phanto

@phanto@lemmy.ca

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Pros and cons of Proxmox in a home lab?

Hi all. I was curious about some of the pros and cons of using Proxmox in a home lab set up. It seems like in most home lab setups it’s overkill. But I feel like there may be something I’m missing. Let’s say I run my home lab on two or three different SBCs. Main server is an x86 i5 machine with 16gigs memory and the others...

phanto ,

I have tried a couple of Proxmox clusters, one with overkill specs and one with little Mini PCs. Proxmox does eat up a fair amount of memory, but I have used it with Ceph for live migrations. Its really useful to me to be able to power off a machine, work on it, then bring it back up, and have no interruptions in my services. That said, my Mini PCs always seemed to be hurting for RAM. So that's my pros and cons.

phanto ,

I have it working with LaCP'd 4gb networking for the transfers. Five nodes. I agree though, It's a beast on RAM.

phanto ,

WildStar got done dirty... It hit at the wrong time, but was so much fun. I could never get any friends to play with me. Le sigh.

phanto ,

Sentinel... From waaay back. Like, Commodore 64 age.
I think it would be a perfect VR game, too.

phanto ,

I own the remake, and I actually had a fan site for it...
And got to interview John Freaking Carpenter for that fan site, as he did the music for Sentinel Returns.
It was exactly as awesome as it sounds.

phanto ,

Thanks to this post, I'm going to adopt the title of Butlerian!

I worked in telecom for years, and recently left because my company decided to automate out a bunch of positions by using their shiny new AI. It suggested carrying 300 Amps at 50 volts (DC) several hundred feet with 14 gauge cable. (Electricians, go ahead and laugh.)

I went back to school, learning IT support. Most of my classmates are fresh out of high school, and they're all using Chat GPT like my generation uses Google. But instead of googling the answer and then figuring out how to make it work and testing the results, they just stop.

Chat GPT says to use this config? They use it.
Of course it doesn't work.

Over and over, I have classmates asking me why their Copliot generated code isn't giving them the right answer, or why their server process is failing to start.

I fear for the safety of a world where the tech support is provided by people who never learned how the tech runs, never learned to read, test, experiment, fail, and try again...

So yeah, Butlerian. points at my face

phanto ,

There's a series of Lemmy posts called the Linux upskill challenge that goes step by step through setting up and using Linux. I tried self hosting and jumping straight in too, and it sucked.

What worked for me:

  1. Start using open source versions of stuff, like switching from Chrome to Firefox, Office to Libre Office.
  2. Set up Virtual Box, and practice running server apps on Linux on virtual machines, until you've done a few Linux VMs and gotten used to the interfaces and commands.
  3. Dual boot a laptop or desktop, one by one getting your daily use apps working in Linux.
  4. Distro hop a bit. I never thought I'd land on Fedora, but here I am.
  5. Get used to running and configuring servers from the command line.
  6. Host some stuff with VMs and get used to the networking and bridging and stuff.
  7. Containers!

I'm still in the middle of 6+7. Not super comfy with Docker quite yet, but getting there. I really do love having my stuff self-hosted though. Well worth the effort.

phanto ,

You mean I didn't need to spend years and thousands of dollars learning Linux and servers? Oh man!
Oh wait, I'm getting ads in Windows on the start menu.
Yeah, I'm happy.

phanto ,

I disagree with this.
Law school isn't cheap. Law school doesn't come from nothing. I'm seeing kids in my class who are stacked six to a bed, working full work weeks and trying to squeak by in class, and largely failing.
Also, effective politicians need to raise funds to run campaigns. Funds come from rich people. Even if this effective politician somehow manages to afford an expensive law degree, they also need to have the time and opportunity to succeed in school, and then somehow manage the free time to also make connections among the wealthy so they can raise the funds to run a campaign.

Politics has become for the rich, by the rich.

InternetIsScary , to Lemmy French
@InternetIsScary@mstdn.social avatar

How did you come up with your username?

I’ll go first, it’s simple, the Internet is literally an open field where anyone can do whatever they want.

