that has tech support
+    that not only knows what they are doing but also has the time/will to do
+    so. The tech support person actually took the time to recreate the issue on
+    another freebsd instance while most tech support people by now would have
+    sent a copy pasted corporate answer that translates to "go fuck
+    yourself". After a few hours they sent a manual route config which fixed it
+    and they also said to configure DNS from <code>/etc/resolv.conf</code>
+    instead.
+  </p>
+
+  <h2>What was learned</h2>
+  <p>
+    Less so when using more popular operating systems on a VPS but do be
+    careful with dashboard settings that might be changing things in the
+    operating system itself instead of on the network and VM. If you can
+    preform a task from a config file that is often the safer choice because
+    you don't know what the fuck the VPS dashboard is doing behind the
+    scenes. Also anything you don't want to loose make backups of because even
+    if you do everything right things will still fuck up! If this issue wasn't
+    fixed a fresh install would have been the only other option. If up time is
+    important for you then automatic backups and full backups are a must
+    have. Regardless keep an offline backup of important things on your own
+    hard drive.
+  </p>
+</article>
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