Over the winter holidays, I built Umbra — a command-line tool that takes a different approach to storing sensitive files. The core idea? Use anonymous paste services — the kind typically used for sharing code snippets or logs — as a distributed storage backend for encrypted file fragments.

The Core Idea

Services like termbin, clbin, and paste.c-net.org are designed for quickly sharing text snippets anonymously — no accounts, no tracking, just paste and get a URL. But what if you could use these ephemeral, anonymous paste bins as a storage layer for sensitive files?

One of my childhood memories is tied to my aunt’s habit of making pizza dough. It was her favorite way to relax. This might seem normal, except that she was a baker by profession. How ironic, isn’t it? The very job that could be a source of stress became her way to unwind. The funny thing is, after becoming a software developer, I found myself in the exact same situation. I love to code, but sometimes I need to do it to relax. And that’s exactly what happened when I started to develop my home server.

Last few months I played with FreeBSD and my Rock64 embedded boards [1] [2]. I really enjoyed the experience and I wanted to go to the next level and experiment with FreeBSD jails. I was surprised how easy (and logical) it was to create and manage an isolated environment. I also noticed that the low level commands have been wrapped into a more user friendly interfaces (like bastille) making the whole experience more enjoyable. To have a real example of a microservice running on a jail, I decided to try with NATS.

I have always dreamed of working remotely. The ability to manage my own time, work from anywhere, and better balance personal and professional life seemed like a utopia until a few years ago. To be clear, there were pioneering countries, like the United States, where remote work is now an established reality, or the Scandinavian countries, where workplace flexibility is a widespread practice. But in Italy, until just a few years ago, remote work was considered a true taboo. The reasons? I’ve spent my entire professional life asking myself this question, and in the Italian context, the main answer has always been the same: the cultural factor.

This is the sequel to the previous post FreeBSD on a ROCK64 Board. Long story short, I had the chance to resurrect 4 single-board computers that were collecting dust in my office. I decided to install FreeBSD on one of them and it was a success. This time I will show you how and why I installed NetBSD on a second ROCK64 board.

Let’s add connectivity to the FreeBSD board

The process I described in the previous post was fun and I learned a lot. However, I used a USB-to-serial adapter to connect to the board, and even though it was fine to complete the installation, I wanted to have a more comfortable way to connect to the board.

This is a story about an embedded board and a BSD system. The title could have been “How to resurrect a forgotten board and fall in love with BSD operating systems, again”. It all started 6 years ago when I bought 4 Pine Rock64 boards, with a well planned project in my mind. Each board was equipped with a Rockchip RK3328 quad-core ARM Cortex A53 64-Bit processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of eMMC storage, and a Gigabit Ethernet port.