@lemmy

phanto ,

Super Mario 2:
Don't you pick up that key!
Hey, put that key down!

phanto ,

What I know: https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/A_guide_to_mdadm
No need to do hardware raid, mdadm is great.
I got an HBA card off of art of server on eBay, and have ungodly amounts of disk. Also, am ungodly power bill...
You can stick regular SATA drives into a SAS Bay, but not SAS drives into a SATA bay.
Some HP equipment is bitchy about non -HP drives, cards, etc.
I saw a fair amount of "Do RAID 6!" But I found on my hardware that RAID 5 and a hot standby was moderately faster.
Try not to mix drive sizes, it messes things up and wastes space.
Have fun!

phanto ,

I have two old usb2 4tb drives attached, and the only issue I run into is a bit of delay at the start of a video in jellyfin. My jellyfin is running in a container in the Nuc though, not natively, and it's a Celeron from a while back, so...

phanto ,

SELinux:
Tries doing a thing, didn't work
Spend eight hours trying various crap.
setenforce 0
Works now
Five minutes cussing
30 seconds googling how to set the context
Works forever

Tries doing a thing...

phanto ,

Canuck here, and I really hate weighing in on your politics, but...
Biden is old.
An old politician, with policy experience, advisors, and hopefully at least enough common sense to step down if his health takes a turn.
Trump is also old.
And a lunatic. A criminal, a predator. No redeeming qualities whatsoever. A human shaped waste of space. When you guys voted for him last time, the rest of the world smacked their foreheads in astonishment and lost any respect for the voting populace of your country. We all honestly thought he was a joke right up until he won.
Every single thing you see online about Biden is an attempt to get enough sane people to abstain so the lunatics can squeak a victory out of sheer disgust.
Vote. Vote for a human being who means well, or vote for a bag of orange toxic waste shaped like a person.
But realize that all the crap about Biden is a blatant attempt to get you to stay home and not vote.
How many criminal charges...?
Seriously?

phanto ,

I have a "smart" TV with a network cable plugged into nothing at all, with no wifi connected, plugged into an Oooold Lenovo Tiny PC running Mint. The Mint box does all my smarts. Pihole, ad-block, all that jazz. It never occurred to me that it might have connected to some open wifi out there, but none of my neighbors have guest wifi or anything, so hopefully I'm good.
It's definitely not on my wifi, anyways.

phanto ,

Hmm...
The nice thing is, I don't use the remote. I have a little wireless keyboard plugged in to my Tiny PC...
But yuck. I guess I'll have to start tinfoil hat wearing soon.

phanto ,

Well, died him?

phanto ,

Yup!
Exactly right.
Weirdly, I just did this exact guide.
I already had the Proxmox and a template of Ubuntu, but the rest, yup!
I am running a pihole Docker, and a SearxNG, and they both work great, on OAF hardware.
I meant to write EoL, but OAF works.

phanto ,

I have Jellyfin working on it as it's own VM in Proxmox. It has a long delay before a stream starts, but playback is fine. No complaints. It accesses my media as a mount off of a different PC over Samba.

phanto ,

Thanks for this!
Looking forward to trying it out!

phanto ,

This is really lame to suggest, but I had an old Mac Mini that had a dead NIC, and I also had a USB NIC, and it ran that way for god knows how long...
Maybe 20$ and keep using the Mac Mini?
I have an old Lenovo Tiny that's running a few Docker services. It's an i5-4570t, I think? It sits in my closet next to my router and is probably covered in dust.

phanto ,

There's a store in my town called Memory Express, and I bought their generic card back in the day. I can't remember if it was vantech or Startech branded. I didn't actually buy it for that purpose, I just had it lying around. I originally bought it because my work computer had no ethernet port, and I was testing networks with it. It's funny, I seem to wander through my Linux-using experience with amazing luck. I always hear about 'no sound' or 'no wifi', and I've never run into that.

phanto ,

I've had pretty good luck with www.era.ca. I'm in their city though, so I can pick up locally, and I can return anything that doesn't work for me. They have an eBay store www.ebay.ca/str/calgarycomputerwholesale. They do sell "for parts" and "as is" though, so read the listing.

phanto ,

Welcome to the club!
My Plex box is an i7-950.
Not a 9600k...
It's whatever I had lying around.
It eats more power than it needs to, but it fits a whole lotta hard disk, so I'm good!
It also shares it's library with a little VM on a Dell tiny i5-4570t which runs jellyfin.
I prefer jellyfin, the Mrs and the MIL prefer Plex.
Don't stress high end hardware, just make sure you can stuff enough disks in it to hold your library.
I bought the tiny used from an auction, and I built the Plex box back in, like, 2008 or something?
Anyways, the point is, it'll probably work fine, go cheaper if you want.

phanto ,

"Sometimes you just can't get rid of a bomb..."

