Cyber
@Cyber@feddit.uk
- Comment on Just a little server 6 days ago:
Have a look at Patrick Kennedy’s reviews on yoochoob under ServeTheHome - there’s some fantastic hardware available now
I ended up buying something from AliExpress, which I was initially reluctant to do - but Patrick’s reviews convinced me
For detailed reviews his site’s got the details from the videos: www.servethehome.com
- Comment on Custom remote backup 1 week ago:
It depends on the sync / backup software
Syncthing uses a stored list of hashes (which is why it takes a long time for the initial scan), then it can monitor filesystem activity for changes to know what to sync.
Rsync compares all source and destination files with some magical high speed algorithm
Then, backup software does… whatever.
Back in the day on FAT filesystems they used the archive bit on each file’s metadata, which was (IIRC) set during a backup and reset with any writes to that file. The next backup could then just backup those files.
Your current strategy is ok - just doing an offline backup after a bulk update, maybe it’s just making that more robust by automating it…?
I suspect you have quite a large archive as photos don’t compress well, and +2TBs won’t disappear with dedupe… so, it’s mostly about long term archival rather than highly dynamic data changes.
So that +2TB… do you drop those files in amongst everything else, or do you have 2 separate locations ie, “My Photos” + “To Be Organised”?
Maybe only backup “MyPhotos” once a year / quarter (for example), but fully sync “To Be Organised”… then you’ve reduced risk, and volume of backup data…?
- Comment on Custom remote backup 1 week ago:
The main point is that sync (like RAID) isn’t a backup. If ransomware got in and started encrypting all your files, how would you know / protect yourself…
There’s a lot of focus on 3-2-1 backups, so offsite is good, but consider your G-F-S strategy too - as long as this remote copy isn’t your only long-term backup option, then sync might be ok for you
So, syncthing / rsync / etc is fine… but maybe just point it to your monthly / weekly / daily backup folder(s) rather than the main files?
You also had some other suggestions I think, like zfs / btrfs snapshots… which would be a point in time copy of your files.
Or burn the photos to DVD / Bluray and store them at the other location? No power requirements there…
- Comment on Custom remote backup 1 week ago:
Wake on LAN won’t work remotely, so you’d either need to have access to a VPN at their location, or have a 2nd always on device that you can connect to and that could then WoL to your device… or… get a device with an IPMI which you remote into. (All non-VPN forms of remote connection are open to abuse)
I suspect (guess) you’re not going to be able to setup a VPN, so perhaps an always on pi is going to be necessary - so maybe it’ll be that with drives set to spin down when idle?
OpenMediaVault was my preferred choice until everything went docker on it which was getting too complex for a NAS… so I just created my own, which powers on at certain times of the day and off again when CPU / network IO was low enough.
Data transfer with syncthing is great, but I don’t really recommend sync for snapshot backups… (consider your files are all corrupted, it’ll happily sync those corruptions) but I have enough space for a few versions of my files, so in theory I can roll back, but it’s cetainly not a Grandfather, Father, Son strategy.
- Comment on Calendar app 1 week ago:
Not sure why you’ve been down voted - I think the fossify apps are really good.
I even contribute towards their app development
- Comment on Calendar app 1 week ago:
Vivaldi has a CalDav Calendar built in.
If you’re open to that possibility, I’ve been using it on both Windows and Linux laptops and works well with my radicale server.
- Comment on The Way Ubuntu Boots on Raspberry Pi is Changing 1 week ago:
Ansible is an automation tool to setup systems to a known desirable end state.
TBH, for a single device, it’s overkill, but you seem like someone who keeps good notes and has some custom files to copy across… you could convert your setup note into an Ansible file, and it will also copy over your custom config files.
For Ansible you define the desired outcome and it does “all” (kinda) the work for you… so… say you want Apache, MariaDB and PHP, it doesn’t matter if half are installed already, or not, or their dependencies - you just say:
Do an update Install packages: A B C Copy my config files over Start the services Relax
Yep, it’ll take 10 times as long to get it working up front, but the day you want to duplicate it / start on a fresh Pi / VM, it’s all there for you.
I use it to setup all my Pi Zeros thr same way (they’re doing BLE presence detection) and for their regular updates
I’ve also got some VMs setup that way
But… I tried it on a laptop and as it’s a single device I just ended up setting it up manually and now the ansible script is woefully out of date… just some balanced feedback.
- Comment on The Way Ubuntu Boots on Raspberry Pi is Changing 1 week ago:
Thanks. No need for the setup notes (but thanks for the kind offer), it was more about the experience, but I think you’ve already answered my question with less surface area (I do have 1 Pi that’s internet facing for Radicale)
Have you looked at Ansible? That might also cover what you’re trying to do.
- Comment on The Way Ubuntu Boots on Raspberry Pi is Changing 2 weeks ago:
I went with Arch Linux on ARM for a minimal approach - did you try that?
Genuninely interested in your experience of Alpine Linux as I’d not considered it on a Pi (only VMs so far…)
- Comment on What else should I self-host? 2 weeks ago:
If you’re just looking for something to chew up CPU cycles and don’t know what to host, consider something like BOINC where you’re “self-hosting” (extremely loose term) scientific research, like cancer, new drugs, etc.
- Comment on Photo management - storing friends' photos 2 weeks ago:
If they’re sharing it with me, then sure, I’ll add it to the folder for that party, holiday, event
Immich would scan it and faces are taken care of and if there’s metadata in there, great, if not, dunno if I could be bothered to edit it… maybe date stamp if that was wildly off.
