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About

Stefano MarinelliStefano Marinelli

I am Stefano Marinelli. I Solve Problems.

I was born in 1979 and graduated with a degree in Computer Science from the University of Bologna in 2003. I founded and ran a small IT company focused on advanced services such as server management, virtualization, hosting, and custom-tailored solutions. In 2019, I became the CEO of Prodottoinrete Group SRL, and DragasIT is now a part of this group.

My main IT interests include FreeBSD, all the BSDs in general, GNU/Linux, Unix-like systems, embedded systems, high availability, and fault tolerance. I have been working with Linux since 1996, with the *BSDs since 2002, and have extensive experience in problem-solving. I have worked with and for large companies, traveling all around Europe.

I'm the "Barista" of the BSD Cafe, a community where all the BSD enthusiasts (but not only) can meet, interact, exchange ideas, opinions and knowledge in a friendly and relaxed way. Have a look at https://wiki.bsd.cafe for more information.

I'm also the "Barista" of the illumos Cafe, a community for users and developers of illumos - the open-source continuation of OpenSolaris - to meet, share ideas, and collaborate in a friendly and relaxed way.

I also created and manage the FediMeteo project, which brings regular weather updates for cities in many countries to the Fediverse (also available on web pages or via RSS feed). The list of cities and countries is continuously expanding.

Recently, I had the pleasure of launching The BSD Cafe Journal. This new space will host many of my technical articles, offering an additional resource for deeper dives into specific topics.

I'm also writing on the blog called "My Notes", where I'll be writing about everything that comes to mind, including tech-related topics (although the articles will be less technical than those on this blog).

To contact me, please send me an e-mail to stefano@dragas.it or, better yet:

Send me a message using Delta Chat

Follow me on the Fediverse (Mastodon, etc)

Follow this blog on the Fediverse (Mastodon, etc)

About this Blog

This blog was born in 2018 as an extension of my "knowledge base", a private wiki that I had been using for over 10 years. Over time, I realized it would be useful to keep track not only of configurations and specific details, but also of procedures and some notes on the approaches used to solve specific problems I encounter. I then thought that sharing these notes could be useful to others, as well as to myself, since comments from others would help me continuously improve my approach and techniques. And so it was.

This blog is a sort of notebook of notes and does not want to be a "From zero to hero" guide. There are tutorials, but the purpose is not to provide instructions to simply copy and paste, but to explain (even in detail) how I solved a specific problem.

There are no announcements, no advertisements, no income from each visit, so I have no reason to artificially lengthen the content.

Running a "docker compose up -d" might seem simple and decisive, but it's important to know what lies underneath.

I have always been an advocate of self-hosting, but it must be done consciously. In my opinion, taking commands from a random site may seem simple and give the illusion of being able to do everything, but it's appropriate to know, at least minimally, what's underneath. Because as long as everything works, everything is perfect, but sooner or later something will happen and, at that point, there will be pain and lost data.

My goal is therefore to show how, on a daily basis, I tackle problems and try to maximize data availability and security, and this presupposes a minimum of knowledge and awareness of what you are doing. #OwnYourData is my motto - and always securely.

Talks and Conferences

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to speak at conferences and events in Italy and abroad, mostly about BSD systems, infrastructure, open source, and the lessons learned from running real-world systems.