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HoUpF7rvfnk

Starting from zero

I'm interested in exploring the world of self hosting, but most of the information that I find is incredibly detailed and specific, such as what type of CPU performs better, etc. What I'm really looking for is an extremely basic square 1 guide. I know basically nothing about networking, I don't really know any coding, but it...

phanto ,

My first step was Nextcloud as a snap on a Xubuntu desktop. Very old hardware but a big hard drive.

That was eight years ago. I'll let you know if it fails anytime soon.

I have a bunch of other stuff now, but that was the start, and I still use it all the time!

Do you often hear the ringing of switching power supplies and devices when you are in a quiet space?

I'm curious, how many people are aware of these sounds. I have designed, etched, and built my own switching power supplies along with winding my own transformers. I am aware of the source of the noise. So, does anyone else hear these high frequency sounds regularly?

phanto ,

I have tinnitus and it sounds just like power supplies, except it comes from nowhere.
So, when. I hear the squeal, I turn my head. If the squeal noise follows the movement of my head, tinnitus. If it stays put, power supply!

It's like skunk and pot! (I'm in Canada, it's legal and everywhere.) If I smell it, I look around. If I see a burrow, skunk! If I see a dozy looking dude with red eyes...

phanto ,

It's funny, I had a horrible toxic job for way longer than any sane person should ever have to deal with, and one aspect of it was dangerous noise levels. We complained, and the company always sent "independent" inspectors who always found that the noise levels were juuuust inside the legal safe limit. Even when they added enough equipment to double the volume! Funny that...
Anyways, I am now over six months gone from that job, and I just realized that my tinnitus is way better than it was! Ditto my mental health...
Now I just need a winning lottery ticket or a not-soul-sucking job...

phanto ,

My Dell does that!
If I load a large image, 'squeal'!
Bought it used though, and anytime someone sells something, there's a reason they're selling it.

phanto ,

Yup!
It fades it out really quick, but it comes back within minutes.
My tinnitus has gotten a lot better lately.

phanto ,

I used to work in a call center and had a notably irate customer named Mrs. Bitschy.
I tried pronouncing it like "Beeshy", and she immediately snapped "It's Bitchy! Got a problem with that!?"
Oof.

I've recently turned 20. What highly specific advice you, lemmy users, would offer me?

A lot of people answering this struggle to understand what highly-specific means. I'm looking to, for the sake of experiment, highly-specific advice that gives a reader clear understanding of what they should do. Unlike the vague advice, on the contrary, that may be too abstract to get implementing it right away....

phanto ,

Save 15%.
Even if it absolutely sucks to do so.
If you have to dip in to the 15%, it better be for life or death.
Skip meals to save that 15%.

1$ saved at 20 is like 20$ saved at 40.

Also, don't cash advance from a credit card, ever, for any reason.
I once bought a 6$ taco at age 18 on cash advance, and once I finally cleared it off, that taco had cost me almost 500$. I did the math.

Use work laptop as personal device by dual booting on a separate internal drive?

I currently have a Dell laptop that runs Windows for work. I use an external SSD via the Thunderbolt port to boot Linux allowing me to use the laptop as a personal device on a completely separate drive. All I have to do is F12 at boot, then select boot from USB drive....

phanto ,

I had a work laptop and did the "external USB" thing.
One day, at work, I'm messing with my Linux on a public wifi, having unplugged from the corporate LAN.

A co-worker walks by, sees the Network cord unplugged, plugs it in. I am oblivious in the washroom.

Corporate security got to my laptop before I did.

I didn't get fired.

I don't work there anymore, though.

phanto ,

Newpipe is my Android based YouTube player.
I don't have a Shield, but there are ways to run Android without a Google account. With a phone it's honestly not worth it because you're constantly messing around with side loading and stuff, but it may be doable with a TV box.

That said, I have an ancient NUC and run Fedora. It was a bit of a pain, but it's been years and years and it's still doing the job, and I'm told that it's gotten easier with the later releases.

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    phanto ,

    I second this. I help people at the library with their computer stuff, and it gets me out of the house and makes me feel like I am contributing. Much underrated feeling.

    phanto ,

    I was trying to get yacy working in a tiny container, but the dang thing kept crashing after indexing about 500,000 sites. Yacy is like a peer to peer web crawler. Too busy to dig into it and figure out why.

    phanto ,

    Nope, just for fun.

    phanto ,

    So it's not just me. I watched its memory use rock slowly up until it ran out, then it died.

    phanto ,

    Well, if he's from Canada (as I am, no hate!), the answer is "We get like 4 hours of sunlight per day here."
    I wear shades to block the glare of my own reflection in the snow.

    phanto ,

    All Hail Eris!
    All hail Discordia!

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