- Comment on Photo management - storing friends' photos 2 weeks ago:
I commented elsewhere here, but E2E encryption is just between the server and the end user (ie a VPN)
You’re thinking about encryption at rest, on the storage.
Immich would have to setup a whole new design to be able to store all the metadata on a per-user basis… but… you could have multiple Immich instances if you were to host it for your friends, but I think we’re drifting into “why bother” now…
- Comment on Photo management - storing friends' photos 2 weeks ago:
Well… E2E is still feasible, that’s your VPN for example.
Encryption at rest is where de-dupe, search, etc, can break.
- Comment on You Should Run a Certificate Transparency Log 2 weeks ago:
I guess this is mainly targeted at Universities and organisations that mirror repos?
They’re the kinda place (I presume) that would be able to support this…
- Comment on Let’s Encrypt Begins Supporting IP Address Certificates 2 weeks ago:
Is that the same
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as the squareroot of -1? - Comment on How to combat large amounts of Ai scrapers 3 weeks ago:
If you’re able to, use GeoIP ranges to only allow access from the countries you want.
That immediately limits a lot of everything
Then - again if you’re able to - use a block list that covers known scrapers in case they’re in your country.
I use pfBlockerNG on my pfSense firewall for exactly this.
- Comment on Just a small question. 3 weeks ago:
Take a backup and go for it.
Personally, I ditched OMV for standard Arch Linux and just added the packages I wanted…
- Comment on Reevaluating my password management 3 weeks ago:
This
x10
- Comment on how are my fellow peeps hosting your music collection these days? 5 weeks ago:
MythTV for the main storage, stored in folders by my genre.
All metadata updated via Picard.
Syncthing to replicate to a Raspberry Pi (2 or 3, I don’t recall which) running Volumio with a DAC board to connect speakers to.
The Pi is in the bedroom, so I only replicate the genres that I want, which cuts down on storage needed on the Pi, and means I don’t need MythTv / NAS / etc. powered over night.
- Comment on PSA: filebrowser is no longer being actively developed 5 weeks ago:
I was going to query why fork instead of just maintaining, but after reading theose comments I see the problem.
So, ok, I need to start shifting packages…
- Comment on Part 2 of car Raspberry pi 4 GPS project 5 weeks ago:
Thanks for the CoMaps pointer, didn’t know about that / issues with Organic Maps
- Comment on Is there any open source tv focused os/ui? 5 weeks ago:
MythTV - as others have already mentioned. It’s designed to work with the 10’ interface
Even records TV programs (presuming you have tuner hardware of course) - which I don’t think the others can do?
We don’t stream Netflix, but we do watch other various streams (ie BBC iPlayer), yoochoob, etc - all works fine, inc… video files from various sources, and music…
We use it with a Logitech K400 wireless keyboard and it works great for us.
I have played with a more traditional looking TV wand remote in the past, but you still need a keyboard to type in program websites, names, etc. so the K400 became our defacto remote.
MythTV used to come with Ubuntu as Mythbuntu back in the day, but most of the pre-installed distros have fallen away, so you’d need to pick a distro and install it yourself.
It’s a very mature application, so you won’t need to keep updating every time you want to watch anything.
- Comment on Anyone else going basic with their NAS? 1 month ago:
Yes. And No.
I have a home made (arch btw) NAS that stores all our files - mostly via syncthing, even from remote family.
That was it.
Then I installed Immich so that we could see the photos… so… it’s technically just a NAS, but it does now have a web application running on it…
Videos & Music are on a completely separate MythTV box which existed before the NAS - I saw no point in moving ~3TB of data to a separate box that would need to be powered when I want to watch / listen to something… my NAS powers itself up & down throughout the day to save electricity (and it was interesting to learn how to make it know when it was / wasn’t being used)
- Comment on YouTube Music Downloader 1 month ago:
Download with yt-dlp. All of it. Even into a single folder if that’s easier.
Then run it all through Picard and that’ll do everything else for you - albumart, metadata, folders, filenames, the lot.
Anything that Picard doesn’t know about, enter it into the MusicBrainz db to give back to the community.
Done.
- Comment on Open Source Paid Remote Desktop 1 month ago:
We use VNC as we can record the sessions easily for later priof / discussion with our customers.
It’s in a VPN tunnel of course.
- Comment on A bit of my selfhost journey [that no one asked about] 1 month ago:
If you’re looking for a different approach, I moved from Nextcloud to Radicale for my family calendars, which includes ToDo functionality.
From an app point, for Android I’m using Fossify Calendar (which I think you’re using?) and Tasks.Org ToDo - and this definitely handles recurring tasks (inc. with different types of schedules)
From a remote access point of view, I have HA Proxy to convert the internal HTTP traffic into external HTTPS traffic (with Lets Encrypt certificate)
(Yes, I also have a VPN for other things… just focusing here for the calendar / todo)
- Comment on Safest CalDAV/CardDAV server 1 month ago:
My journey⋮ Nextcloud —> syncthing + radicale
Much simpler, easier to maintain, less resources needed
- Comment on Is there any good decentralized cloud storage for personal backups as a self-hoster? 1 month ago:
Got a link for that? Searching for “garage backup storage” doesn’t really get me anywhere…
- Comment on New server for the family, Proxmox or TrueNAS, LXC or Docker? 1 month ago:
Nice. I’ll go that way when I next brave the dust and cobwebs where the server’s currently located
- Comment on New server for the family, Proxmox or TrueNAS, LXC or Docker? 1 month ago:
Aha! I was considering moving from proxmox to incus too, but incus seemed quite new and not much documentation (at the time)
How do you find it now?