Author Archives: Mike Hernandez

OpenBSD PF Strange Issue (Solved)

I was running an OpenBSD PF firewall here at my office for several months, replacing a Cisco PIX with something I felt more comfortable with. The only issues I had with it, were that 1) AOL Instant Messenger stopped working, even after I opened the proper ports, and 2) Optimum Online’s Web Mail ceased to work (it would immediately log a user out upon login. These issues were very minor, and so I left it alone. Eventually the cause of these 2 issues lead to a similar problem, this time with software made by ACT called Work Keys. The Work Keys help desk insisted that the problem was being caused by caching (i.e. a proxy server). I insisted that I had no proxy server. I had no caching enabled anywhere… so what was the problem? Well thanks to this email I figured it out! It has to do with NAT address pools.

Linux vs OpenBSD vs FreeBSD (The Battle For My Desktop)

Although I still have windows on my machine (FL Studio is a killer app… can’t help it) my primary OS has been linux for a few years now. I use OpenBSD for firewalls at work, and have experimented with FreeBSD at home as well. After using linux from scratch for so long, I began to feel the itch for change. This is the beginning of a long story, which I’ll get to writing more of later. If the mood strikes me I’ll post lots of technical details and so forth, but as of right now I’ll say this… I wish OpenBSD had support for my sound card… *sigh* Stay tuned for more!